2001
1/26/2001: Dispatch from the front lines of the anti-Bush inaugural
History shows again and again how nature points out the
folly of man.
"Godzilla," Blue Oyster Cult.
Afros will be trying to straighten their heads and straightened heads
will be trying to wear afros
When the revolution comes
When the revolution comes!
When the revolution comes!
...But until then, you know and I know that niggas
will party and
bullshit and party and bullshit and party and bullshit. And party...
Some might even die . . .
Before the revolution comes.
"When the Revolution Comes," The Last Poets, 1970
This is a historic moment. We're hearing reports that this is even
larger than the protests against Nixon. We're incredibly excited at the
amount of people who turned out. Of course, we're ashamed that Bush has
decided to be a 'uniter' by uniting people against him. They all chose to come out
in the freezing rain. Even the weather couldn't stop these people.
Liz Butler, Justice Action Movement to Salon.com, 2001
Maybe the decision to listen to protest music as soon as I stepped onto
the Metro train at Takoma station is what did it.
I mean, I had almost talked myself out of a morning of protest hopping at the
inauguration of George Bush, the younger. I really didn't care enough to do a
good job of even looking remotely angry, much less doing a reasonable job at
affecting enough righteous indignation to distinguish myself as a true
"protester."
So when two of my co-workers—including one who incessantly berated me since the
day after the election for voting for Ralph Nader—asked whether I wanted to go protest hopping, I gave a
noncommittal committal. I'll go if the weather isn't too nasty—a wintry mix was
expected—and if I could manage to wake up early on Saturday.
By Friday night, I had talked myself into it. I figured the people-watching
opportunities were endless. And if rubber bullets start to fly and tear gas fills the air, well, I'd have something to tell the folks
back home. Either way, what have I got to lose?
Then I decided to replace my usual Metro portable CD player fare with some
revolutionary music. That was a big mistake.
Sure, The Flames' "Stand Up and Be Counted" was an exhilarating soundtrack
on a Metro car filled to the brim with protesters with "No More BUllSHit" placards sitting next to extremely
uncomfortable Republican types, but when I arrived at the designated meeting
place, DuPont Circle, the CD started to play songs
that turned out to be ironic, yet prescient, at the same time. James Brown's "Say
it Loud, I'm Black And I'm Proud" played as I watched young, idealistic
and mainly white faces rising to the street from the Metro platform, ready to perform
what they consider to be the great coup d'etat.
Then, The Last Poets' "When the Revolution Comes" played as the
protest crowds became more loud and obnoxious as they confronted Republicans
who were slowly descending from the street level to the Metro trains. Until the
revolution comes, there will be nothing but partying and bullshitting. Indeed.
I met my protest-hopping posse and sauntered to the Circle, where a big demonstration
had dodged D.C. traffic-circle gridlock to gather. It was a cornucopia of
leftist causes. Environmentalists, Naderites—also known
as Greens, but not necessarily environmentalists, because most environmentalists
tend to be Gore supporters who hate the Greens—abortion-rights activists, labor
unionists and anti-homophobes abounded.
A group dressed as caribou were performing militant street theater demonstrating
what Bush's environmental policies would do to Alaskan wildlife. I couldn't
hear them very well, but from what I could tell, Bush's
policies would prevent the Alaskan caribou from reciting poetry and playing the
congas. And since they were the only group playing percussion instruments well
on the Circle—did I mention there weren't many other blacks there, so there was a terrible lack of rhythm—I decided this
really was a shame and my heart went out to the poor creatures. Every form of
wildlife in America should be able to recite poetry with accompanying rhythm. So I decided that my
cause for the day would be to save the rapping Alaskan caribou.
There were Wobblies. Patricia Ireland was there, representing the National Organization for Women. Filmmaker Michael Moore was there, probably representing
himself, but since he is an avowed Naderite like me, I won't hold that against him. Granny D, the woman who
walked cross-country to bring attention to campaign finance reform, was there.
We couldn't hear anything they said, what with rhythmic caribou, random arrhythmic
white boys and the rapturous antics of Billionaires for Bush drowning out their
speeches.
I LOVED Billionaires for Bush: More tax cuts! More inequality! Our children shouldn't
have to pay taxes for money they earned just by having rich parents! If only
the government could be that straightforward.
But after the initial euphoria, my interest in the festivities began to fade. First of all, did
mention it was REALLY cold? I counted the blacks in the audience—10, including myself. To our credit,
apparently there was a big contingent of newly reformed Black Panthers on 14th
and U Streets. They won't be coming to the DuPont gathering,
I figured, because a City Paper article the Thursday before painted them as
very anti-white-people-in-the-district. If they were anything like the CP
portrayed them, they were going to stay far away from DuPont,
which was chock-full of white people.
I also noticed a distinct 21st century phenomenon to the demonstrations: a
proliferation of cell phones. Everyone—me included—seemed to be calling everyone
who wasn't there to tell them about it. In my defense, I will say that I wasn’t
calling anyone who lived within a Metro ride of the demonstration. I called my
father in Richmond and another group of Naderites in Atlanta. That said, it was such a yuppie, and not very revolutionary, way to act. Forget
about the revolution not being televised, can we add it should be non-mobile?
When we couldn't feel our feet anymore, we ducked into a nearby office building to warm up,
get a snack and check to see if any of the demonstrations made it on any news web sites—also
very yuppie, so sue us. While inside, we made a couple of new signs. I wanted to make a sign that said "Save
the rapping Alaskan caribou" but that idea didn't go over well with the
rest of my group.
After warming up a bit, we walked to the inaugural parade
route. Even in my near-jaded state, it was a beautiful thing. Small bands of us
would converge into bands large enough to stop D.C. traffic. Anytime you can stop
D.C. traffic and someone doesn't break from the herd and try to run you over
with their SUV is akin to nirvana.
At the parade route we caught up with the rapping caribou, the grim reaper, a
group of much more rhythmic drummers surrounded by badly dancing protesters
and, whaddaya know? The Black Panthers! They decided to join the unwashed heathen leftists after all! This could be fun.
We saw sinister kids wearing all black with half of their faces hidden by
bandannas. My friend said to make sure we stay away from
them because they were anarchists and probably going to destroy property. Being
the conflicted liberal, I secretly wished them luck while breathing a sigh of
relief that I didn't park my car in the District.
I bought a couple of souvenir buttons from a Black Panther sympathizer—merchandising,
it’s where the money from the protest is made! Sure, it’s another yuppie thing
to do, but anyone who knows me knows I'm just a sucker for a souvenir.
We then tried to get as close as we could to the parade route, which was no
easy task. The Metropolitan Police set up a checkpoint, which caused a
bottleneck with the demonstrators. Nearby, the distinct stench of rotten eggs
was wafting our way from the right, where several suspiciously innocent looking
demonstrators were gathered. I figured someone there wouldn't get far at this
checkpoint. One guy wearing a toy crown and carrying a mind full of wit—"Please
drop your drawers for the body-cavity search"—started harassing the pigs…uh,
cops…er, officers by reading the Fourth Amendment and
reminding us, as if we needed a reminder, that this was a clear violation of
our rights and we should not submit to a search.
Sure, and if you can figure out how we can get in here without submitting to a
search, let us know. Like the sheeple we are, we opened our book bags and pocketbooks.
To call it a search was laughable, really. The cop glanced in my book bag
(contents: gloves, a wallet, lotion, a day calendar, a portable CD player, a
hardcover library book on the sexual revolution and two CDs of protest funk
music. The book and protest funk, after all, could become contraband in the rhythmically
and romantically challenged Bush administration), and let me through. Didn't
touch anything, didn't even ask. This made me more nervous than the prospect of
the search, because, quite honestly, I could have hidden a really small firearm in there and he would have been none
the wiser.
We didn't get very far. So we gave up for a moment and went back out to eat,
because the parade wasn't starting until 2 pm anyway. This kind of pissed me off, because that means I sheepishly submitted
to a lame illegal search for NO REASON WHATSOEVER.
So then we ate, picked up another friend—now my group comprised two Gore
supporters and three Nader supporters—searched for a bathroom in nearby National Place, freshened up and returned to "Checkpoint
Charlie." I opened my bag again, but this time, the officer wanted to know what
the "heavy thing" was inside—by this time, I added a three-quarter-full
soda to my already stuffed bag, but, honestly, the "heavy thing" could be any of the aforementioned items but NOT a gun, bomb or a Molotov cocktail. Stop hassling me, pig!
At least, that's what I wanted to say. Then I reminded myself that my dad was
in law enforcement and this day really sucks for the officer as well, especially since he's still downwind from rotten eggs.
We found a place about as far away from the parade route as one can get and
still be in the "restricted area." To see something, you had to pay either
$15 or $50, depending on the misguided anarchist you asked. As far as I was
concerned that was $15 or $50 going to a president I didn't like, so I stayed
put.
Now, I'm not sure how the media will report the crowd count. I can't really
give an accurate estimate, either, because we could never get to a position to
see everyone—we had cameras, we tried—but there were a lot. Where we were,
which was Freedom Plaza between 13th and 14th streets, the anti-Bushites outnumbered the Bush supporters. The Bush
supporters were easy to spot. The men wore 10-gallon hats and cowboy boots. The
women wore ankle-length fur coats, many with matching fur hats—so much for Texans
not playing to stereotype.
They obviously hadn't heard of PETA where they came from. Fortunately or
unfortunately, depending on your point of view, there were no paint splashings. I think everyone decided that freezing rain
would do enough of a number on those coats.
I really was surprised by the turnout, but I'm really not sure, in hindsight,
if I was surprised in a good or bad way.
It's good that an issue finally seems to galvanize the
liberal flank. It's about damned time that happened. On the other hand,
election violations have been going on for years—what happened in Florida was
bound to happen somewhere, sometime and no one spoke up or chose to do anything
about it until now. In addition, no one was defending rights when Ralph Nader
was banned from the debates for not being a "major-party candidate." If he had participated, his dry style would
only have helped Gore, because then only the perennial third-party voters who
understood what Nader was talking about would have voted for him. Banning Nader from the debates only
made him a constitutional martyr, which was the last thing Gore needed.
An important tenet of the Wiccan faith is that what you do is paid back threefold, and that goes for whether you
do good or bad. Could it be that all these years of letting liberal ideals
slide, of settling for liberal Republicans like Clinton and Gore has bitten Democrats in the ass? It could be, but it could also be
that we liberals are still too wrapped up in our special interests—everyone was
there to protest W's "theft" of the election, but no one could stick
to that agenda to speak in a united voice, a missed opportunity on our part. I
mean, would it have been too much to drop all the other side issues for one day
to focus on one that really mattered?
I admire conservatives sometimes. I don't know what they do to achieve
this, and I'm sure I don't want to know, but they are good at speaking in a
united voice on issues that they consider important. Every conservative has the
same spiel on guns and the Second Amendment. It's really quite scary, come to
think of it. But I wish we liberals could figure out what we truly care about
and do that, because we'll never get our country back unless we do.
9/13/2001:
…In times of crisis, conventional wisdom becomes the absolute truth of the ruling elites. It gives them the confidence to go on because it eliminates the need for thought and doubt, which, in turn, allows the elites to categorize any attempts at either as naivete or treason.
The average man, witness to a barbaric massacre, is left to scratch about in search of some new means of communication, which will allow him to express the obvious.
John Raulston Saul, Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West (1992)
It isn’t every day that the skyline of a major American city is altered radically. Just three days ago, on September 10, the twin towers of the World Trade Center dominated New York City’s skyline. Now those towers are gone, destroyed by two hijacked commercial airlines. Never had so much work been demolished so quickly.
A third plane hit a part of the Pentagon and a fourth—believed to be headed to the White House, the US Capitol or Camp David, depending on what TV news organization you believe—crashed in Pennsylvania.
Violence is a daily thing in most nations. On a beautiful, cloudless Tuesday morning we joined the planetary norm in true American—hysterical—fashion.
It is all as painful and devastating to me as it is to everyone else. But, personally, I’m more frightened of the aftermath than the event. The towers are gone—I can do nothing about that— but the hysteria and the madness that will come with it still are on the horizon and I shudder to think what it will bring, because everyone has lost their senses.
The word “war,” of course, has been bandied about, as if we were saying “food.” War with whom, I know not. Two days after the attacks, no one has come up with an enemy, but damn it, this means war. Once again, we’re ready to battle an unconventional enemy by conventional means. The result will be just as moronic as it sounds, mark my words.
I have yet to understand the wisdom of wanting to carpet-bomb countries that “harbor” terrorists. Hell, we harbored these terrorists, as well as most “free” Western democracies. Are we going to start bombing Florida, or Canada, or Germany?
The very nature of a terrorist—if he is worth his weight in salt—is to operate in secret, completely below any radar. Carlos the Jackal has eluded authorities since the 1970s—
if authorities worldwide still can’t find him, what can they possibly plan to do about this? Are we going to futilely chase this network for another thirty years?
I know we really want “state-sponsored terror” to exist because it would make us feel better to have a nation to attack instead of a bunch of shadowy, under-the-radar lone wolves, but hey, contrary to conventional wisdom, terrorists don’t want to be beholden to any nation—it hinders them. They don’t really want anyone to know their whereabouts and the money has to be dropped off somewhere, requiring a rudimentary knowledge of…whereabouts. They trust themselves, some compatriots and an underground network we Americans can only begin to fathom. But bombing Middle Eastern countries only will add fuel to the fire—it won’t stop a terrorist, it will just inspire new blood to help him.
Unfortunately, bombing nations seem to be the only thing we understand. We still believe things are as simple as World War II, when a country attacked us that we could retaliate against and all countries had rules of warfare that everyone pretty much adhered to out of some sense of honor. But we haven’t fought a war since, much less won one, with those tactics. Now, the “enemy” is smaller and, for lack of a more politically correct word, sneakier. They either don’t know, or know they can’t win, using Western warfare rules and tactics, so they just don’t play fair. You can’t really blame them. Hell, they can be so gosh-darn unfair that they can manage to get trained in the US and use that training against us.
So carpet-bombing may make us feel good, patriotic, and it may look effective initially, but in the end it’s going to be ineffectual. We carpet bombed Saddam in ’91 and he’s still standing. We carpet bombed Muammar Qaddafi in the 80s and he’s still standing. So what the hell’s the point?
In addition, we get martial law, president and secretaries of state declaring war against the intangible and Congressional prayer vigils where our lawmakers show their resolve by singing “God Bless America” and reciting the “Pledge of Allegiance” like any of this MEANS anything, to the terrorists or the rest of us. Who hasn’t uttered the words a gazillion times without contemplating what they really mean?
I guess these empty actions are supposed to satisfy us to the point that we don’t notice they aren’t really doing anything but posturing.
It’s really all quite depressing and pathetic, and I don’t need a new form of communication to believe, and say, that, but I guess stating that would be perceived by the elite as naïve and treasonous. I think the First Amendment backs me up, though—perhaps they should stop singing long enough to read it.
2002
12/6/2002: Whaddaya think? Early sign of a brain tumor? Impending aneurysm?
I had this bizarre nightmare last night. It is probably the
first outright political dream I've ever had.
I'm sitting at the bus stop reading a book and minding my own business when I essentially get kidnapped—no rough handling, but definitely
under duress—by the Secret Service. After questioning the Secret Service and
the president, I learn that apparently the Bush family picked me for some strange
sociological experiment because they concluded that since I was black, had
dreadlocks and didn't own a vehicle, I was probably poor and homeless and,
thus, would make a perfect experiment in compassionate conservatism.
Informing these folks that I had an affordable, comfortable apartment; a cat
who was probably waiting to be fed and a job that most people would consider
"well-paid" did not seem to matter. I had to admit, though, it was
typical Bush administration logic.
Anyway, this "experiment" seemed to involve little more than dressing
me up in really nice clothes, fixing my hair (which caused a slight altercation
when I told the stylist that if he touched my locks, he was going to die,
because I have a very tender scalp) and having me eat with the family in a
really nice restaurant that served food I had no desire to eat.
I suggested policy that would help this experiment a hell of a lot more
than dressing me up and making me do things I had no desire to
do—vetoing the bill that makes bankruptcy harder for consumers but leaves those
rules lax for corporations; more corporate taxes; more research for alternative
fuels to lessen our dependence on oil; progressive income taxes; putting more
money into social programs and less in the military and this fake "war on
terrorism"—but I was, of course, ignored as people continued to dress me,
pamper me (I did get a manicure and pedicure out of the deal) and give me
unnecessary etiquette lessons.
I know where the knife and fork go, thank you very much, but
I still don't think it matters in the grand scheme of things.
So we go to this posh restaurant—I'm guessing so I can be shown off as this
testament to compassionate conservatism despite the fact that I'm middle class
and educated. Everyone is trying to talk to me but since they all seem to have
their heads up their behinds, I'm trying to remain silent before I really curse
someone out.
I really want a drink, worse than I've ever wanted one in my life, because if I
am going to survive this strangeness, I would prefer to be drunk. There was,
I'm sure, a subconscious desire to embarrass them as well. The waiter, however,
refuses to serve anyone at the table alcohol. At some point, I mumble under my
breath that I needed a gin—I don’t even drink gin—and Jenna, who is sitting beside me, motions that she
and Barbara are going out for a nightcap and I'm welcome to come along.
At that point, I woke up.
2003
2/4/2003: Anyone willing to raise the bar?
Both the spoiled, but failed, male basketball prodigies in the inner-city and female victims of honor killings in the Middle East
are manifestations of what is becoming a universalism: the standards for raising
boys into men are much lower than raising girls into women.
Girls are expected to meet certain expectations, while boys are given a wider
berth—too wide, I think—to make mistakes. A mother will sacrifice a better life
out of the projects to give her male child a vehicle merely because he can
dribble a basketball with some skill. Sisters expect little or nothing of their
brothers—they'll do the chores because their male siblings can't be bothered,
and how else are the chores going to get done?
Women let significant others get away with just about anything in exchange for
them gracing their sorry lives with their presence. Examples are too numerous
to count, but I've seen the E! True Hollywood Story: Richard Pryor and The Miles Davis Story on Bravo—we can start with
Richard's and Miles' many women and work from there.
Not all men, but a depressing number, are spoiled by lowered standards. On the
other hand, there are men who still manage to rise above those abysmally low
standards. As rare as it is, it gives me hope.
I don't let women off the hook on this. We perpetuate a lot of it and then we're shocked
when we've created monsters that don't respect the law, don't respect other people,
don’t respect other people's property, don't respect women and don't respect themselves.
I grew up with the consequences of lowered male expectations in the inner city and I used to think
it was peculiar to that environment, but the older I get, the more I think it's everywhere.
The only difference is whether the lowered standards receive cultural support.
In a news report I read today, a girl in Jordan is killed by her father for walking with
her male friend, but there's no retribution for the guy with whom she walked.
Neither should have been punished for such an innocent act, but the burden still is placed
squarely on the female—she should have known better and now she must face punishment because
she brought dishonor to the family.
What of the father, whose murder of his own daughter also is dishonorable?
What of his sons, who likely are walking with other people's daughters in full
awareness of the consequences? Will they get the same punishment for
dishonoring other families with their behavior? No. I guess it's universally
understood that a guy just can't control himself, so he escapes retribution
every time.
Males are allowed to be human and make mistakes without paying with their
lives. The women are not so fortunate. Cultures around the world place women on
a pedestal. They are ideals: no longer human, no longer allowed a human
mistake, no longer sullied with such worldly things as money, property and
education. When a woman tarnishes the ideal, she then must become a nonentity—
anything to protect that bogus ideal.
In what is considered more enlightened America, in the earnest D.C. suburb of Takoma
Park, Maryland, a man on a bus discusses his children to a friend he hasn't seen in a while—
a son and at least two daughters are mentioned. The daughters are in college, seem to be doing
well. He says this proudly, but with a tone, detectable by the average listener, that their
achievements met expectations. The son, well, "he's not getting anyone
pregnant or doing anything illegal, so he's OK.
My thought upon hearing this was "Well hell, isn't that what he's SUPPOSED
to do?" So what? Surely he can perform at his sisters' level. It isn’t like
his sisters are Venus and Serena Williams and he's expected to be the next
tennis phenomenon. For this kid, college is a reasonable expectation.
I have many male friends, with only a few from families where the males had
expectations. Not saying the family is perfect, or that the lowered
expectations aren’t on someone else, but in these families, the expectations
were there for these particular male friends and it makes all the difference in
their behavior.
But what the rest get away with is astonishing!
I've tried to become a standard bearer, reminding them that it's not a good
idea to juggle several women at the same time because it'll only bite you in
the ass, but, you know what? It NEVER does. When the women find out about each
other, they punish the competition, never the man! It never seems to occur to
them that the guy they have in common has deceived them and, if they end up
with him, will only do it again because he knows he'll never be blamed.
All I can do is keep myself off limits to these men. I don't play the game
because I give myself too much credit to allow them to treat me with the same
lack of respect they treat other women. If the women would just give themselves
some credit and take themselves out of the game as well, these guys may change,
but until they have to, they won’t. They do this because they can, and one lone
feminine voice of sanity isn't going to help if other women don't catch a clue
as well.
If there were any expectations of male kids other than surviving to adulthood without a rap sheet, it would help tremendously. I see
many single mothers expecting their kids to be something other than a burden to
society and, guess what? They manage to meet those expectations! I have a high
school friend who grew up without his father, turned out a college graduate, has
a steady job. He isn’t dead, he hasn't gotten anyone pregnant and he hasn't
been to jail.
This brings me to that belief that there are more black men in jail than in
college. That belief hasn't resulted in anything positive, like judicial
reform, police sensitivity or the end of racial profiling. But it has resulted
in a lot of women lowering their expectations further still and a lot of men
taking advantage of women who will date anyone who currently isn’t behind bars.
There are black men out there who aren't married, aren't gay, haven't done jail
time and don't already have a gaggle of children, but it takes some work and
confidence in oneself to find them. It takes a belief that you deserve nothing
less than an honest-to-God good man.
But women fail to do this. They'd rather knowingly share a guy with four or
five others or fall in love with some guy who strikes up a civil conversation
with them at a Greyhound bus station or exchange dirty letters with guys in
prison. While I've had many conversations with men at Greyhound bus stations, I
have yet to get an overwhelming urge to run off with any of them. It's really pathetic.
Honestly, I'd rather be alone than date or marry a man whose only good quality
is he's not in jail. And that's what so many women settle for now.
4/28/2003:
Some people tell me they prefer the festive atmosphere
of the black church more than anything else in the world. Yet I prefer
Renaissance religious painting and Gregorian chant. Go figure.
At risk of betraying one of the most widely appreciated characteristics of my
culture, I don't really enjoy the loud singing, dancing and call-and-response
in the typical black church. It has always been irritating to me. I understand
it, because I grew up with it and both my parents were—and my father continues
to be—thoroughly moved by it, but I've never learned to appreciate it without
some jadedness.
Every year at Ash Wednesday mass I hear a gospel that really affects me. It's in Matthew,
I don't know chapter and verse, but the gist is that when you pray, you pray quietly.
You don't make a grand spectacle of it. When you're fasting, you don't look like it,
you try to look your best. The grand spectacle is what hypocrites do.
Thus, I've always wondered what's really going on with the people who shout,
scream, dance, speak in tongues and pass out.
A lot of the reason the black church doesn't hold the stature it used to is because the sacrifices involved are almost inhuman.
To be a churchgoing person, you can't like or do anything out in the open, because
it's all profane. Thus you don't have any fun, which is probably why they all
act up so much in church.
We, as a people, are perpetually caught on the crossroads, just like Robert
Johnson.
The tug-of-war between sacred and profane, and the effect it has on black
culture, is an ongoing issue in the community. Gangsta rap didn't invent it,
nor will it dissipate when the "next big thing" is discovered.
We used to be big on education and self-improvement, mainly at the expense of
some of our more profane contributions to culture. Once upon a time, playing
the blues meant you were country and you got rid of that crap when you moved to
the more sophisticated city. Blacks also were among the first to eschew jazz,
because it was what was played in the whorehouse and wasn't "proper"
music. It just didn't seem to occur to the proper, churchgoing folk of
yesteryear that some of the most moving things in life have a bit of sacred and
profane in them, just like people. And that stamping out the profanity to prove to white people just how
human you are is contradictory and, therefore, just plain silly.
For this reason, I don't blow a gasket when whites "co-opt" black culture, because in many of those cases, we abandoned it first. If they didn't
appreciate it, collect it and imitate it, we would no longer have it. At least
our contributions to music are well acknowledged and documented—can anyone
remember the last time they've stepped into a black-owned and operated
convenience store in the ghetto?
Imagine if what happened to the black-owned and operated convenience store
happened to our contributions to black music or black literature. If some white record producer didn't support Jimi Hendrix letting his freak flag fly, we'd be deprived of the greatest guitarists
on the planet. If some white publisher didn't appreciate Langston Hughes, James
Baldwin or Richard Wright to give them a forum to write, where would they be now? They'd still be geniuses, of course, but if you're a genius and no
one knows, are you really a genius? Then, as now, being on the radar screen
makes all the difference.
Perhaps hypocrisy is the biggest turnoff for me in all this. Sure, they don't
make Catholic priests like they used to, but they NEVER made black Baptist
ministers the way they used to. Al Sharpton sometimes makes the Reverend Ike look like a saint, and there was nothing saintly about
him!
But the profane isn't lacking its share of hypocrisy, either. The truly dangerous thing about gangsta rap being
the predominant cultural face of the black community these days is it's mainly
based on a lie—many rappers are middle-class, educated people from churchgoing
families who wouldn't know a ghetto if it bit them on the ass, but I guess letting record
buyers know that would be bad for business. But if they did emphasize their
middle class, educated origins, imagine the impact on the next generation! Does
any emerging hip-hop star have the guts to try to be anything close to the next
Chuck D?
But, as it is, hip-hop and rap sells the pleasures of money and status to
people who don't have anything. To these people, church sells nothing but
sacrifice, and what fun is sacrifice when you don't have anything to start
with? What, exactly, are you sacrificing? This, I think, is how "prosperity theology"
emerged—churches realized they were selling sacrifice to people who have nothing so, voila!
Put your complete faith in God and you'll start having something—oh, and don't forget to tithe!
Twenty-first century black culture is an interesting thing. Notice I didn't say
a good thing, just interesting. I'm not sure I really get it to
explain it further—I've never been one to embrace the church, but I don't
embrace the hedonism advertised in rap videos, either. I guess I'm just one of
those neutrals who get eaten to death from the inside by insects in Dante's Inferno.
My finger isn't on the pulse. And the older I get, the more
I'm happy that is the case.
I think not getting it kept me from ruining my life. It wasn't without some
sacrifice of my own, but that sacrifice beats aspiring to be a preacher's
concubine or a hoochie mama in a rap video. Somehow, without going to church and without spending all day watching rap videos, I
turned out to be a productive black American.
Or perhaps I turned out that way because I stayed away from
church and rap videos? Who knows? I'm just glad it happened.
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