theblacktivity-blog

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The color of urbanization.

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A Tale of Two Cities

In over the past decade, the city of Richmond, VA, the hometown of my birth and maturation,  has seen what has often been described as a sea-change in its reputation and cultural texture. The capital city having been the political epicenter of Virginia for nearly 240 years and the once capital city of the confederacy during the succession of southern states from the union, has in recent years been seen as one of the chief cities in the growing cosmopolitanism of the south (I argue that Virginia is more mid-Atlantic...but that’s for another time). I remember vividly the Richmond of my youth, when it was it was considered something of an expanded rest stop for those traveling either north to Washington D.C. and beyond, or those traveling South to Virginia Beach or down and past the Carolinas. It was a city whose chief claim to fame was once its Civil War rich “legacy”, the history of the trolleys and streetcars, and it’s sprawling neighborhoods (of which it’s redlined background is public knowledge). I was born and raised in Gilpin Court, a public housing complex north of the James River, in an area known as Jackson Ward, which at the height of its powers in the early twentieth century was known to many by such superlatives as “The Harlem of the South” or “The Birthplace of Black Capitalism”. This was due to the role in which African Americans, both working class and prominent, played in the development of a bustling and successful neighborhood at a time when Blacks were maligned at every turn as a matter of American “normalcy”. The community boasted such influential figures as banking magnate Maggie L. Walker, entertainer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson,  publisher John Mitchell, and Booker T. Washington’s pupil and famous lawyer Jackson W. Giles. Further, throughout its most formative years Jackson Ward was the city’s entertainment hub for not only Black patrons but for whites from across town as well, as acts such as Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Nat King Cole, and James Brown (among others) frequently performed at the Hippodrome Theatre and stayed at the Black owned Eggleston Hotel, both on 2nd Street or “The Deuce” as it was known at the time. However, by the time that I was born in 1985, it was President Ronald Reagan’s second term in office, the crack epidemic was at its height, and the neighborhood once known for Black excellence had become a shell of its former self. This was in no small part due to President Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway Program of the 1950’s that only 35 years prior began cutting through the neighborhood clearing out once prosperous areas, combining with redlining policies that tanked housing prices and encouraged institutional and individual neglect of Black communities, and subsequently creating vacuums of poverty, many of which last until this day. The Gilpin Court/Jackson Ward of my childhood then, was one that was at once filled with love though existing within the prevailing economic struggles and violent epidemics of the times. Further, it didn’t help that federal policies made it so that police were given license to wage all out war on Black communities via the narrative of crack as a criminal rather than public health matter. It wasn’t uncommon to for police stop by one’s home under the guise of community involvement (only when I would become old enough to understand would I come to realize these were just illegal searches of the homes of friends and family…) but because of the violence of the period it wasn’t uncommon for otherwise reasonable people to carry weapons. (my mother and sister once both owned guns due the the rash of break ins that occurred due to addicts attempting to feed the habit). It was during this era and the subsequent 90’s that Richmond was considered a city to stay away from. Wars concentrated mostly in poor Black neighborhoods were the constant source of angst for citizens, community leaders, and local politicians downtown. Further, City Hall had its own troubles as charges of mismanagement of funds were rampant and one of its own council members publicly battled heroin addiction. The peak of the violence was the year of 1994 which saw one of the highest homicide rates in the city’s history including one of its most noted massacres when in October of 1994 Christopher Goins a small time hustler, murdered the entire family of his unborn child’s mother, a then 14 year old Tameka Jones. James Randolph 35, Daphne Jones 29 (Tameka’s mother), and her younger sister Nicole Jones 9, and her little brothers David Jones 4, and Robert Jones 3, were all brutally slaughtered when Goins walked into the Gilpin Court apartment and emptied his Glock 45 throughout the home. In the process Tameka was also shot but survived only because her unborn child took the majority of the bullets dying in utero. Her youngest sister, Kenya, was shot in the arm, but survived as well. All taking place up the street from where I lived at the time, remember the cold and rainy October day. In third grade I remember hearing over the PA system that Nicole had passed and I remember hearing Mrs. Hatcher, one of the many teachers at Carver Elementary, attempting to dedicate a song over the the intercom as her voice trembled audibly fighting back tears. This was also the decade that saw the murder of Harold Marsh, a prominent lawyer, judge, and brother of the city’s first Black mayor and civil rights icon Henry Marsh. With this and other senseless crimes,  measures were taken to sweep the streets of weapons via Project Exile, a program championed by then Mayor Tim Kaine (who to be clear was a great mayor with a history before politics of fighting against housing discrimination and redlining) which vouched a mandatory five year sentence for those caught with illegal handguns. While the efforts at reducing crime were in part a response to the surge of violence in the 1990’s this program alone did little to address the fundamental causes of poverty and its adjacent symptom, crime. Still, toward the end of the 1990’s and into the new millennium, Richmond was proclaiming itself to be a city on the move, and looking to expand its tax base by attracting more businesses, and professional residents. Part in parcel of this move would be accomplished through the re-imaging of the city, which meant less focus on reporting crime and more focus on reporting development, not to mention the advent of Virginia Commonwealth University’s expanded involvement in the community at large. Students of the urban campus would bring about the youth and hip appeal to the surrounding neighborhoods that were at the time just in the genesis of reeling from decades of neglect. The hope was that those students would graduate to careers in the city that would have them stay as permanent citizens creating a new revenue base. Further, the with the professional class and business interest of the city growing younger, the desire to re-migrate in closer proximity to the city began to grow and with this, in 2005 under the mayoral leadership of former Governor Douglas L. Wilder, Project Renaissance Richmond began in earnest. The combination of VCU’s expansion, in conjunction with developer interest in the neighborhoods of Jackson Ward, Carver, Church Hill, and Shockoe Bottom, brought business and private speculators and newly migrated residents to the fore. Meanwhile, lifelong residents watched as the neighborhoods they had known all of their lives changed before their eyes. While change was indeed welcome, a source of contention was whether or not the fruits of that change would be available for all residents, after all many of these communities were those with a history of being redlined, concentrated poverty, and crime. As speculators began to collect distressed property at discounted rates, this pace was exacerbated with the historic tax credit incentive available to all investors willing to seed capital in these abandoned enclaves. Existing residents, mostly African Americans without the access to capital nor the working knowledge of the markets, found themselves either selling properties below market value or being priced out as emerging service industries attracted new higher income residents. Meanwhile many of the adjacent public housing complexes most of which are end the east end of the city, continued to see much of the same crime as before albeit at lower rates than in the previous decade. As leaders both civic and entrepreneurial championed the city’s emerging growth and Virginia as a whole became recognized as one of the top states in the nation for new business, the poverty rate steadily climbed. Abandoned warehouses gave way to condominiums, boarded up and once condemned single family residences became recreations of homes from years past that combined charm with modern chic. Local industry began to flourish as well. In particular downtown’s finance and banking industry, the restaurant and hospitality sector, the medical industry, government, entertainment and nightlife, and most famously the beer brewing sector. In 2009 on the heels of the economic collapse of 2008 and the inauguration of the nation’s first African American president, Barack Obama, the administration of Mayor Dwight C. Jones was underway, and in the wake of this most historic time in history Richmonders like those of many other cities were both attempting to regain equilibrium from the effects of global financial collapse, and look to the future with some optimism. While the crash affected speculation of real estate briefly with a squeeze on lending, those most hurt by the crisis were those who lived in the inner city where jobs are scarce and when available are often low wage. Meanwhile development around Richmond’s emerging industries and real estate continued accelerate. VCU’s footprint on the whole of the downtown area as well as those of private business interest went as far as achieving the unsettling measure put forth by those within the corridors of City Hall and the GRTC (the city’s transit company), of re-routing buses to backstreets, as to clear the Broad Street artery of of the bustle that was to be found mostly from 2nd to 9th streets going eastbound. Such a measure appeared to many as a dog whistle to clearing the main thoroughfare of it mostly Black and working class citizens, as condominiums, art galleries, coffee shops, and boutiques took the place of former convenience stores and soul food restaurants. The paradox of this change was the reality of the city’s poverty rate which was found by 2014 to stand at 25%. While the business community and local politicians checked off victory boxes with every new contract to build enterprise and with every neighborhood gentrified to the benefit of a few, local schools, most of which cater to young African American children from struggling communities, crumbled under the weight of decades of infrastructural decay. Even as major (and even admirable) development of the downtown area continued to shape the rebranding of the city from Richmond to the more hip ‘RVA’, the same songs filled the the newswaves when it came to the underdevelopment of the cities most vulnerable communities, all the more problematic given the adjacency of such communities to what was often touted in theory (but not application) to be opportunity for all citizens. Fast forward to 2017, and one can see that on the one hand RVA has now become one of the faster growing cities in the nation, home to the number one public arts university in the nation in VCU as well as one of the top schools in medicine. There are no shortage of young future affluents promenading the corridors of Jackson Ward, Carver, Church Hill, and The Fan. And as art and beer has become the city’s signature staples, there have been no shortage of exhibits by emerging artist who have decided to stake their claim to RVA as their springboard into the white walls of the gallery. In much the way that Brooklyn in the 1980’s gave way to new and daring generation of artist, entrepreneurs, creatives, and visionaries, Richmond appears in many ways to be the new millennium's version of that direction. One problem: in 2017, the city is once again finding itself in the midst of one of its violent years. The prior year, 2016, saw the most homicides in a decade.  Concentrated per usual among mostly poor African American neighborhoods, those in the know continue to turn a blind eye to the links between systemic racism, poverty, and crime. Even as the East End, Northside, and Southside of town develop to the liking of tourist and the affluent, the larger question of the democratization of opportunity somehow evades those in positions of leadership. The Office of Community Wealth Building, an anti poverty task force started under Mayor Dwight Jones in 2015 and headed in part by U of R Professor Thad Williamson, was and is still a continuing effort to derail the effects of poverty. However with a budget estimated to be only worth 10 million dollars and with job creation at the center, however noble this cause it does little to address the vacuums of strife that exist, a direct result of federal, state, and local housing policies that were racist in their intent and quite frankly, successful in their intended outcome. The link between the city’s revival, despite all of its beauty and fanfare and beauty, cannot be separated from the insidious cycle of racialized urbanization. Once upon a time living in a community that was considered majority Black (or even if it wasn’t and you were one of only a few Black faces) meant that to the government and banks, your neighborhood was worthless at worst, and at best “lacked the value” of neighborhoods considered white. This had the effect of whole areas being divested of equity and investment and as a result, ghettos were created. These so called “ghettos” concentrated poverty and crime into these areas as those who fled to the suburbs enjoyed greener pastures that Blacks in the city were shut off from. Then one day, when those who had built tremendous equity and wealth in the suburbs decided that the city was once again desirable, the “ghettos” that residents had spent decades living and fighting for investment in became invested in by the “flighters” or the sons and daughters or grandsons and daughters of the former “flighters”, and for this ambitious politicians were grateful, because economically neoliberal policies work best when it appears as if problems are being solved, with as little “dirty work” as possible. In the process those in the “ghettos” not only found themselves continually reeling from more of the same...violence, drugs, crime, poverty, shame, but also find themselves on the outside looking in on the lands of opportunity developing around them without tools to access it. Meanwhile in the public eye, leaders feign victory for the city as a whole while privately wringing their hands at the latest crime report, knowing all along the true reason for the dichotomy between the mostly white haves and the mostly Black have nots.  

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The new golden age of Blackness.

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The Black Renaissance 2.0

It’s now been duly noted that the campaign and subsequent two-term presidency of Barack Obama circa 2008-2016, was in part responsible for ushering in a renewed era of cultural and political engagement. After all, we all remember the massive amounts of pressure that was placed on the millennial, Black, and the intersectional Black millennial voting blocs to bring home the first African American presidency. I’m almost certain that we remember the way in which conversations in the media about the then Illinois junior senator’s run gingerly, but unsuccessfully, attempted to avoid any allusion to exactly what he would say about the ‘elephant in the room’ issue of race in America. We surely remember what the stakes really were. What about the reactions of those staunch supporters of the republican opposition of Sen. John McCain and former governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin to Barack Obama’s run for the White House? Such comments ranged from the veiled and incorrect attempts by some to link him to socialism, others were completely wacked out like that of the crazy cat lady at a McCain rally who stated that Obama was “an Arab” only to have Sen. McCain snatch the mic from her with the quickness. As Black folk, we knew exactly what lied behind these exhortations from the white delegation, an anxiety, a coming to terms moment with the fact that a scenario once considered a punchline in Black comedy and a fantasy played out by the likes of Morgan Freeman, was indeed a reality...a Black president. For many of us, it was a coming of age moment. There will be many a Black millennial, such as myself who will be able to forever mark their maturation from the election of Barack Obama. Yet, while the former prez’s election could be considered nothing less than a watershed moment, his presidency was marked by that line most recognized by those who are enthusiasts of Charles Dickens, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Obama’s was an era in politics marked by tremendous progress on the health care front, and his signature act, the ACA, or Obamacare will forever be a testament to the reality that he got shit done, considering the environment towards him. He took out one of the most wanted terrorist in world history in Osama bin Laden, in a way that a 10 year long botched war in Iraq didn’t. He bailed the financial and auto industries, the former on which had for decades used financial charlantry to such a degree that it crashed the the global markets, costing homes and jobs for millions. By restructuring regulations to protect consumers, and punishing criminal financial outfits, he eventually brought back balance to the markets that hadn’t seen a tank like that since the Great Depression. Needless to say, that in the span of 8 years there were many more accomplishments, the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, the passing of the “Lily Ledbetter Act”, and the legalization of same sex marriage (whatever your take on these) at the very least must be considered monumental achievements given the stalemate that such issues had previously been met with in Washington. Still, President Obama also presided over the most polarized political environment since Lincoln. What was a victory for so many African Americans was at once a devastating blow to the white psyche. Forty-three times in a row, the most powerful space in the world had been occupied by a white man and the presidency was synonymous with the continuation of white administrative power. But this upstart, a junior senator with culturally androgynous roots in Kenya to his birthplace in Hawaii, to Indonesia, to the South side of Chicago, with a name such as Barack Hussein Obama to boot, must’ve been way too much for the melanin impaired! As such, there were no shortage of racial dog whistles, and slurs such as “food stamp president”, “welfare president”, existed alongside images of stuffed monkeys dressed in suits, and signs that read “go back to Africa”. Since Black folk are endowed with a sixth sense that alerts us to America’s racism, we expected it, and Obama probably being well acquainted with the ways of the Nordics himself, exuded a chill factor that made such detractors look like mere children in his world. This only infuriated them more and made us even more proud of him for his ability to execute with unmatched cool. Still, the racial divide that in part marked his time in office manifested itself most potently in the exorbitant amount killings of unarmed African Americans, many of which have gone on to become martyred household names, Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, John Crawford, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Rekia Boyd, Laquan McDonald, Mike Brown, and these names are just the most widely known, because in Obama’s era there were at least 500 other such state sanctioned murders. For us, these killings and white American “justice” system’s nonchalance toward the perpetrators of these deeds, were the in part an outward manifestation of America’s need to “put Black folk back in place”, as to say, that not even a Black president could save us. Which brings us to a flashpoint in which the issue of race and the reality of Blackness took centerstage in a way not seen since the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements of the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s. If race took centerstage with the election of Barack Obama in 2008 and our moment of “post racial” euphoria was quickly jolted with the killing of Oscar Grant by a transit cop in 2009 just weeks before Obama’s inauguration, the murder of Sanford, Florida teen Trayvon Martin and the subsequent acquittal of his murderer, George Zimmerman was the event in which all of the forces of unabashed Black political consciousness collided. The rise of the #BlackLivesMatter movement and other similar Black protest organizations, marked what would paradoxically become an unfortunate Godsend as the era of social media, camera phones, and 24 hour online and offline news cycles were just some of the newer tools of 21st century Black revolution. Further, while such movements have been either directly or indirectly linked in one way or another with liberalism, given the African American link to the democratic party, what was amazing about this moment was how it seemed as if 400 years of oppression brought out ideologies across the African American spectrum. What comes to mind is Ta-Nehesi Coates’ depiction of his experience at Howard as being “The Mecca” of Blackness in his book “Between The World And Me”. Such were the times during the Obama era that Black folk from all stripes politically and ideologically occupied a space to weigh in on the most pressing issues of the day, from police brutality, to economic empowerment, to media. While Black pride and power had never truly ceased to exist, this renewed sense of it began to spill over in the most influential of spheres with music and popular culture that reflected the signs of turbulent and changing times. For instance,  hip hop artist such as Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole found their rise to hip hop stardom during this era with lyrics that didn’t shy away from the realities of being Black in America. Filmmakers such as Ava DuVernay created and released poignant films that not only touched intimately on Black life, but narrated Black history, and put critical issues like mass incarceration center stage. There was the rebirth of grassroots activism spawned by the wave of police killings of Blacks and in part supported by the relatively new tool of social media in which names of activists like Alicia Garza, Patrice Cullors, Shaun King, DeRay McKesson, Opal Tometi, and Johnetta Elzie (to name just the few) became household names. And certainly there were no shortages of Black academics, writers, and pundits whose new found dominant presence in the public intellectual sphere was part and parcel of 44th president’s mere existence in creating dialogues and partly due to the wave of all things Black once again dominating the population at large. While such legendary and well known  minds as Dr. Cornel West, Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, Jelani Cobb, Tavis Smiley, Dr. Kimberle Crenshaw, and Donna Brazile, were infused into the new era and being reintroduced to a new generation with noticeable vigor, such new and young Black minds like Angela Rye, Joey Jackson, Dr. Marc Lamont Hill, Cornell Belcher, Ta-Nehesi Coates, Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry, Yamiche Alcindor, Van Jones, Joy Reid, Toure, and many of their peers and contemporaries in part became the voice and impetus for the new Black. Still, there are also other voices coming out of this era that rose to prominence despite the so-called controversy they engender, names such as Dr. Umar Johnson, Tariq Nasheed, Dr. Claud Anderson, Dr. Joy DeGruy, and Dr. Boyce Watkins, names once not considered as much a part of the “mainstream”, but whose messages of Black independence and empowerment in the Pan African strain (economically and culturally) has since regained new life and noticeably influenced the minds of many in the Black community. Even pop cultural icons within the Black America from Oprah, to Beyonce, Jay-Z to LeBron James and the many influential behemoths of media, sports, and entertainment have rose to the task in a sphere in which it was once thought that being mum on social and political issues was the path to sustained popularity and success, especially if you were Black. Messages of not only Black economic empowerment, but creative freedom and unabashed Blackness in the face of white oppression dominated the lyrics and even business moves of the most successful among us. In other words, we went from talking it, to living it. This may be due in no small part to the advent of the digital world’s role in cutting out middle men in business and entertainment, allowing for newfound freedoms in connecting directly to consumers and creatively using platforms to engage on topics that once would’ve been censored by gatekeepers. Further, the democratization of media has created spaces for the likes of once ordinary citizens to create content on levels that can have both niche and mainstream appeal (see: Issa Rae) making Black life in it’s fullness, a main plot, not a marginal one. It was and is this Black renaissance that was in part responsible for the white backlash of 2016 and the election of Donald Trump. There can be no doubt that it would be hard to imagine America voting for such a flawed 45th president, had the 44th one been white instead. But it was not just President Barack Obama’s presence as leader of the free world that was the problem, it was what he stood for, it was what he (inadvertently) created by his being alone. It was the renewed since of pride and the benchmark of Obama’s occupation of the highest office in the land that in part, created varied conversations across the Black spectrum, and laid a foundation off of which a new generation of Black folk define themselves, smart, engaged, and swagged out to boot! While there can be no doubt that there is still much work to be done, as it always has been in America for Black folk and while we may be able to debate what policies we please, what can’t be debated is the role of Barack Obama’s presidency in creating the atmosphere of our renewed aspirations toward Black excellence. This, to me at least, is President Barack Obama’s most lasting legacy, and we have him in part to thank for the Black renaissance we are witnessing today.

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For Black people, the 4th of July is just another day. 

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Keep Your 4th of July.

The 4th of July for most Americans is cognitive dissonance expressed at a peak commercial level. It is a time where some of us gather around grills in manicured backyards and harp on the “glory” of living in the “greatest nation on earth”. We sing “America The Beautiful” and tear up as “The Star Spangled Banner” blast over the ballpark loudspeakers as we wait for the crescendo “…and the rockets red glare” to applaud and scream into a frenzy. In expected fashion this is also a time when we look to the past with a degree of reverence for the nation’s founders and their infinite wisdom in crafting the essential documents that have since remained a cornerstone of this country’s supposed creed, The Declaration of Independence, The Federalist Papers, The U.S. Constitution, The Bill of Rights.  In some parts, this desire to bring the nation’s past to the fore borders on the comically insane as some citizens take it upon themselves to dress in full colonial era garb in peak summer weather to recreate for one day the events before, during, and after July 4th 1776. We gather around open fields at city parks, at airports, or watch from our porches and pillars (if you’re among those lucky enough to have either) and gaze in awe at the magnificence of the fireworks illuminating the nighttime sky. If you are more of a home body, the “Americaness” of “ ‘Merica” shall nevertheless escape you not, as everything from the M&M candy commercial, to the Budwiser beer ad, to the jingle for the wholesale furniture outlet down the street will make some allusion to “ ‘Merica” faster than you can say Yankee Doodle. Still words such as liberty, equality, justice, freedom, democracy, rights, and of course…patriotism, are used in excess all of which are a vain attempt to conceal from ourselves and the world that for many other’s the 4th of July doesn’t mean shit. That’s right, as a Black person (that is a person of African descent whose ancestors were the forced human engines upon which this nation was built to and for the advantage of white people) the 4th of July is a day off, nothing more, nothing less. It’s a time in which we are reminded in earnest that freedom actually isn’t free, and that the folks whom Ta-Nehesi Coates so eloquently described as “the dreamers” in his book “Between The World and Me” aren’t just merely delusional, they suffer from what could only be considered a psychosis. We are reminded that for more Americans than less, it is of such importance to protect the illusion of “exceptionalism”, that it has driven the majority white (for now) citizens into a state of endless vertigo, reinforced by at least 250 years of twisted (at best) and false narrative. We’ve known the chicanery in this supposed celebration of “freedom” ever since we where able to piece together this tomfoolery occurring in full view of the slave quarters and cotton patches, and none put it so eloquently as Frederick Douglass when he asked and answered:

“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness; swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.”

With this in mind, on this 4th of July we are reminded that for Black people while there have been some liberties in the nominal, Blacks are still considered 2nd class citizens whose lives matter not to the American “dreamers” and whose pleas for justice and human dignity continue to fall on deaf ears. Such has been the case since July 4th 1776, however July 4th 2017 is a time uniquely suited to the representation of this country’s grotesque shams of liberty, justice, and togetherness. It falls at a time when the nation is at its most openly polarized time (active word: openly) since the 1960’s. A time after the so-called post racial era of President Barack Obama in which white resentments, anxieties, jealousies, and nonchalance has swelled to such a degree as to render the house highly combustible. In the person of newly elected President Donald Trump whites see their psychic savior and at least a superficial return to American “normalcy” where white men rule with impunity, no matter their behavior. It’s a time when an administration such as Trump’s, swamped with more allusions to criminal activity than any presidency in recent history, is practically pored over and discussed by pundits to the point of xerostomia , though it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that if the previous administration of former President Barack Obama had been faced with a tenth of these allegations, they would be under Guantanamo Bay right now. As if this isn’t enough, we also have a president and cabinet who has made it quite clear that the issues of African Americans are so out of the discourse for them, that they don’t feel the need to be informed on Black history (see Trump and Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s discombobulated rant about Frederick Douglass existing with us in the present tense), not to mention the appointment of Attorney General (and former Alabama Senator) Jeff Sessions to chief cop despite his (or because of) his sordid civil rights record. These occurrences and a laundry list more doesn't bode well for the Black situation on the ground. As the Black bodies pile up from police executions, said police officers are walking off scot-free, and from the looks of it, there seems to be some consensus among many in law enforcement that “hunting” season is back in session, Bull Connor style. Meanwhile, urban areas densely populated with Blacks suffer from a mixture of poverty, gentrification, and crime, the former, next, and latter of which has time and again been proven to be the result of racist economic and housing policies. Yet, the narrative is that there is something “inherently wrong” with such communities and while there seems to be no shortage of town halls and special reports on the subject, in the most prosperous nation on earth, we still haven’t gotten to any solutions and in many cases moderators and politicians resign it to being “a complex issue”.  We Black people in America have this to think about as the 4th of July rolls around.  It will be said, as it is has been in Independence Day’s past that “we need to get over it”, that “Black people have come a long way”, that “we are being unreasonable”. There will then be attempts by the “dreamers” to disregard America’s utter hypocrisy via our television screens flooded with “people from all races” championing their love for country. Meanwhile those of us willing to confront the illusion, will largely go on about this day no doubt appreciative of the family gatherings, the time off of a stressful job, and the cookouts, nevertheless as for the country and its celebrations, we’ll feel nothing. For African Americans this July 4th will be but another piercing reminder of how those suburban manicured lawns so storied in American lore came to be (redlining, restrictive covenants, and mortgage discrimination). It will be yet another reminder of whose freedom was really achieved that day in 1776 (white people). It will be yet another reminder of the second Revolutionary War, the Civil War and the grounds on which it was fought (primarily the maintenance of the slave state in the South and the North’s jealousy of it). It will be a reminder of the broken promises of The Reconstruction (still being fought til this day). It will bring to pass the images of old Jim Crow lynching and new Jim Crow jailing and police killings. It will remind us of the litany of names that have been martyred throughout the struggle for real freedom, and those symbols missing justice who weren’t born to be symbols but died becoming such. More than anything though, for Black people, the 4th of July will mean nothing.  

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Shame on you Jason Whitlock...really?!?

[theblacktivity-blog]

Shame On You Jason Whitlock

To the extent that racism is the pervasive illness of the American body politic, it should be of no surprise that it can be mined out of almost every topic of consequence from social reform and politics, to entertainment and sports.  The depth, breadth, and complexity of the original sin’s subsequent shit stain upon this nation is one that can’t be avoided. Rightfully so after all, the “free world” has at least 400 years worth of answering to do for the enslavement and destruction of Black flesh, Machiavellian crafting of racist policies and social customs, and its devastating and repercussive effects.  As such, most of the grandsons and granddaughters of those distant countries in Africa, the more immediate southern cotton and tobacco patches, and the still more immediate urban “ghettos” and even Black suburbs have antennae that are particularly sensitive to American bullshit.  This is true even as we have in the most evolutionary and revolutionary of manners contributed to the very identity of a country that has built its house (and continues to embellish it) by biting the dark hands that feed it.  Among the laundry list of peculiar conceits and questionable theoretical contortions which we as Blacks take exception to are; American “exceptionalism”, colorblindness, and more recently, post-racialism.  However, a variation of the latter philosophy has been touted even more in recent years though it has been promulgated through out Black history among these “purple mountains majesty”.  It’s one that posits racism as selective or more particularly acute by class. That is to say there are “exceptional negroes” and “negroes”.  Somehow despite all historical evidence to the contrary there are those who still believe Black folk with money to be immune from the all American skin matrix.  The intent behind this is nefarious however, given the documentation we have about what life was like for those Black folk who through ingenuity, creativity, and sheer force of will managed to obtain some semblance of what could be deemed as success (we need look no further than the way in which so called “uppity negroes” were often the victims of more lynch mobs given their status over “slighted” and jealous white perpetrators).  In fact, such a theory is often the ploy of the very institutions within American society to not only substantiate false claims of a fading racism, but to keep those few Black folk with money and power from being aroused to the sensibilities of their discontented and less privileged brethren.  To some extent then, there has been some success with this particular mode in the white world’s attempt to keep the African American nation “in check”, yet, there has also been a history of Black wealth meeting Black politics and social progression.  It’s a legacy that begins with Paul Cuffee, one of America’s earliest Black millionaires and the father of Pan-Africanist politics in the nation, and runs through names of wealthy Black movement financier types like William Monroe Trotter, to A.G. Gaston and John H. Johnson to name not even a handful.  So much to the chagrin of white Americans is the very notion of Black success let alone that success paired with consciousness, that one such was device at thwarting it has been the absorption (attempted and successful) of Black America’s best into intermediate hierarchies. Such a belief then could only be predicated on getting certain upper class Blacks to believe that race is a subject that they needn’t be bothered with.  There have been those before us who see the game for what it was and is, those who didn’t, but then there are those among us who know the game and still drink the Kool Aid.  Such battles between the woke and slumbering and or co-opted among us have been taking place since were hipped to the absurd notion of our condition.  This tiff is essentially a proxy fight of sorts where those of us aware of the racial house of mirrors and its dizzying array of effects, with a dogged determination to address it and defeat it, are locked in a dual with white dismissiveness via those who look like us. I’ll refrain from using the cliché’ “Uncle Toms” and just say; those Black folk who knowing full and well racism’s actuality who catch self induced cases of amnesia that they may be considered by the white world as either less threatening, or exceptional. Or, those who simply forgo any stiffening of spine as to present themselves as the self styled archetype of the American “rugged individual” in Blackface (as if white folk who consider themselves the same are paid one dollar to every Black five cents not because of centuries of unjust policies, but because they “earned” it…ruggedly). 

In any event, in the latest installment of this ongoing saga we have two men, both Black and privileged. One is Jason Whitlock, sports columnist and commentator for ESPN. Never one to shy away from controversy, Whitlock has made a quite a name and check for himself by being more than willing to go into the abyss, crafting self styled (or maybe not so “self” styled) lectures of Black people in and out of sports on “self-victimization” that he considers himself a hero for. From calling Serena Williams who is arguably the greatest tennis star ever an “underachiever” and criticizing her weight and calling Colin Kapernick “Martin Luther Cornrow”, he appears to be one of white sports media’s favorite Black mouthpieces.  On the other end of the spectrum we have LeBron James. LeBron James is the game’s greatest basketball player who by the end of his career will more than likely achieve best ever status.  He is a basketball player of unparalleled ability with a combination of size and skill sets the likes of which we have never seen.  LeBron is a 3-time NBA Champion, 4- time MVP, 3-time NBA Finals MVP, 2 time Olympic Gold Medalist, 1 time NBA Scoring Champion, and former NBA Rookie Of The Year. Oh did I mention that he is also a 13-time NBA All Star…first team, 6-time All Defensive Team honoree, 11-time All NBA First Team honoree, and the Cleveland Cavaliers all time leading scorer, whew!  But wait it gets better! Being the astute businessman that he is (probably even more so than MJ at this stage) LeBron is fundamentally responsible for the sea change in NBA player bargaining rules, which has placed more power in the hands of players.  His “controversial” decision to team up with Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami after the 2010 season was not only a move that had the effect of helping him to his first elusive title, then a second, including subsequent trips to the finals, but one structured in a way to get him max money up front with marketing deets. This has since led to the subsequent formation of super-teams across the league where stars join forces signing shorter max contracts, leveraging free agency as a tool to profit share in other areas.  Anyone familiar with contracts that were more owner-biased in the past, will appreciate the chess move.  James stands at a net worth of roughly $400 million dollars, and his lifetime contract with Nike has the very real potential of one day netting him $1 billion.  But beyond all this and what’s most important to realize is that his greatest gift, notwithstanding the hardwood and the boardroom, is that he is a loving husband, father, and son.  He’s also the consummate citizen-athlete involved heavily in his community through tangibly beneficial charities (not tax write-off shell charities) and educational foundations of which he has provided everything from food, to clothing, to college prep, and full scholarships. He’s never been involved in any scandal on or off the court that would have us question his character, and further he’s proven to be the one thing in addition to of all of these qualities that has since put the white world on notice…LeBron James is a woke ass Black man.  And that leads us here. Because as of the time of this writing, LeBron James has found himself in yet another NBA Finals, a rematch to boot, against the high powered offense of Steph Curry’s (and now Kevin Durant’s) Golden State Warriors. After leading the Cleveland Cavs from a 3-game deficit to a game 7 win in the 2016 NBA Finals and ending the Cleveland Championship drought, he finds himself facing a rather familiar foe. However, while preparing for game 1 of this year’s NBA Finals he found himself facing a still familiar foe when it was reported that his Los Angeles home had not only been burglarized, but vandalized with the word “nigger” spray-painted across the front gate.  That said foe wasn’t any particular person per se, so much as it was America’s ugly racist history taking root, even on the lawn of a celebrity Black millionaire and megastar. Being the consummate non-Michael Jordan athletic entity that he is (meaning that unlike Mike, LeBron has always been outspoken on societal matters) LeBron decided to make a statement that at its root is pretty basic and obvious to anyone whose even halfway tuned in to the world:

 “No matter how much money you have, no matter how famous you are, no matter how many people admire you, being Black in America is tough”.  James then added, “It just goes to show that racism will always be a part of the world, a part of America. And, you know, hate in America, especially for African Americans, is living everyday. And even though it’s concealed most of the time, even though people hide their faces and will say things about you, they smile in your face, it’s alive every single day.”

 LeBron then went on to make mention of the infamous Emmitt Till case;

“And I think back to Emmitt Till’s mom, actually. That’s actually one of the first things I thought of. The reason she had an open casket was that she wanted to show the world what her son went through as far as hate crime, and being Black in America”

No sooner than the statement was made, anyone familiar with the way in which white Americans react to any Black celebrity with a conscious voice, could’ve predicted the slew of fake outrage that would follow. However, it was Jason Whitlock’s response to James’s statements that were of particular peculiarity, especially given the fact that he himself is a full grown Black man in America and should have some idea of what James’ meant. To quote Whitlock’s response;

 “The people that murdered Emmitt Till got off, an all-white jury let them off; there was no real investigation, the whole town was against him. LeBron’s $20 million Brentwood home gets vandalized and I see two or three police cars trying to get to the bottom of it. LeBron’s staff I’m sure cleaned up the spray paint within hours. This ain’t Emmitt Till.”

 Whitlock then continued;

“Racism is an issue in America but is primarily an issue for the poor. It’s not LeBron James’ issue. He has removed himself from the damages and ravages of real racism.”

 Soon after, the net was flooded with responses from other athletes such as Green Bay Packer’s tight end Martellus Bennett, and journalists such as his ESPN co-worker Mike Hill, chiding Whitlock (and rightfully so) for his ignorant and misguided lecturing. I won’t get into those responses at length given that there are transcripts of the ass-kicking correctives to Whitlock. But I will state why Whitlock was wrong.  First, LeBron’s correct take that racism is still a problem in America is American sociology 101. If the recent the succession of police shootings of unarmed Black folk in which murderous cops are acquitted and re-assigned to job post haven’t been enough for you Mr. Whitlock, we need not go any further in this discussion, you are perpetually lost.  In fact, these state sanctioned murders are only what’s been making the news, because if you aren’t aware, there are provisions of the Voting Rights Act they have been rolled back to such a degree that in many southern states, Black votes are all but made impotent. I wonder too, if Jason Whitlock is aware of the fact that the American criminal justice system still incarcerates Black people out of proportion to their representation not only in American society, but the world? If there was any doubt about whether racism is a “real thing” then he need look no further than the wealth gap in this country to find that there is still a 20 to 1 ratio as it pertains to dollars made per capita between whites and Blacks. Yes, whites make nearly 20 times more and that’s including the Black millionaires he attempts to hold up as symbols of some “dying “racism. In fact, maybe Whitlock isn’t familiar with the history in this country of white backlash against Blacks with wealth and privilege, maybe the story of Greenwood, in Tulsa, Oklahoma rings not a bell in Jason’s pea sized mind. Or, maybe he’s never heard of Rosewood, FL and the countless stories of successful African Americans who have found themselves with crosses in their lawns when they are finally able to afford homes in neighborhoods with “greener pastures”. See, what Jason Whitlock doesn’t realize is that racism is systemic, and actually most of it is predicated on containing Black bodies and any sort of equal economic privilege. So the very notion that someone found it necessary to remind LeBron James that he was still a “nigger” by spray painting it on his mansion is proof positive of racism’s still insidious and continuing hold on the American (mainly read: white American mind). Further, to assume that LeBron was attempting to compare his situation to that of Emmitt Till’s is not only a preposterous claim, but one that blatantly ignores both what LeBron stated and what he actually meant. The transcripts of LeBron’s response after all, clearly show him saying “I think back to Emmitt Till”. That is to say that he’s not comparing his situation to Till’s, but rather this act is one the perpetuates the attitudes that led to the heinous act of Till’s murder. In this LeBron is absolutely correct. While neither LeBron nor his family were harmed and thankfully so, such sentiments are the type that have had deadlier consequences. As African Americans we can’t afford to put anything past a society that has utilized symbols to remind us how easily we can be reached, touched, and in some cases, harmed.  Is there a chance that this could be the act of some teen vandals or a sick person with a desire to fulfill some inner satisfaction from making short lived news? Sure. But then again what if it’s more? The fact that such an act happened in a relatively secured wealthy L.A. neighborhood should in an of itself raise hairs because it means that given the mostly white makeup of Brentwood, someone knew this may have been one of only a few Black residents in that area. Fact is, that symbols can and have materialized into much worse. To be clear, Jason Whitlock has made his living being controversial and one could probably surmise that he was rolled out as white America’s Black troll against Black consciousness. But what makes this hypothesis all the more telling is that back in 2008, it appeared as if Whitlock was on the right side of the argument about systemic racism when he penned a 50,000 word article for Playboy on mass incarceration and the drug war. This drew the ire of white folk and there was a response written back labeling him “The Black KKK”. He also penned a piece in 2014 entitled; “Why Black Folks Can’t Breathe”, where he wrote at length about everything from Jim Crow, to New Jim Crow, and the death of Eric Garner, and the sports world’s response to it. This by comparison was a complete 180 turn from his recent comments on LeBron James, in fact in part of it he specifically states:

 “Derrick Rose and Reggie Bush – who donned “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirts supporting Eric Garner’s family – can see, feel, and testify to what we in the media have ignored for way too long. Yeah they have realized the so-called American dream, but many of the people they love have not.  Making it financially does not protect you though.”

 So, what makes Whitlock’s statements even more egregious is the proof that he obviously knows better! The question is then, what happened? We may never know. But what I will say is that sentiments such as Jason Whitlock’s comments on LeBron James have reverberating repercussions for Black folk writ large. When other Black folks make such comments trivializing racism, it practically gives racist and racist sympathizers a license to consider this type of shit “ok”. This is only the first step, because once a white racist or white racist sympathizer feels he has the “green light” from the so-called conservative Black corner, he can commit with impunity that which he wants, and be absolved of the responsibility. Put otherwise, Jason Whitlock’s comments were reckless, reek of intellectual sloppiness, and have the stench of one who has been effectively “put in his place” given his own past comments on race in America. In other words, Whitlock has essentially and happily sold his soul to white acceptance and quick fame. Shame on you Jason Whitlock, shame on you.

[theblacktivity-blog]

Again.

[theblacktivity-blog]

All You Need To Know

All you need to know is that less than a year ago on September 16, 2016 Terence Crutcher, an unarmed Black man was killed in Tulsa, Oklahoma. All you need to know is that in America if you are Black, traffic stops aren’t merely routine. All you need to know is that if you are a police officer in America, and particularly if you are white, you are in some sense endowed by the state with a certain right to carry out this country’s heritage of body destruction. All you need to know is that this demolition of life was caught on camera, no different than many before it. All you need to know is that in America, the evidence doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that Blackness is the original “boogie man”. All you need to know is that the shooter’s/killer’s name is Betty Shelby. All you need to know is that she is a white woman, a white woman endowed with the power of the privilege and the blue wall. It should have been a simple traffic stop, but so often it’s never that simple (ask the fiancée of the late Philando Castile). All you need to know is that on September 16th 2016, a stage was set and one that is rooted within the already vicious and cyclical narrative of American racism. The coming together of two types of people historically meant to be kept apart, at least according to the “American” doctrine of social mores…a white woman and a Black man. All you need to know is that the power of life and death was in Betty Shelby’s hands the moment she was called to the scene of the seemingly abandoned silver Lincoln Navigator in the middle of 36th Street North, west of Lewis Avenue. And believe me, she understood she had that power, in much the same way that Carolyn Bryant was aware of it when Emmitt Till an out of town Chicago teenager cordially spoke to her on a Mississippi evening, only to be met with her callous double cross and the punishment of death at the hands of Bryant’s husband and brothers. All you need to know is that much like Bryant, Betty Shelby too had “backup”, on that day it was Tyler Turnbough. All you need to know is that Terence Crutcher was human, this is to say that he like all of us had flaws. All you need to know is that Terence like all of us, was attempting to make sense of this world and work through his flaws, the conduit was his Christian faith. All you need to know is that on Sunday’s he sang in the choir at his church…flaws notwithstanding. All you need to know is that flaws shouldn’t get you tasered. All you need to know is that flaws shouldn’t get you shot and killed. But to be Black in America is to be subjected to a separate set of rules. All you need to know is that what Terence needed on that September 16th 2016 evening was help. All you need to know is that Terence wasn’t harming anyone. All you need to know is that Terence was standing near his silver Lincoln Navigator. All you need to know is that he thought his vehicle to be on fire. Again, all Terence needed was help. All you need to know is that for Officers Tyler Turnbough and Betty Shelby, this was enough. All you need to know is that they found it perfectly fine and necessary even, to taser and shoot him…in the middle of an intersection…in broad daylight. All you need to know is that both officers knew that ultimately there would be no repercussions for this act. It mattered not that the scene was caught on camera. It mattered not that it would be broadcasted for the world to see. It mattered not that there would be marches and protest. Shelby and Turbough knew all of this was to follow, and they knew they would get off. All you need to know is that at that intersection, a son, a father, an uncle, a brother, a friend, a fellow church member was murdered. All you need to know is that it was sanctioned by the state, the state of Oklahoma. All you need to know is that it was sanctioned by the country. When you are Black in America the reality is that at any moment you are one traffic stop, one contortion, on gesture away from state sanctioned body destruction. All you need to know is that the destruction of your body is the oil that greases the American machine. All you need to know is that despite what the “American Dreamers” say, we haven’t “come so far”. All you need to know is that from whence Black people in America came is no credible source for comparison to full human existence. All you need to know is that Betty Shelby was acquitted, that is for what was essentially the murder of another human being. All you need to know is that Terence Crutcher was harmless. Rest assured, that he knew what the deal was when the cops pulled up on him, as we as Black people all know. We all had “the talk”. “The talk” kept Terence Crutcher by his vehicle. All you need to know is that it still didn’t matter to Betty Shelby…because she was “scared”. It matters not that she’s trained (or supposed to be) to face comparably more dangerous situation’s than traffic stops. Shelby was, “scared”. That is to say she was white, female, and… “scared”. All you need to know is that a killer is now free. All you need to know is that justice yet again wasn’t served. All you need to know is that many of us expected this, the lady with the scales being blind indeed.  All you need to know is that Betty Shelby will more than likely join back with the police force in Tulsa, Oklahoma or elsewhere, where she will “serve and protect” the rest of her days out until she retires into the setting sun with a tax funded pension. All you need to know is the family of Terence Crutcher will be left to celebrate birthdays, holidays, and special occasions one person short…and it is because of Betty Shelby. All you need to know is that this is what’s called American ���justice”.

[theblacktivity-blog]

The House of Representative’s passage of a D.O.A bill was merely a vain attempt to repair hurt feelings.

[theblacktivity-blog]

The Vanity Bill

The scene was a giddy one in the Rose Garden of the White House as congressmen and congresswomen (nearly all of them White and financially privileged) smiled, took selfies, and in a gross and grandiose self- congratulatory posture, assembled themselves behind President Trump like acknowledged children. Some could be seen laughing, slapping one another on the back, chatting it up with one another, villainously grinning through teeth more than likely covered by their insurance providers. The great “overseer” of rights and wrongs of himself, Congressman Jason Chaffetz of Utah was photographed happily and smugly flying in to the chambers of Congress on a medical scooter to assist in passing the AHCA (American Healthcare Act: “Ryancare” or “Trumpcare” depending on the day of the week) fresh off a surgery for his foot, the surgery required ironically as the result of a pre-existing condition. It was reported that within the chambers, cases of Bud Light were rolled in, some members lit cigars, while a phone booth was created for the ‘yea’ voting members to receive calls from the president himself as a token of appreciation.  As the passage of the act was finalized on the floor, the democratic members of Congress sang “nah nah nah nah/nah nah nah nah/hey hey hey/goodbye”. Not only are the democrats against the bill itself given the myriad of flaws and people it will hurt, they know what’s up, the bill will be the political death of many of those congressmen and congresswomen. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi chided her right-wing colleagues on the floor warning them that they were “walking the plank” and that provision cuts to the ACA would be but a tattoo about the forehead for all of them, one that would “glow” alluding particularly to the obvious political suicide committed by the congressional right. It matters not that this bill will eliminate coverage for pre-existing conditions, couch rape as a “pre-existing condition”, decimate maternal care, defund Medicaid, and all but eradicate care for mental health and addiction (all provisions covered under Obamacare), this was cause for “celebration” for the congressional GOP. It matters not that this bill has only passed in the House of Representatives and will now have to pass in the Senate where it will most likely die anyway. For the house GOP just the sheer thought of having passed a bill no matter how raggedy seemed to put a twinkle in the eye. Yes, this bill will absolutely crush the most vulnerable of American citizens of which minorities, i.e. Black and Brown folk are a major part, but let us be perfectly clear, this will also crush women, the elderly, the mentally ill, and the lower middle class to poor whites in rural America, many of whom (God bless their misguided souls) voted for these congressmen and this president with the belief that somehow, they “identified” with them. Their loyalty to these congressmen and this president is now being repaid with a fresh boot up the ass, and it’s not as much funny, as it is unfortunate. Again, this bill may very well fail in the Senate, yet the sheer determination of the GOP in passing this legislation through the House of Representatives despite the potential damage it will do and despite the campaign promises of Trump to protect pre-existing conditions, is it seems, indicative of not only the worst in the game of politics but something deeper. For many of the GOP members particularly those on the far right, President Obama represented and affront to all they believed to be “American”. In fact, the House Freedom Caucus made up of members propelled by the Tea Party insurgency of the Obama era, came to power on the back of those who reviled the 44th president as everything from a socialist, to a Muslim terrorist, to a non-citizen (the current president’s most famous shtick).  It was not only the economic downturn, terrorism, and economic globalization gave rise to the far right, it was the stoking of these racial flames that in part created the working class and rural white voting bloc that has so characterized most of the right’s base in recent years. As such, if President Obama was the person who embodied all that the right and it’s base resented, then what better way to do away with a twice elected president than to destroy the signature bill of his legacy. When the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare was passed, it was viewed by many on the far right as a referendum on the “free” market, but couched in terms that eluded to welfare (a typical dog whistle to racial politics…remember they called him the “cell phone president” and “food stamp president”). This was manipulated enough to convince those within the right’s grassroots, many of whom given their low-income levels benefit from the provisions in ACA, that nothing short of a repeal would acceptable in “moving the country forward” on healthcare. To this those on the frenzied right agreed, so much so that after the ACA’s passage it became cannon fodder in republican stomp speeches and soundbites, “repeal and replace” became a permanent part of the political lexicon. It was repeated by everyone from the once republican golden boy Speaker Paul Ryan to Donald Trump himself and everyone in between. As insurance companies and medical practitioners began to come out against the suggesting of repealing the ACA altogether, the rumblings from those on the right only swelled and one was left to wonder: why would folks, many of whom have healthcare in part due to the act, be so against it? While it was true that the ACA in some cases caused premiums to increase as well as deductibles (the result of private insurers attempting to adjust to the fact that they were in competition with a government intent on bringing quality care to least of us), it was also true that President Obama admitted future development could be necessary. Let’s be clear that it was essentially a single payer model of healthcare like that found in Europe which President Obama and a progressive congress would’ve wanted. Yet given right wing America’s historical aversion to anything deemed to be “centralized” or “socialized”, the cost for the ACA was passed on to the insurance industry, a sector once infamous for covering as little as possible while charging as much as possible. The over 1000-page complex bill was written with the intent of giving power back to the policy holder no matter the income level or condition, or in the words of Jay-Z, President Obama was “overcharging niggas for what they did to the Cold Crush”. Undoubtedly, this had the consequences in the beginning of insurance companies raising premiums to adjust, yet as the cost began to even out many a folk who were once detractors began to find that the ACA was a godsend compared to what health care in America previously was. Further it was the icing on a cake that was at that time still beginning to bake in the former president’s legacy. This brings me to my point. If the ACA is by some miracle of the gods of Mt. Reagan and Mt. Goldwater able to pass in the senate (and it would have to be a miracle given the suspicion that republican moderates in districts benefiting from Obamacare provisions have to this “repeal”) then it would leave 24 million and counting uninsured. It would cut Medicaid funding by $883 billion dollars leaving the elderly walking the health care tightrope at best, and at worst, being deemed “uninsurable” by insurance companies who will once again cease to cover preexisting conditions. As for women, they can essentially nix the degree to which maternal care will continue to be covered and on an even more sinister note that has been conveniently been avoided, trauma from incidents such as rape may well be classified as a “preexisting condition”. If you are a minority and poor, you may very find yourself among the many seated once again in overcrowded emergency rooms and community clinics across the country, since the AHCA will also include cuts to subsidies for public hospitals and clinics leaving such institutions under-funded and understaffed. To those in rural white America, the ones who in large part helped to usher in the rise of not only the Tea Party but the election of an ill prepared and governance-ignorant populist president, you too will not only have to bear the burden of much of these potential cuts, you will have to do so with the knowledge that you helped. Blocs such as the rust belt whose frustration with the rise of globalization (in part) in eliminating manufacturing jobs will find that it’s even worse when you have a lower paying job AND very little to no healthcare. The coal miners in states like West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio will more than likely find that Black Lung Disease is a lot harder to treat when your provider (if you still have one) categorizes it as a preexisting condition as well. But oh, how pride comes before the fall (well let’s hope not) because let’s be honest, the calls to repeal Obamacare were never really about the bill being damaging to average citizens. Institutions such as the AARP and even the one-time foe of any form of “socialized medicine” the American Medical Association have admitted that while the bill has some improvement that could be made, repealing the law could be damaging beyond belief. The cry of “repeal and replace” and the rush to push through any bill along those lines is and was about something much deeper. Its part politics, as these congressmen and women want desperately to save face given the first attempt of the Trump era to pass such a horrendous bill, as well as pander to their still uninformed constituents. However, it’s just as much about the vainglorious feeling that those on the right have long been seeking ever since an African American president not long after winning the highest office in the land achieved what scores of those before him couldn’t by bringing about true healthcare reform. For many of those on the far right, the mere existence of a President Obama was itself often alluded to as an affront (this in part drove the Tea Party to prominence) to the “real America”. But, to have a Black president with a legacy…oh hell no! Thus, the push to dismantle his signature achievement…no matter the cost to anyone. In all, this is a sordid political vanity act that as more light is shed, will be the date by which we will be able to mark the beginning of the 2018 democratic sweep of congress, and maybe…just maybe, the moment when those who’ve blindly supported “repeal and replace” ask themselves: “what in the fuck were we thinking?”. If not, many of us will be asking the other question: “what in the fuck have we done?”.

[theblacktivity-blog]

Collateral damages.

[theblacktivity-blog]

Pt. 2 “Like His Daddy”

You’re sitting in the waiting area at the Greenville County Correctional Facility. In many ways, if one wasn’t aware of what lie behind the gates that are separated from the visiting room by guarded electronic steel doors and metal detectors, it would appear as any other waiting space. As stated before, Greenville is a near gothic fortress that sits in the middle of a desolate rural landscape in Southern Virginia about 1 hour out from the Virginia-North Carolina border. Among other things it is the facility most known for being home to Virginia’s death row, and if one is honest, it’s hard not to think of this as you gaze out of the doors from your vantage point in the waiting room. Blue double doors tacked to a white building almost stucco like in appearance, leads one to the waiting area. At first glance, one immediately sees the front desk, where administrative officers, often amiable and frequently gossipy, greet families as they enter and assist first time visitors with filling out the necessary clearance forms. Talking among your family you discuss today’s visit as well as previous ones. Your uncle, who for many years you’ve only known through the stories told by your mother, through the semi-high pitched (with age and ailing health) raspy southern drawl you remembered as a kid on the corded house phone, through a vaguely remembered one-time shackled and guarded appearance at an aunt’s funeral, and the slew of letters collected and kept by your mother, he has in recent years been a more visible fixture in your immediate family’s life. This was in part since Greenville Correctional, being only about an hour and fifteen minutes out of the city had years prior accepted Unc’s transfer papers from his previous location located along Virginia’s mountain range, more than 4 hours away. Among other topics often talked about during these visits are the neglect of your uncle at the hands of distant “relatives” in the 25+ years since his conviction. The way in which Mama was the only sibling that Unc could consistently count on in those years in which they strengthened each other with letters, calls, and the exchanging of Bible Verses, when Mama being without a vehicle was in no position to travel hours out for visits but made up for it by consistently putting money on his books. In those days, Mama kept Unc alive through stories of his childhood heroics in defending his siblings from bullies both Black and white. It was often said that his temper was fierce enough, but when family was at the root he became vigilante. While exchanging these same stories amongst each other in the waiting room, you notice the bodies filing in. Most are young Black mothers with small children. The faces of most are of a beautiful ebony quality in all their hues, behind which seems to exist the tattered remains of youths cut short by circumstance. For the most part, the children they bring appear to be no more than five years of age on average and most are toddlers with beautiful busy little spirits, whose feet pitter patter across the waiting room often toward the candy machines, while tired mommies sheepishly grin or giggle attempting to hide the slight frustration.

You, now knowing parenthood for yourself smile at the sight of the curious children, the little he’s and she’s reminding you of your own. In a silent way, this puts both you and the parents at ease. This is an almost telepathic reassurance that neither person is judging or questioning the reasons for the other’s presence in this visiting room. There is a certain familiarity and empathy that you feel with these mothers, because in them you see the Black girls that you grew up with. They were the around the way girls you had crushes on during your younger days, their high-pitched voices piercing the spring and summertime air, stringing their gimp, hop scotching in mulit-colored Reebok Classics, while the young fellas burned the blacktops with dreams of being like our favorite basketball stars. In your prepubescent years, you grew awkwardly while they seemed to grow in beauty without missing a step. Later as high school teenagers, they grew to be young women with personalities that ranged from the studious, to the popular, to the cliquish, to the rebellious and sometimes troubled. During this time, some even became mothers while barely having grown into themselves. At times the backstories would play out in public like tragic soap operas wherein teenage couples would find themselves in the center of stormy adult arguments beyond their years. Expectant teen mothers with developing bellies could be seen quite often in tear-filled rages hurling every cuss word in the book at nonchalant boyfriends (whether this title was real or perceived) who either immaturely laughed their insults off, or who angrily gave just as much word salad back as they took. Other times, for those who suddenly found themselves responsible for carrying life, the matter of who the father was would be scarcely rumored whispered among the halls like a valuable secret. In many cases this would turn out to mean that the suspected father was someone well beyond her age and often someone with a reputation in the “game”. In the social caste system that was the inner city high school, this was met with a degree of fear and pomp. After all, if these rumors proved to be true, then such young girls were admired by the male student body from a distance and to some extent both envied and emulated by other girls. She was often marked by all the trappings of “the life”, a plethora of the freshest sneakers, doorknocker earrings, rings on almost every finger, thin name plated necklaces and on the good days, she got picked up from school on chrome. As you find yourself suspended between dazed reminiscence and a semi-awareness of all the faces in the waiting room, you remember that this is often the story of the system that goes scarcely told. For you know that behind the high walls and gates of the prison exist a sea of male Black bodies, Black faces many of whom are either from your hood, or places like it and in that sense, you are them and they are you. It was a concrete jungle where all too often the necessity of survival supplanted promise and Black hands were forced by that invisible hand, that insidious but well known “something” that has always been in the way of any real progress. Yet and still, there too exist a sea of Black female bodies, Black faces often alone and now responsible for younger lives, who too are victims of the same force. And you think momentarily back to the little Black girls you remember. Those ebony faced braided hair sweethearts with spray painted name shirts and multi-colored sneakers whose big dreams existed everywhere from grand stages to college campuses. Whom on so many occasions had their journeys aborted somewhere between promise and fulfillment guided still by that invisible hand, that “something” that has traveled with us for centuries and spurns in one so a desperate a necessity for basic survival and protection, it manifests in what appears to the un-programmed eye to be reckless choices.  

You’re jolted out of your mental drifting by the thunderous buzz and unlocking of the electronic metal door and find that you and the rest of your family have somehow made it along with others, into a second but more cramped locked room. It’s a bland porcelain walled room filled with the same faces, young Black mothers with increasingly impatient children and older Black mothers, some with grandchildren, behind whose warm smiles hides the mixture of weariness that comes with each bus ride, each visit. Suddenly, you notice a toddler in meltdown, everyone in the rooms stares, some such as yourself trying not to be so obvious. Apparently, children have no patience for the procedural constraints that are the series of waits, ID checks, and searches that are customary, almost ceremonial of visits to the Department of Corrections. Realizing the embarrassment that some parents feel (especially young Black parents who inherently know they exist under a cloud of constant judgement) when they lose control of their impatient little ones, you gesture over to the young woman in a way as not to offend her. She’s decked in a petite Polo outfit (fit to her size), including a hoodless bomber jacket, fitted jeans, a pink Polo cap pulled tightly over top of long shoulder length hair, and a fresh pair of construction Timberlands that couldn’t have been over a size 6 in women. The woman looks all but not a day over 20 and her soft features, fair brown skin, dimpled cheeks, and piercing hazel eyes silently take you aback as she looks up briefly from her child and grins cordially but somewhat apprehensively. In the lining of your blazer jacket you pull a yellow bag of M&M’s purchased from the waiting room vending machine which you forgot to open during your reverie. Looking toward the mother as if waiting for approval you briefly notice the young tike, a fair brown boy with curly hair almost cherub like in appearance, and ask: “Can he have these?”. Slightly laughing and seeming almost relieved by the offer of anything that will at least temporarily distract the boy’s fidgets, she turns him around towards you “Look CJ, what you say? Say thank you”. Happily, the little one takes the candy as only a kid could and mumbles shyly “tank you”, to the chuckles of everyone in line at the metal detector. “I swear boy, you act just like your daddy!” the young mother says, smiling and rolling her eyes as she slides her clutch wallet from under her arm and places it on the conveyor along with earrings, rings, and what appears to be a couple of dollars and some pocket change. As she walks through the metal detector, she’s asked by one of the two attending guards, the one operating the machine, to remove CJ’s jacket, shoes, and to pull the pockets of his jeans out, matching hers. With a familiarity bordering on muscle memory she complies without hesitation or offense taken as the operator, a black female corrections officer with gold rimmed glasses and short black and burgundy hair checks her items thorough the machine. “So, he’s just like his daddy huh?” the guard ask smiling warmly. “Yep, just like him, walk like him, talk like him, think he slick like him, everything!” the young mother says laughingly. As the young boy is ushered by his mother through the detectors, she grabs the shoes of the conveyor and places them back on his feet. The boy still tightly clutching the yellow bag of M&M’s says something inaudible to his mother the only thing of which can be heard are the words “da-ddy”. “Yeah CJ, we going to see your twin in a few minutes…” she says, laughing again. You walk through the detector behind the pair following the same procedure as the two now wait, back facing you and the rest of the line at the metal door which when unlocked, leads one out to what appears as a holding pen surrounded by electrified gates. After you’re checked, your family as well as other families trail slowly along until the limit has been reached, allowing the door to unlock to the visitor’s outdoor pen. Standing outside, the air is crisp and sun beaming. The lush green forestry in the distance foreshadows the coming of the spring despite the wind. Through the gates you take a view of the large grey and beige housing units that encircle the area. In a way, they bring about a bleakness that is juxtaposed to the welcoming weather, like a rain cloud that travels overhead shadowing at least momentarily the sun’s glow. In the distance to your left you hear the crushing of gravel beneath tires and the quiet hum of a small commercial engine. It’s the shuttle making its round’s dropping of the previous group of visitors and picking yours up. You enter the bus and take a seat amongst the now chattering families and just as soon as you take your seat, you arrive at your destination, visiting pod C. Ironically enough, the young mother and child arrive at the same pod. In this unit you, family, the young mother and her child will be once again subjected to more search and if necessary, seizure. This process is only different however because it is alleviated by the large brown door that is the visiting area. Dead center of the door, a small window reveals the expected sea of Black faces, some appearing joyfully anxious. In the middle of that crowd closer to the entrance, sits a man hands held slightly over his face and somewhat slid down in his chair. If the resemblance between him and your mother is striking with the exception that the man is of light skin with fair grayish black hair. His face is lined with time’s trails and his hands appear all but arthritic, but he is jovial at the sight of your family, its Unc and these are visiting days. After taking as seat and amidst the conversations between your mother and Unc, as well as the shuffling of cards and dominoes, you take a moment to look for the young mother and her son without being too obvious. At a table toward that back of the visiting room, you notice a young man clad in the denim work suit that’s indicative of inmates, and he’s holding a boy. The boy appears overjoyed as his mother looks on at him and his father mouthing something indecipherable, but appearing cordial. “He does look just like his daddy” you think to yourself until you hear a chuckle and “It’s your deal”. Your family, game sharks that they are, are waiting for you to strike the new hand so you get back to it. In a few hours after the visit is done until the next month, you’ll go home that night and look in the mirror. Then you’ll look at your wife and daughter. You’ll think about your family including Unc, your friends, and as always you’ll include them in your prayers. But on that night you will also include in your prayers a little Black boy named CJ and all the others like them who look just like their daddy.

[theblacktivity-blog]

Over the next few weeks I will be presenting excerpts from my book currently in the works entitled: “American” We. It is a series of personal vignettes in which my intent is to pull the Black experience momentarily away from dialectics, and back into lived and felt experiences. By re-emphasizing some of the human pains, joys, and consequences of being Black in America with my own experiences, I hope to play my part in giving context to Black life through what I consider “de-abstraction”.

[theblacktivity-blog]

Pt. 1, ‘Visiting Days’.

It’s spring and at the driver seat you feel the mixture of increasingly warm sun and cool wind through slightly cracked windows as you travel U.S. Route 301 South. On these days, you’re joined by your family: mother, sister, and niece, who despite the journey revel in the opportunity for togetherness, fresh air, and memory recall…especially your mother. The road is off the beaten path and on it there are no indications of the hustle, bustle, and pollution that is city life. One can smell the scent of pine, poplar, and spruce as you pass vast amounts of forestry, seemingly dilapidated old country stores, and homemade wired fences that are clear indications that you are in just one of the many rural areas of the state that Black folks know as “down home” or “the country”. Mama was born a country girl, one of 16, in another rural county called Powhatan, VA, yet the counties that we pass en route to our destination conjure stories out of her with striking clarity, like those of the griots of centuries past. It is partially these stories that you enjoy the most about these trips, as they sound more like something out of a Zora Neale Hurston novel than real life. Though most of the stories are presented with joyous introspection many still hint at the fact that Mama is old enough to remember the dividing lines of a segregated county, the crushing poverty (she often spoke of walking miles to school shoeless as a child), and the sternness of your grandparents, particularly your grandfather who has often been described as a “mean red man”. As the car fills with the cross talk of reminiscence, you let your right foot slowly off the accelerator allowing the car to drift just slightly down the country highway in a way that has now become familiar. You are in Southampton County, VA a stone’s throw from Greenville County where your father was born, under nearly similar circumstances as Mama. But, this area also tends to capture your attention for other reasons. Gesturing matter-of-factly with one hand on the steering wheel and the other toward the passenger side window as to get the attention of all in the car, you notice the massive fields of green speckled with wooly white tips. In a way, it’s surreal, like an out-of-body experience that has transplanted you from reality to the pages in a history book. “Who would’ve thought cotton fields existed anymore?” you rhetorically and cynically ask, your linking them with Black enslavement (your ancestors) momentarily obscuring the fact that chattel slavery’s so-called end, didn’t bring an end to the growth of the crop itself. The field is empty, with the breezes pushing and pulling the leafage back and forth as to create something of a ripple effect in the distance. But in your mind, you imagine a sea of Black bodies toiling in the sun as if you and everyone in that moment have a communicative ability to bring forth the forbearers themselves. In the short but piercing way that Black women have a talent for showing their contempt with a roll of the eyes and a huff in the breath, the passengers let out some variation of this: “Hmm…redneck bastards!”. As you drive along, the multiplicity of the cotton fields are almost overwhelming and leads to more cross talk, history, politics, economics, lineage, all in a way that is removed from the obscurity of statistics, graphs, charts, and town halls on racism. Yes, you know that all of those are important to the conversation, and important in the advancement of a justice that has yet to be served to Black people but, these trips and these talks are ultimately proof positive that white supremacy is a structure with real and felt consequences and experiences. As the succession of cotton fields dwindle back into makeshift gates, and rickety houses that appear as if being crushed under the weight of a dark and heavy legacy, you notice on one such dwelling a larger than life size flag of “the stars and bars”. Further down the road, you notice a large billboard that reads “Parker Oil & Gas Co.” You remember the numerous occasions when on the highway, you would pass or be passed by large petroleum tankers reading the same company brand. You know instinctively (and later from actual proof) that the company is not owned or operated by Black people and that they are located in South Hill, VA not far from where you are. Parker is your surname, the surname of your father, and your paternal grandparents, and so on and so forth as forced upon your antecedents by a white slave and landowner Drewry Parker. You wonder what the connection if any to these Parker’s, knowing that is more than plausible that the apparitions in the cotton fields could easily have a connection to this company….and whatever wealth gained. Part serious but jokingly you say “See that sign? I’m coming down here to get my money!”. The laughter momentarily breaks the intensity of the conversation as you realize that you are getting closer to your destination. Casually, the mood in the car sobers as you pull up to a blue state department sign that reads “Virginia Department of Corrections; Greenville Correctional Facility”. The entrance is like a long wide driveway or a short road at the end of which sits a behemoth solid beige structure in some ways, gothic in appearance. For acres, it seems, fences line the facility and curiously as you always do, you look out of the car as you find a parking space only to notice a mass of bodies in the distance, most clad in orange skull caps, and some mixing between gray sweats and blue jean state uniforms. You over hear the inaudible conversations in the distance, notice some to the brothers playing ball or walking the yards and you wonder how many of them you probably grew up with. You attempt to imagine the feeling of being put away from friends, family, loved ones for years at a time. You’re aware that while not every man in here is innocent, there is no coincidence that most of those you see look no different than you. Shaken out of your moment, you lock the car doors family in tow, easing toward the white building with the blue double doors. You are in the waiting lounge, and the visitors for the most part all look like you and your family. It is visiting day. But, you are not just visiting your uncle you realize, you’ve effectively time travelled the evolution of a system.

To Be Continued....

[theblacktivity-blog]

Part introspective, part polemical, “DAMN” is an instant classic.