Useful Perhaps

I'VE MOVED!

2009-01-01T13:48:00.004-05:00

Or at least, everything's in process... It won't feel like home until I get all my pictures up.

I've decided to consolidate my web presence (more to the point, I finally found someone who knew how to set it up the way I was hoping to). Soon usefulperhaps.melvinbray.com will redirect to the new spot. For the time being (and thereafter), find me at MELVINBRAY.COM.

The Stuff Multiculturalism is Made of

2008-12-23T09:34:00.007-05:00

I have to learn to write and edit to length. I didn't particularly care for the edited version of my submission to CC. Don't get me wrong, it needed editing! I was supposed to do about 500 words and landed somewhere just south of 700. Plus, some thoughts were needlessly complex. No doubt, it needed editing. However, in the copy editors' apparent attempt to "correct" my occasional use of colloquialism (and, strangely, eliminate every transition word), some of my meaning was (in my opinion) muddled.

I find solace in what a writer-friend of mine says, "They own it once you let it go." At least they put a brotha in print!

Nonetheless, it got me thinking. Perhaps the task of editing (and similar gate-keeping responsibilities) in the brave new world of more democratic access must be as interpretive as it was heretofore pragmatic. Perhaps gate-keepers must now also be anthropologists, increasingly immersed in the imaginative space (culture) of new democratic participants enough to translate thought as well as they proof text.

It's a bit much, I know, but such seems the stuff of which multicultural dreams are made.

Hope Full-term

2008-12-22T18:00:00.009-05:00

I finally made print! Today I received my complimentary, advanced copy of Christian Century for a contribution I made to the article "What's Changed?" (December 30, 2008 Vol. 125, No. 26, p. 20). I was in quite prestigious company—sandwiched between leaders of this and that. It was quite an honor to be invited to comment on the election. Thank you Christian Century! Thank you, thank you, thank you and... May your circulation increase.

The following are my unedited comments...

One of the defining questions for an Obama-era America, pregnant with possibility, will be: What does it mean to be 'post-racial'? In fact, the term 'post-racial' has such potential for misinterpretation that Newark, NJ, mayor, Cory Booker, disallowed it on MSNBC's election night coverage:

“I reject the idea of a post-racial America. I want to luxuriate in the racial deliciousness of our country: the Italian-Americans, the Irish-Americans, the Mexican-Americans. I mean, that’s what makes America great. We are a nation that celebrates racial diversity. We’re not Norway; we’re not South Korea; we are the United States of America. The story of America is one of bringing such differences together to manifest a united set of ideals—not a united culture, not a united language, not a united religion, but a united set of ideals. That was what made America dramatic when it was founded, the first country of its kind in humanity. So I reject that. I want to celebrate all of America: its richness, its diversity, its deliciousness.”

I so reside where Mayor Booker is coming from. "God forbid if we ever get to a point where we 'transcend our race'" (Cory Booker on BigThink.com). Nevertheless, that is not what I believe 'post-racial' means—transcendence would be 'non-racial,' a well-meaning sociological nonentity—although it may be exactly what a lot of heretofore-exclusively-privileged persons hope 'post-racial' means. I get the distinct impression that many want it to mean 'over and done with race.' However, as Robert Jensen reminds us in his book The Heart of Whiteness, "race is a fiction we must never accept; race is a fact we must never forget," and the election of a person of color to the highest office in the land at a time of profound uncertainty, quelled only by hope, did not change this one bit.

Continue reading>>>

If it is to follow the pattern of other such 'post-' constructs, 'post-racial' most appropriately identifies those who have suffered through the crucible of race and come out the other side determined to live/trust beyond race—still in visceral awareness of its worst and unequivocal opposition to even the slightest of its indignities. Long before such 'post-' language became en vogue, Cornel West, one of the great American post-modern thinkers, wrote about the dangers of race as the sum of identity in his seminal work Race Matters. West advocates the replacement of "racial reasoning" with a "moral reasoning" that engages beyond the arguments of the past, that obliterates the categories of left-right-center or conservative-liberal and that seems to be descriptive of Obama's decentralized post-racial cadre.

I am convinced that in order to be healing and generative our future conversations must be rooted in the reciprocal admissions inherent to anything post-racial:

1—That there are those who have historically been disadvantaged in our fair country, and consequently…

2—There are those who have been historically advantaged in our fair country.Neither admission can be up for debate anymore, and we must recognize the existence of either is decidedly unfair and immoral. We must commit ourselves to rectifying both wherever either may be found and can't settle for the miscarriage of just doing better from this point forward. "Equal rights" to a piece of pie means little when the entire pie was divided up before one was even allowed to sit down at the table.

As if all that weren't difficult enough, here's the gut-check. If 'post-racial' is to denote an actual repudiation of the discriminatory use of race, it must also become the catch-all concept for the refutation of any act of civil discrimination—in similitude to the way people of color sometimes use 'racism' to connote any abuse of power for which there does not exist a specific term. (Everything is not about race, but race has been a fitting proxy for the intractable abuses of power that have plagued American life.) If our Obama-inspired post-racial impulses don't demand from us unequivocal justice (and from Christians, grace – generosity of spirit – as well) in all facets of democratic life—gender, disability, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, etc—then we might as well throw the term out with the bath water as (a kingdom-come) hope stillborn.

From Alice Walker, with Love, to the President-elect

2008-11-11T03:43:00.003-05:00

Nov. 5, 2008

Dear Brother Obama,

You have no idea, really, of how profound this moment is for us. Us being the black people of the Southern United States. You think you know, because you are thoughtful, and you have studied our history. But seeing you deliver the torch so many others before you carried, year after year, decade after decade, century after century, only to be struck down before igniting the flame of justice and of law, is almost more than the heart can bear. And yet, this observation is not intended to burden you, for you are of a different time, and, indeed, because of all the relay runners before you, North America is a different place. It is really only to say: Well done. We knew, through all the generations, that you were with us, in us, the best of the spirit of Africa and of the Americas. Knowing this, that you would actually appear, someday, was part of our strength. Seeing you take your rightful place, based solely on your wisdom, stamina and character, is a balm for the weary warriors of hope, previously only sung about.

I would advise you to remember that you did not create the disaster that the world is experiencing, and you alone are not responsible for bringing the world back to balance. A primary responsibility that you do have, however, is to cultivate happiness in your own life. To make a schedule that permits sufficient time of rest and play with your gorgeous wife and lovely daughters. And so on. One gathers that your family is large. We are used to seeing men in the White House soon become juiceless and as white-haired as the building; we notice their wives and children looking strained and stressed. They soon have smiles so lacking in joy that they remind us of scissors. This is no way to lead. Nor does your family deserve this fate. One way of thinking about all this is: It is so bad now that there is no excuse not to relax. From your happy, relaxed state, you can model real success, which is all that so many people in the world really want. They may buy endless cars and houses and furs and gobble up all the attention and space they can manage, or barely manage, but this is because it is not yet clear to them that success is truly an inside job. That it is within the reach of almost everyone.

I would further advise you not to take on other people's enemies. Most damage that others do to us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion. We must learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise. It is understood by all that you are commander in chief of the United States and are sworn to protect our beloved country; this we understand, completely. However, as my mother used to say, quoting a Bible with which I often fought, "hate the sin, but love the sinner." There must be no more crushing of whole communities, no more torture, no more dehumanizing as a means of ruling a people's spirit. This has already happened to people of color, poor people, women, children. We see where this leads, where it has led.

A good model of how to "work with the enemy" internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet. Because, finally, it is the soul that must be preserved, if one is to remain a credible leader. All else might be lost; but when the soul dies, the connection to earth, to peoples, to animals, to rivers, to mountain ranges, purple and majestic, also dies. And your smile, with which we watch you do gracious battle with unjust characterizations, distortions and lies, is that expression of healthy self-worth, spirit and soul, that, kept happy and free and relaxed, can find an answering smile in all of us, lighting our way, and brightening the world.

We are the ones we have been waiting for.

In Peace and Joy,
Alice Walker

Obama Grabs Headlines--November 5, 2008

2008-11-11T03:37:00.002-05:00

A view of the many newspaper front covers from around the world on November 5, 2008.

A Letter from a Friend

2008-11-07T04:04:00.004-05:00

A dear friend of mine just sent this to me. I offer it in part as the beginning of an answer to my blog-friend Aerin's gracious and largely rhetorical inquiry...

Hi Friends,

Today I was reading an article in US News & World Report about the historic significance of Barack Obama's election. In it, journalist Robert Schlesinger encourages all of us to focus on what this election truly means to our country. This election has changed the narrative of American history regardless of what happens once Obama and his family are comfortably ensconced in the White House and subsequently at battle with the current state of American politics.

I was not involved in any Obama campaigning and should probably admit that my cynicism about race in this country caused me to reserve a kernel of disbelief and mistrust in the system. When I was driving home and I heard that Obama was President-elect my kernel was shattered and cast away. I cried and celebrated and honked my horn with millions of people all over the world. And yet, what remains is a country, a world even, that still needs work.

I know that we must continue to work because right here in my adopted home state of Georgia dissatisfied citizens resorted to vandalism and fear simply because a black man has been elected president. As a black teacher in a private school located in a mostly affluent, white area of Atlanta I see the seeds of discontent and racism present in the uncomfortable faces of people I stand in line with at Starbucks. I feel pain when a co-worker tells me that her African-American son was ridiculed at school by white classmates who told him that Obama was a terrorist who will ruin this country. These types of summations are rooted in our deepest fears about race and its correlation to power. If race, read: being white, no longer signifies power and "rightness" then we have a great opportunity to do a lot of re-education and rebuilding across large swaths of this country.

I was reminded of this reality when I started to read the comments section of the Robert Schlesinger article:

* "As for a large majority of new voters I also believe, that the Black's voted mainly for race, without any understanding of any kind of politics in there country. Most NOT all were uneducated academically, most are high school drop outs, and voted strictly because they were of a black or mixed black race and thought that vote stood for more free stuff, because Obama did preach that he would fix many if not all of there ills including unemployment food stamps and help of all kinds. To them it was shall I say "Christmas"."

* "Not since that sex adict defiled the White House has there been such a disaser as Mohamed Obama's e;ection! Guess there will be boggying down the halls and shouts of " you dirty MF" resonating in the hallowed rooms of the White House! What joy,the bastardization of our country!!!!!!!!Send Obama and his family back to Kenya!! Bet his daughters won't go to a public school in DC,aka definitely colored! You residents of DC are good enough to vote for him but not good enough for his kids to associate with yours!!"

Let me not even begin to address the clear grammatical problems with these comments, which in my opinion does serve to negate them. ( Full Disclosure: I am an English teacher) What is at issue here is that while Obama has united sections of America previously divided we do have a large number of people who were pulled in the other direction, or rather chose to stay where they were and continue to embrace stereotypes, fear, and hatred. These people are America too. Even in our joy of what Obama's presidency means we must continue to be vigilant, vocal, and active in our schools, churches, and local politics. We must require each other to examine our language and ourselves and help facilitate change.

I, for one, am happy to continue to work for and facilitate change in my community when we have a President who is not afraid to at once decry bigotry and require accountability on the part of the people. We have some momentum in this country that we have never had before. It is time to focus not only on breaking barriers, but also on the painstaking process of healing. As Chicano activist Luis Rodriguez states: "Healing involves going to the wound, not recoiling from it. The wound, the damage, can be the mother of our rebirth, the reconciliation. If revolution isn't about this, it isn't about anything." Right now is the time for us to embark on that journey. Yes we can.

Signed,
Yaisha Caron Harding,
A black woman who finally gets to feel vindicated for having an "ethnic name"

Thanks for the Dialogue

2008-11-07T04:00:00.001-05:00

Aerin, thanks for the dialogue. I wrote this last week about today...

The Day After

As the 2008 Presidential campaign draws to a close, I've become increasingly less concerned about the specific outcomes of election night and more concerned by what we will have positioned ourselves to accomplish the day after. What are our prospects for success in meeting the tremendous challenges we as a country now face, when we've painted our countrymen and neighbors out to be devils and villains? How do we commit ourselves to meaningful action for the good of all God's creation and not become immobilized in our bickering over who is most right? I'm almost afraid that too much damage has been done: the fear mongering and race-baiting and name-calling and prejudice rationalizing. How do we begin to engage one another and work together if indeed I am (by your definition or my own) a tree-hugging, homo-loving, abortion-permitting, other-embracing, terrorist-empathizing, socialist-leaning un-real black man, whom you've been socialized to resist at all costs?

As I write, a song invades my consciousness, refusing not to be heard. I believe it echoes a way forward through this mess we’ve made for ourselves. The song is "Belfast to Boston," by James Taylor (listen). It's been my prayer for peace for about two years now…

There are rifles buried in the countryside by the rising of the moon.
May they lie there long forgotten, 'til they rust away into the ground.

It's a song of grace: blood bought, divinely inspired, blessed assurance that as followers in the way of Jesus we are not condemned to give as good (or as poorly) as we get. We can give better. Yes…

Who will bend this ancient hatred: will the killing to an end?
Who will swallow long injustice: take the devil for a countryman?

We can. This is the grace that is ours. "Freely you have received; freely give," Jesus says.

continue reading on GP>>>

I Too!

2008-11-05T08:00:00.007-05:00

I Too
by Langston Hughes

I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

Today is "Tomorrow," Brudda Langston. And in honor of it I gladly, full of the audacity of hope choose my American-ness for myself for the first time in my life. May God bless America... and everyone else!

Mmmm! They Make a Beautiful First Couple

2008-11-04T23:54:00.005-05:00

It's A Whole New World

2008-11-04T23:52:00.000-05:00

Sing That Funky Music White Kin!

2008-11-04T23:50:00.002-05:00

My Own Worst Enemy... in the Voting Booth

2008-10-31T15:33:00.003-04:00

DON'T VOTE!

2008-10-31T07:32:00.004-04:00

Vote for Hope

2008-10-29T17:07:00.002-04:00

Obama '08 - Vote For Hope from MC Yogi on Vimeo.

One Week!

2008-10-28T06:46:00.006-04:00

Obama is in PA today. It's a rainy, messy morning. Half the student body loaded a bus 5:30 this morning to get to the rally in time to make it in. I will show this video to many of the others. Leslie and the kids were going to go, but it's too nasty for her to manage all three alone. But we will be at the inauguration...

Remarks of Senator Barack Obama
“One Week”
Closing Argument Speech
Transcript
Monday, October 27th, 2008
Canton, Ohio

One week.

After decades of broken politics in Washington, eight years of failed policies from George Bush, and 21 months of a campaign that has taken us from the rocky coast of Maine to the sunshine of California and everywhere in between, we are one week away from changing America.

(APPLAUSE)

In one week, you can turn the page on policies that have put greed and irresponsibility of Wall Street about the hard work and sacrifices of folks right here in Canton, folks right on Main Street.

(APPLAUSE)

In one week, you can choose policies that invest in our middle class and create new jobs and grow this economy from the bottom up so that everyone has a chance to succeed from the CEO to the secretary and the janitor, from the factory owner to the men and women on the factory floor in one week.

(APPLAUSE)

In one week, you can put an end to the politics that would divide a nation just to win an election, that tried to pit region against region and city against town, Republican against Democrat, that asks us to fear at a time when we need hope.

In one week, at this defining moment in history, you can give this country the change we need.

(APPLAUSE)

You can do that.

(APPLAUSE)

You know, we began journey in the depths of winter nearly two years ago on the steps of the old state capitol in Springfield, Illinois, the place where Abraham Lincoln served for so many years.

You know, back then, we didn't have much money, and we didn't have many endorsements. We weren't given much of a chance by the polls or the pundits. And we knew how steep our climb would be.

But I also knew this. I knew that the size of our challenges had outgrown the smallness of our politics. I believed that Democrats and Republicans and Americans of every political stripe were hungry for new ideas and new leadership and a new kind of politics. Once that favors common sense over ideology.

(APPLAUSE)

One that focuses on those values and ideals that we hold in common as Americans. (APPLAUSE)

Most of all, I believed in you. I believed your ability to make change happen. I knew that the American people were a decent generous people who were willing to work hard and sacrifice for future generations.

(APPLAUSE)

And I was absolutely convinced that when we come together, our voices are more powerful than the most entrenched lobbyist or the most vicious political attacks or the full force of a status quo in Washington that wants it keep things just the way they are.

(APPLAUSE)

And, Canton, 21 months later, my faith in the American people have been vindicated. That's how we've come so far, how we've come so close, because of you.

That's how we will change this country, with your help. And that's why we cannot afford to slow down or sit back.

(APPLAUSE)

We cannot let up for one day or one minute or one second in this last week.

(APPLAUSE)

Not now. Not when there's so much at stake.

(APPLAUSE)

One week.

(APPLAUSE)

We are in the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. I don't have to tell you, Ohio. 760,000 workers have lost their jobs so far this year. Businesses and families can't get credit. Home values are falling. Pensions are disappearing. Wages are lower than they've been in a decade at a time when the cost of everything from health care to college have never been higher.

It's getting harder and harder to make the mortgage or fill up your gas tank or even keep the electricity on at the end of the month.

(APPLAUSE)

At a moment like this, the last thing we can afford is four more years of the tired, worn-out, old theory that says...

(APPLAUSE)

... that says we should give more that billionaires and big corporations and hope that prosperity trickles down on everybody else.

(APPLAUSE)

The last thing -- the last thing we can afford is four more years where no one in Washington is watching anyone on Wall Street because politicians and lobbyists killed common sense regulations.

(APPLAUSE)

Those are the theories that got us into this mess. They haven't worked, and it is time for change. And that's why I'm running for president of the United States of America.

(APPLAUSE)

Now, Senator McCain has served this country honorably. And Senator McCain can point to a few moments like torture where he has broken with George Bush over the past eight years. He deserves credit for that. He deserves credit for that.

But when it comes to the economy, when it comes to the central issue of our time, the central issue of this election, the plain truth is that John McCain has stood with this president every step of the way.

Voting for the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy that he once opposed. Voting for the Bush budgets that sped us into debt. Calling for less regulation 21 times just this year. Those are the facts.

(APPLAUSE)

And now, after 21 months and three debates, Senator McCain still has not been able to tell the American people a single major things he'd do differently from George Bush when it comes to the economy.

(APPLAUSE)

Not one thing.

CONTINUE READING One Week!>>>

Senator McCain says we can't spend the next four years waiting for our luck to change. But you understand that the biggest gamble we can take is to embrace the same old Bush-McCain policies that have failed us for the last eight years.

(APPLAUSE)

We can't afford to take that risk.

(APPLAUSE)

It's not change when John McCain wants it give a $700,000 tax cut to the average fortune 500 CEO. It's not change when he wants to give $200 billion to the biggest corporations or $4 billion to the oil companies or $300 billion to the same Wall Street banks that got us into this mess.

OBAMA: It's not change when he comes up with a tax plan that doesn't give a penny of relief to more than 100 million middle-class Americans. That is not change.

So, look, Ohio, we have tried it John McCain's way. We have tried it George Bush's way. And deep down, deep down, Senator McCain knows that, which is why his campaign said that, if we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose.

That's why he's spending these last weeks calling me every name in the book, because that's how you play the game in Washington. If you can't beat your opponent's ideas, you distort those ideas and maybe make some up.

If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run away from. You make -- you make a big election about small things.

Ohio, we're here to say, "Not this time, not this year, not when so much is at stake."

(APPLAUSE)

John McCain might be worried about losing an election, but I'm worried about Americans who are losing their homes, and their jobs, and their life savings.

(APPLAUSE)

I can take one more week of John McCain's attacks, but this country can't take four more years of the same failed politics and the same failed policies. It's time to try something new.

(APPLAUSE)

It is time, Canton, to try something new. The question in this election is not, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" We all know the answer to that. The real question is, "Will this country be better off four years from now?"

(APPLAUSE)

I know these are difficult times. They're difficult times for Ohio; they're difficult times for America.

But I also know that we've faced difficult times before. The American story has never been about things coming easy; it's been about rising to the moment when the moment was hard.

It's about seeing the highest mountaintop from the deepest of valleys. It's about rejecting fear and division for unity of purpose.

That's how we overcame war and depression. That's how we've won great struggles for civil rights, and women's rights, and worker's rights. That's how we'll emerge from this crisis stronger and more prosperous than we were before, as one nation and as one people.

(APPLAUSE)

Remember, we still have the most talented, most productive workers of any country on Earth. We're still home to innovation and technology, colleges and universities that are the envy of the world.

Some of the biggest, brightest ideas in history have come from our small businesses, in the back of somebody's garage, in our research facilities. So there's no reason we can't make this century another American century.

We just need -- we just need a new direction. We just need a new politics.

Now, understand, I don't believe that government can or should try to solve all our problems. You don't believe that either.

But I do believe that government should do that which we cannot do for ourselves: protect us from harm; provide a decent education for all children; invest in new roads and bridges, in new science and technology.

Our government should reward drive and innovation and encourage growth in the free market, but it should also make sure businesses live up to their responsibility to create American jobs, and look out for American workers, and play by the rules of the road.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: It should ensure a shot at success not just for those with money and power and influence, but for every single American who's willing to work. That's how we create not just more millionaires or more billionaires but how we create more middle-class families.

That's how we make sure businesses have customers that can afford their products or services.

(APPLAUSE)

That's how we've always grown the American economy -- from the bottom up.

John McCain calls this socialism. I call it opportunity. And there's nothing more American than that.

(APPLAUSE)

AUDIENCE: Obama! Obama! Obama!

OBAMA: Thank you. Look, if we want to get through this crisis, if we want to get through this crisis, we need to get beyond the old, ideological debates and divides between the left and the right. We don't need bigger government or smaller government. We need better government.

(APPLAUSE)

We need a more competent government. We need a government that upholds the values we hold in common as Americans. We don't have to choose between allowing our financial system to collapse and spending billions of dollars of taxpayer money to bail out Wall Street banks.

As president, I will ensure the financial rescue plan helps stop foreclosures and protects your money instead of enriching CEOs.

(APPLAUSE)

And I'll put in place the common-sense regulations that I've been calling for throughout this campaign so that Wall Street can never cause a crisis like this again. That's the change we need.

(APPLAUSE) The choice -- the choice in this election isn't between tax cuts and no tax cuts. It's about whether you believe we should only reward wealth or whether we should also reward the workers and workers who create wealth.

(APPLAUSE)

I will give a tax break to 95 percent of Americans who work every day and get taxes taken out of their paychecks every week.

(APPLAUSE)

I'll eliminate income taxes for seniors making under $50,000.

(APPLAUSE)

And we're going to give homeowners and working parents more of a break.

(APPLAUSE)

And, yes, I'll help pay for this by asking the folks who are making more than $250,000 a year to go back to the tax rate they were paying in the 1990's.

(APPLAUSE)

No matter who John McCain may claim, here are the facts. If you make under $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increase by a single dime -- not your income tax, not your payroll taxes, not your capital gains taxes, no taxes. Because the last things we should do in this economy is raise taxes on the middle class.

(APPLAUSE)

And we have been saying that throughout this campaign.

Now, when it comes to jobs, the choice in this election is not between putting up a wall around America or allowing every job to disappear overseas. The truth is we won't be able to bring back every single job that we've lost here in Ohio or across the country. But that doesn't mean we should follow John McCain's plan to keep giving tax breaks to corporations that sends American jobs overseas.

(APPLAUSE)

I will end those breaks as president. I will give American businesses a $3,000 tax credit for every job they create right here in Ohio, right here in the United States of America.

(APPLAUSE)

I'll eliminate capital gains taxes for small businesses and start-up companies that are the engine of job creation in this country. We will create 2 million new jobs by rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges and schools, by laying broadband lines to reach every corner of the country.

And I will invest $15 billion a year in renewable sources of energy to create five million new energy jobs over the next decade.

(APPLAUSE)

Jobs that pay well.

(APPLAUSE)

Jobs that cannot be outsources. Jobs building solar panels and wind turbines and a new electricity grid -- jobs building the fuel- efficient cars of tomorrow. Not in Japan. Not in South Korea. But right here in the U.S. of A.

(APPLAUSE)

Jobs that will help us eliminate the oil we import from the Middle East in ten years and help save the planet in the bargain. That's how America can lead again.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: When it comes to health care, we don't have to choose between a government-run health care system and the unaffordable one we have now. If you already have health insurance, the only thing that will change under my plan is that we will lower your premiums.

(APPLAUSE)

If you don't have health insurance, you'll be able to get the same kind of health insurance that members of Congress give themselves.

(APPLAUSE)

We'll invest in preventive care and new technology to finally lower the cost of health care for families, and businesses, and the entire economy.

And as someone -- as someone who watched his own mother spend the final months of her life arguing with insurance companies because they claimed her cancer was a pre-existing condition, they didn't want to pay for her treatment, I will stop insurance companies from discriminating against those who are sick and need care the most. You can count on that.

(APPLAUSE)

When it comes to giving every child a world-class education so they can compete in this global economy for the jobs of the 21st century, the choice is not between more money and more reform, because our schools need both.

As president, I will invest in early childhood education...

(APPLAUSE)

... to close the achievement gap. We'll recruit an army of new teachers; we'll pay them more money; we'll give them more support.

But I will also demand higher standards and more accountability from everybody, from our teachers and principals and our schools.

(APPLAUSE)

And I will make a deal with every young American who has the drive and the will but not the money to go to college: If you commit to serving your community or your country in national service, we will make sure you can afford your tuition.

You invest in America; America will invest in you. Together, we'll move this country forward.

(APPLAUSE)

When it comes to keeping this country safe, we don't have to choose between retreating from the world and fighting a war without end in Iraq. It is time to stop spending $10 billion a month in Iraq while the Iraqi government sits on a huge surplus.

(APPLAUSE)

As president, I will end this war by asking...

(APPLAUSE)

... by asking the Iraqi government to step up and finally finish the fight against bin Laden and the Al Qaida terrorists who attacked us on 9/11.

(APPLAUSE)

I will never hesitate to defend this nation, but I will only send our troops into harm's way with a clear mission and a sacred commitment to give them the equipment they need in battle and the care and benefits they deserve when they come home. We will treat our veterans with honor and respect.

(APPLAUSE)

I will build new partnerships to defeat the threats of the 21st century. And I will restore our moral standing, so that America is once again viewed as that last, best hope for all who are called to the cause of freedom, who long for lives of peace, who yearn for a better future.

Now, again, I won't stand here and pretend that any of this will be easy, especially now. The cost of this economic crisis, the cost of the war in Iraq means that Washington will have to tighten its belt and put off spending on things we can afford to do without. On this, there is no other choice.

As president, I will go through the federal budget, line by line, ending programs that we don't need, making the ones we do need work better and cost less.

But as I've said from the day we began this journey all those months ago, the change we need isn't just about new programs and policies. It's about a new attitude. It's about new politics, a politics that calls on our better angels instead of encouraging our worst instincts, one that reminds us of the obligations we have to ourselves and one another.

OBAMA: Now, part of the reason this economic crisis occurred is because we've been living through an era of profound irresponsibility. On Wall Street, easy money and an ethic of "what's good for me is good enough" blinded greedy executives to the dangers in decisions that they were making.

On Main Street, lenders tricked people into buying homes they couldn't afford; some folks knew they couldn't afford those houses and bought them anyway.

In Washington, politicians spent money they didn't have and allowed lobbyists to set the agenda. They scored political points instead of solving our problems.

And even after the greatest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, all we were asked to do by our president was to go out and shop.

That's why -- that's why what we've lost in these last eight years can't be measured just by lost wages or bigger trade deficits. What's also been lost is the idea that, in this American story, each of us has a role to play.

Each of us have responsibilities to work hard, to look after ourselves and our families, and each of us has a responsibility to look out for each other, our fellow citizens.

That's what's been lost these last eight years: our common sense of purpose, our sense of higher purpose. That's what we need to restore right now. That's one of the reasons I'm running for president of the United States of America.

(APPLAUSE)

So, yes, government must lead the way on energy independence, but each of us must do our part to make our homes and businesses more efficient. Yes, we must provide more ladders to success for young men who fall into lives of crime and despair.

But all of us have to do our part as parents to turn off the TV set and read to our children, to take responsibility for providing love and guidance.

(APPLAUSE)

Yes, we can argue and debate our positions passionately, but all of us must summon the strength and grace to bridge our differences and unite in common effort: black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, Democrat, Republican, young, old, rich, poor, gay, straight, disabled or not. All of us have to come together.

(APPLAUSE)

Ohio, in this election, we cannot afford the same political games and tactics that are being used to pit us against one another, to make us afraid of one another. The stakes are too high to divide us by class and region and background, by who we are or what we believe.

Because, despite what our opponents may claim, there are no real or fake parts of this country. There's no city or town that's more pro-America than anywhere else.

We're one nation, all of us proud, all of us patriots.

There are patriots who supported this war in Iraq and patriots who opposed it, patriots who believe in Democratic policies and those who believe in Republican policies.

The men and women who serve in our battlefields, some may be Democrats, some may be Republicans, others independents, but they've fought together and they bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a red America or a blue America; they've served the United States of America.

(APPLAUSE)

It won't be easy, Ohio. It won't be easy; it won't be quick. But you and I know that it is time to come together and change this country.

Some of you may be cynical; some of you may be fed up with politics. A lot of you may be disappointed and even angry with your leaders. And you have every right to be.

But, despite all of this, I ask of you what's been asked of Americans throughout our history: I ask you to believe, not just in my ability to bring about change, but in yours.

I know this change is possible, because I've seen it. I've seen it over the last 21 months. Because in this campaign, I've had the privilege to witness what is best in America.

I've seen it in the lines of voters that stretched around schools and churches, in the young people who cast their ballots for the very first time, and those not-so-young folks who got involved again after a very long time.

I've seen it in the workers who would rather cut back their hours than see their friends lose their jobs, in the neighbors who take in a stranger when the floodwaters rise, in the soldiers who re-enlist after losing a limb.

I've seen it in the faces of the men and women I've met at countless rallies and town halls across the country, men and women who speak of their struggles, but also of their hopes, of their dreams.

I still remember the e-mail that a woman named Robyn sent me after I met her in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Some time after our event, her son nearly went into cardiac arrest. He was diagnosed with a heart condition that could only be treated with a procedure that cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Her insurance company refused to pay, and their family didn't have that kind of money.

In her e-mail, Robyn wrote, "I ask only this of you: On the days where you feel so tired you can't think of uttering another word to the people, think of us. When those who oppose you have you down, reach deep and fight back harder."

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: Ohio, that's what hope is, that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better is waiting around the bend, that insists there are better days ahead, if we're willing to work for it, if we're willing to shed our fears and our doubts, if we're willing to reach deep down inside ourselves when we're tired, when we're worn out, and we come back fighting harder.

Hope. That's what kept some of our parents and grandparents going when times were tough -- what led them so say, maybe, I can't go to college, but if I save a little bit each week, my child can go to college.

(APPLAUSE)

Maybe I can't have my own business, but if I work really hard, my child can open one of her own.

(APPLAUSE)

Hope -- it's what led immigrants from distant lands to come to these shores against great odds and carve a new life for their families in America. What led those who couldn't vote to match and organization and stand for freedom, that led them to cry out, and may look dark tonight, but if I hold on to hope, tomorrow will be brighter. That's what this election is about. That's the choice we face right now.

(APPLAUSE)

Canton, don't believe for a second this election is over. Do not think for a minute that power concedes. We have a lot of work to do. We have to work like our future depends on it in this last week.

(APPLAUSE)

Because it doesn't depend on it this week.

(APPLAUSE)

In one week's time, we can choose an economy that rewards work and creates new jobs and fuels prosperity from the bottom up. In one week, we can choose to invest in health care for our families and education for our kids and renewable energy for our future. In one week, we can choose hope over fear and unity over division.

(APPLAUSE)

The promise of change over the power of the status quo. In one week, we can come together as one nation and one people and, once more, choose our better history. That's what's at stake.

(APPLAUSE)

That's what we're fighting for.

(APPLAUSE)

And if, in this last week, you'll knock on some doors for me and make some calls for me and talk to your neighbors and convince your friends, if you'll stand with me and fight with me and give me your vote, then I promise you, we will not just win Ohio we will win this general election.

(APPLAUSE)

And together, we'll change this country and we will change the world.

God bless you.

(APPLAUSE)

God bless of United States of America.

(APPLAUSE)

Let's get to work.

(APPLAUSE)

The Anti-Socialist

2008-10-22T07:04:00.002-04:00

Pass me some of whatever he's smokin'!

Collin Powell: A Racist?

2008-10-21T07:32:00.002-04:00

I am prayerful I will have time to draft out what has been brewing inside me about race in this Presidential race. But if not, I am grateful to Keith Olbermann for saying this...

That's My Man!

2008-10-19T09:47:00.009-04:00

Collin Powell just endorsed Barack Obama for President of the United States!

Powell has renewed my appreciation of him. There are so many reasons why it was in Powell's self-interest not to, but he did. Powell offers a totally affirmative rationale for his endorsement of Obama. And though he could have side-stepped it in an effort to maintain his Republican standing, Powell expressed his disgust with the incendiary ad hominem campaigning of the McCain ticket that has been so completely beyond the pale these past few weeks.

The coalition grows...

Does It Scare Anyone Else?

2008-10-17T22:52:00.005-04:00

Does it scare anyone else that a self-described "conservative" feels comfortable and privileged enough regarding her place in and reception from the general public that she would say these things from the highest of media platforms?

Oh those clear- and fair-minded 'true believers' who would save us from the likes of Barack Obama, and even John McCain, if just given the chance.

Can anyone say "Joseph McCarthy?" What about "Third Reich" (prior to the whole totalitarian dictatorship and subsequent death camps, wasn't their message about the same)?

As philosopher George Santayana reminds us, "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it" (The Life of Reason, Vol I "Reason of Common Sense").

What's Wrong With Making This Our Standard?

2008-10-17T11:06:00.001-04:00

What does it say about the usefulness of faith that people of faith are often the first to offer rationales against a standard of political discourse that reflects our highest ideals and best intuitions?

I was so grateful for this glimpse of John McCain...

Throw Down the Guanlet!

2008-10-15T11:39:00.008-04:00

I understand why Barack Obama is loathed to throw a punch at John McCain. I, like many other people of color, know from personal experience that as soon as Obama is deemed by a critical mass of whites to have stepped across the line (and there's no accounting for where that line is located at any given moment)--been "too" aggressive--he will be pegged as "an angry black man," and there's no coming back from that. There is little grace or benefit of the doubt given to the historically marginalized: we get no do-overs.

White supporters of Obama often lose sight of this very real double standard that highlights the meaning of "white privilege." As columnist and commentator Eugene Robinson has said, Obama must remain the most "un-aggrieved black man in America."

Although I don't want Obama to throw any ad hominem punches, I did want him to throw down the gauntlet last night and say to John McCain,

"When you find someone--anyone--at a John Lewis rally who screams out, 'KILL HIM!' in reference to you, Sen. McCain, then i will both repudiate Rep. Lewis for inciting such despicable behavior and condemn the degenerate who acted so despicably. Until then, you need to get your own house in order!"

Like Braided Hair

2008-08-09T10:08:00.003-04:00

Family News

2008-08-07T12:00:00.001-04:00

Dear Friends,

Leslie and I want to inform you that I have been offered a post teaching English at my high school alma mater Pine Forge Academy (a boarding school near Pottstown, PA). Thus, we are relocating temporarily. The prayer is that grad school will bring us back to Atlanta fall of next year. In the meantime, this is the opportunity that has presented itself. So we go in faith.

It all happened in a matter of 2 weeks, which is why we haven't had the chance for proper goodbyes. We solicit your prayers and positive thoughts. It's not always easy to go home again. This is the table that nourished me through adolescence (but I am a very different person now). This also happens to be the place where both of Leslie's parents grew up, so there is family left in the area. It will be exciting for the children to spend time with their remaining great-grand.

We look forward to connecting with old friends and friends we have come to know and love at a distance. We will also sorely miss you we are leaving behind. Pray with us that it won't be long. God bless. Until next time...

In the adventure,
Melvin, Leslie, Jaya, Kari & Melvin 4.0

"Tax & Spend Liberal"

2008-08-06T08:57:00.004-04:00

click to enlage

Magna Cum Laude vs.Thank you Lawdy

2008-07-23T15:56:00.006-04:00

A lot will be made this election cycle over McCain's years in public service versus Obama's. Hillary tried her best to breath life into the insinuation, "Look what putting inexperience in the White House has cost us the last 8 years."

Then today I get this e-mail:

"The academic records of the Presidential Candidates are clear:

Magna Cum Laude @ Harvard Univ Law School vs # 894 of 899 @ US Naval Academy.

Interesting facts, this is one of those situations where most right wing conservatives will ignore facts and just support McCain. If the shoe were on the other foot we all know they would be bashing Obama.

According to several sources (see link below) Senator John McCain graduated 894th out of 899 in his class at the U. S. Naval Academy in 1958, yet I've not seen this in ANY major media. I wonder if this would be the case if the roles were reversed and that unimpressive rank had been Senator Barack Obama's class ranking and Senator McCain had graduated MAGNA CUM LAUDE from Harvard Law School and been President of the Harvard Law Review--as did Senator Obama."

I think records are important and can't be ignored, but I wonder if we don't put too much emphasis on the past. Presidents have so many competent people around that, more often than not, it's not proven ability that matters as much as it is the direction and leadership. Bush has led us quite effectively (thanks to the competence of his camp) exactly where he wanted to. It's not where I want us to be, but he has no problems with it.

I would argue that the clearest indicators of Obama or McCain's future success in office is not their past, but their policy and vision of the present coupled with the nature and effectiveness of their current campaigns.

Scam

2008-07-23T15:41:00.002-04:00

It's amazing that we are so used to being extorted by our own government that this even works. It's supposedly spreading fast so be prepared should you get this call.

Most of us take those summonses for jury duty seriously, but enough people skip out on their civic duty, that a new and ominous kind of fraud has surfaced. The caller claims to be a jury coordinator. If you protest that you never received a summons for jury duty, the con artist asks you for your Social Security number and date of birth so he or she can verify the information and cancel the arrest warrant. Give out any of this information and bingo; your identity was just stolen.

The swindle has been reported so far in 11 states, including Oklahoma, Illinois, and Colorado. It is particularly insidious because they use intimidation over the phone to try to bully people into giving information by pretending they are with the court system. The FBI and the federal court system have issued nationwide alerts on their websites, warning consumers about the fraud.

Check it out here: http://www.fbi.gov/page2/june06/jury_scams060206.htm

Since I've been all over the place looking for a job, this has me wondering how vulnerable I've made myself to identity fraud just by filling out applications.

Artistic ramblingS

2008-07-23T12:27:00.002-04:00

I just published an Home-Training essay on GP about the Rene Marie controversy and the importance of artistic contribution (Part 1 / Part 2). This marks the first time I've liked the almost inevitable title change better than my own. My working title was "Artistic ramblingS," which my editor changed to "Good Art Gives--but Doesn't Always Sell." You go, Ryan!

The Ironies of Campaignin'

2008-07-22T12:30:00.003-04:00

Send a JibJab Sendables® eCard Today!

Worth Reconsidering

2008-07-18T12:23:00.002-04:00

To presume is human, to reconsider sublime. At least that's what I'm beginning to believe as a father of three. Fatherhood asks one to do a great deal with often incomplete, misleading, and sometimes outright false information -- from arbitrating disputes to meting out appropriate consequences to picking cereal. I am loathe to admit the number of times I've rushed to judgment or totally misunderstood something as a dad. Sometimes the only thing that spares me from acting on dubious presumptions are a loving pair of deep mahogany eyes staring up at me, begging me to reconsider.

Art functions in a quite similar fashion. It asks us to reconsider our biases, our preferences, our intuitions, our world. That's what Barry Blitt was doing when he inked the cartoon, "Politics of Fear," which made the front cover of The New Yorker this month. And, yes, I join the ranks of Clarence Page and Jon Stewart believing that Blitt did a pretty good job.

read more on GP>>>

Exactly

2008-07-17T23:46:00.001-04:00

VeeP Watch

2008-07-13T10:57:00.005-04:00

Tim Kaine, Governor of Virginia, is another not so bad looking prospect. He perhaps helps Obama bridge a connection with Southerners and Roman Catholics. A Roman Catholic constituency is one thing John Edwards doesn't bring to the table. Tom Daschle is Roman Catholic, but not a Southerner. Kaine brings them both together.

Brian Surgery with a Switch-blade

2008-07-07T16:14:00.009-04:00

I'm not sure how I feel about this GP post—whether it says something that ought to be voiced or whether I just fell into the trap of being the Black guy who commented on the black thing just because I happened to be more qualified to do so than most other GP contributing writers.

If nothing else, I do love the quote by Ralph Ellison...

The 4th of July is always a weird holiday for me. It's not that I don't enjoy the nostalgia, picnics, barbeque, fireworks and romanticizing of history—I do—yet as a student of history I can't help but be reminded of the July 5, 1852, speech of Frederick Douglass, given at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, NY. If you haven't, you should read it. "This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn." This was a full 10 years and then some before Emancipation. Though I do not mourn in the same way or for the same reasons, I feel I owe such proud patriotism some homage. So I remember in (mostly) quiet yet hopeful ambivalence. January 1st (1863) is much more straightforward for me.

Exactly one week prior to the Fourth this year (not by accident, I'm sure), the largest segmented survey of African-Americans ever conducted was released by the research firm Yankelovich. The study was commissioned by Radio One, the largest radio broadcasting company primarily targeting African Americans in the U.S. USA Today was given the first opportunity to review it.

I am always amazed at how serendipitously life tends to sync up with what I am currently reading. On the very day Black America Today was released to the public, I coincidentally began reading Dark Matter, an anthology of speculative fiction. I was floored by the incisiveness of the following statement found in the anthology's introduction:

"In his 1953 collection of cultural criticism, Shadow and Act, Ralph Ellison cautioned readers not to stumble
'over that ironic obstacle which lies in the path of anyone who would fashion a theory of American Negro culture while ignoring the intricate network of connections which binds Negroes to the larger society. To do so is to attempt a delicate brain surgery with a switch-blade. And it is possible that any viable theory of Negro American culture obligates us to fashion a more adequate theory of American culture as a whole.'"

This became the lens through which I process the Radio One survey in the shadow of Independence Weekend. I'm not left with a cohesive image. Rather a disjointed vision cracked by nagging questions.

read more @ God's Politics blog>>>

Target Marketing

2008-06-29T13:30:00.002-04:00

Dobson Hates Barack People!

2008-06-29T12:51:00.001-04:00

VeeP

2008-06-29T11:31:00.011-04:00

I'm liking John Edwards or Tom Daschle for Obama's VP right now. Obama said this week that he is looking for a partner who can be President, if necessary, and a great adviser. Chris Matthews points out that Obama also needs someone who doesn't make him look like the naive youngster. I think Edwards and Daschle meet all these criteria, particularly the third--even though both men are older than he, Edwards slightly and Daschle by about 13 years.

Though Daschle is very much a boomer, he's cool as hell and doesn't look like an old fogy next to Obama. Edwards, I believe, has the fortitude to implement a populous legislative agenda. Both men are extremely intelligent, can call it like they see it, yet are also team players. And both, I believe, would deliver key constituencies. What do you think?

Compassion-Fatigue

2008-06-24T13:45:00.003-04:00

Parallel Public Funding—The Audacity of Nope!

2008-06-22T12:02:00.004-04:00

If you have a moment, listen to or watch these before reading futher:

"In a Strategic Shift, Obama Opts to Forgo Public Financing", NewsHour 6/19-08 (12 min)
"Shields & Brooks Discuss Obama's Fundraising Shift", NewsHour 6/20-08 (first 6 min)
"Obama forgoes public financing", Meet the Press 6/22-08 (8 min)
"Does Obama’s financing opt-out raise doubts?", Meet the Press 6/22-08 (4 min)

We can't have a new kind of politics on the terms set by our old politics.

One of the old terms we have to change is the guarantee that political gamers count on: the public just WON'T THINK and CAN'T REASON and will continue to accepted whatever interpretation ideological pundits, politicians and commentators offer.

Another of the old terms of debate we have to abandon is the misconception that APPROPRIATE CHANGE (change necessary to transcend gridlock) will fit neatly into traditional liberal-conservative ideological constructs. It won't. It can't, if one believes Albert Einstein.

Obama's choice to not commit to federally- and party-managed public funding of his campaign is not a flip-flop. He made no unconditional pledge to do so. He said he would IF he and his Republican opponent made mutually iron-clad commitments to close the loop-holes that make our campaign finance laws nigh useless. Though he is now more than willing to throw stones, McCain did not join Obama in going this far.

Obama's choice is also not simply a matter of pragmatism as an overwhelmingly cynical--when not indiscriminately antagonistic--mass media have suggested. It wasn't just the opportunity to go after more money (i.e. political expediency) that compelled Obama. He has already out-raised McCain more than 5 to 1, and he could have used the money raised during the primaries up until the Democratic Convention 8 weeks from now, plus the $85m of federal public financing, plus money spent on his behalf from the DNC. If winning at all costs were Obama's impetus, he would have done just this. It would have been the politically expedient way to have his cake and eat it too. As it now stands, Obama will raise money (and can spend as much as he raises), but not in amounts so extraordinary so as to dwarf the aforementioned composite amount. The difference is that now Obama will be funded in small amounts (on average less than $100) by a self-organizing, broad, identifiable coalition of "we the people"—not by an anonymous fiction often appealed to by politicians as the "general public" or the "American people—not to overlook deep-pocketed, well entrenched corporate interests who regularly manipulate the current system of so-called "public financing". This was in no wise a money play.

The laws allowing for the public financing of presidential campaigns were written in 1976 after Watergate. They are 30 years old and do little (if they ever did much) to address the ways strategists game the system today. We've all watched with disgust at how toothless those laws have been in their ability to subdue the influence of money in the political process. Yet for reasons I don't understand, we've accepted politician's banal excuses as to why they just can't do anything substantive about it and let them off the hook for compromising reform efforts to the point of uselessness.

Matthew Dowd, Republican stratigist, on ABC's This Week said Obama has created a "brand issue" for himself—"he's tarnished his brand." This comment belies a fundamental misunderstanding of the Obama brand—at least the part that has capture the imagination of post-ideological progressives like myself. Obama's brand is safe with us if all you have on him is that Obama chose to take a transparent position parallel to a too easily exploitable so-called "public finance system" that has yet to limit the impact of big money in American politics. I'll take that brand of politics over the status quo any day.

Believe it or not, I'm not an Obama or bust guy. I'm certain he will disappoint me in some ways. But this isn't one of them. Like I tell kids who want to be mad at name-calling, we have to "consider the source." The push-back to this move is coming from all those who have a vested interest in our political system as it is. Obama is finding ways to subvert that system, and I'm glad for it. It gives me hope.

*Thanks to Stephen Colbert (or his writers) for the clever and insightful phrase "The Audacity of Nope"—I love it!

4 Thumbs Up, 2 Thumbs Way Down

2008-06-21T18:40:00.011-04:00

If you like movies, here are a couple I've seen of late that I loved:

I collect live-action comic book flix, so I was especially pleased to see one done with such a well developed storyline and complex characters, as was the case with Iron Man.

It is for the same reason I HATED The Incredible Hulk. Saw it on Wednesday. It was awful! It's unpardonable sin was that it had no unifying plot. At best, it was a poor collection of character subplots, the most interesting of which belonged to someone other than David Banner. They tried to make Banner's quest to rid himself of the beast within the central storyline, but that's the underlying theme of all things Hulk (tritely justaposed with someone else's quest for power). It's equivolent to making a movie about how much Superman loves flying or how conflicted Batman is. These are quintessential elements of each character, not storylines!

I was disappointed again last night by the movie Jumpers. Bad for similar reasons. However, I will be eternally grateful from its preview. The director's visual interpretation of teleportation--which, before seeing the movie, I thought was time travel--was the recent inspiration for, my own favorite figment, Revelations' idiosyncratic habit of arbitrarily switching tenses when he's talking to someone. In the trailer, as a jumper moves through the 'space-time continuum' it looks as if he could accidently come out in the wrong place and time--past, present or future--if she were not careful. This got me thinking about rememberance, embodiment and anticipation as more than just states of mind. I wish the director had gone there with it. If he had, the movie might have kept me awake.

A Joke for Colored People

2008-06-21T17:06:00.006-04:00

This seems to be the Year of Color in America—from ethnicities to rainbow coalitions.

Kevin Tan may be the first Chinese American to take the mat for USA gymnastics on the very year the Olympics go to Bejing. He's America's best hope in the rings.

The first American of East Indian descent, Raj Bhavsar, may finally make it on the USA Olympic team as well. Many gymnastics fans felt that by virtue of his performance at the last trials he should have made the 2004 team, but such is life (...in the West—sadly one can never be sure what dynamics are at play).

In order to understand the following comment, you'd have to know that my sister-in-law is of Indian descent as well.

While watching Raj today, I turned to my wife and said, "Quick, Leslie! Call Jocelyn and see if she knows him!"

*Update: Though 3rd best all around (separated from 2nd best by less than a tenth of a point) and the high scorer on the parallel bars, Raj was again denied and named 2nd alternate for the team—go figure.

Lexicon Artist!

2008-06-21T16:29:00.001-04:00

Baracknophobia

2008-06-21T15:12:00.003-04:00

The Assassination of Hillary... [and] Barack

2008-06-14T13:34:00.010-04:00

Assuming the best (until evidence to the contrary surfaces), I think this is brilliant! Disturbing, yes—intentionally so (not for children)—but BRILLIANT...

www.theassassinationofhillaryclinton.com

www.theassassinationofbarackobama.com

Story by NY Times blogger Sewell Chan

"It's art....It's about character assassination—about how Obama and Hillary have been portrayed by the media."

-Yazmany Arboleda, 27-year-old Boston-born performance artist

Can We Say "Duped"

2008-06-08T12:26:00.010-04:00

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (California, D) clued me into this on CNN's Late Edition this afternoon.

Did anyone else know that ONLY 18%-20% of the US federal government annual budget goes to social spending? What are Republicans and Libertarians always complaining about? They've made social spending out to be the national bogeyman—the serial killer of America's hopes and dream.

Better than two-fifths is spent on Defense, but because the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are funded as supplemental spending, their totals ARE NEVER added into official congressional Defense spending totals (though spending on them equals/exceeds the amount spent on social programs). This means—though we have known for 5 years that we will need the appropriations—Congress has never actually budgeted for either war, so spending for both automatically goes on the credit card (it gets charged to the Chinese). What the—?

THE WORD

2008-06-04T10:23:00.000-04:00

Gut Reaction

2008-06-03T22:47:00.018-04:00

Having just finished hearing Obama speak, what strikes me most notably is that John McCain and Hillary Clinton's speeches were about themselves, while Obama's speech was so graciously about others.

That is so telling...

Furthermore, Barak put the Democratic Party on notice that his high-road, others-interested methodology should become the standard now that he's the presumptive nominee.

What brings tears to my eyes is that with Obama as President my children will grow up in an America in which, for the first time, no one can say that they have no right, no place, no voice... and seem even remotely credible.

The commentator line of the night came from Carl Bernstein on CNN, with regards to Hillary's attempts to strong-arm herself into the VP position:

"The Clintons are the Ike & Tina Turner of politics—they don't do it nice-and-easy, they do it nice-and-rough."

Another great quote:

"She almost offered him the vice presidency tonight."

theGuild

2008-06-03T12:16:00.005-04:00

This is a creative project some friends and i are doing. Right now we're publishing to God's Politics (which defines our primary topic as justice). We're just getting started. Stuff we've published will appear in the NOTES section. You can find more (on a broader range of topics) at members individual pages and sites.

The first post is mine. It's satirical op-ed--thus the purpose is to ridicule and provoke, while advancing a definite point of view (this isn't 'fair and balanced'!). Sadly, I am not much of a humorist :-(. But that is only one style of creativity to be explore.

Check us out. Become a FAN!

Want the Right to Help Shape the World?

2008-06-01T12:37:00.011-04:00

Barak Obama broke ties with Trinity United Church of Christ this weekend. I hate it. He had to do it, no doubt. It was the politically expedient thing to do. He probably couldn't have won the general election without it... but I hate it.

George Will said it well when he described it as the only way Obama could "coderize the wound." Now, George and I probably differ greatly on what we interpret that wound to be. The wound that George and others often speak of is, frankly, imaginary to one who has been through the crucible of race. It's the self-delusion that racism as an institution has been dismantled and that the wounds it once inflicted on the public psyche are categorically on the mend and that comments such as those made by Rev. Wright or Father Phleger only serve to lacerate regenerated tissue. I find this to be naive wish-fulfillment. The wound I perceive has been the lancing of the dominant culture's racial sensibilities and ahistorical fantasies, precipitated by the viable Presidential candidacy of a person of color and the inevitable revelation that his story validates some but not most of the myths the dominant culture has told itself about "truth, justice and the American way." (By the way, "dominant culture" in this instance is not code for "white".) Obama had to leave Trinity because all too many could not have heard his message of unity otherwise.

I get why he left. I believe Obama understands intuitively an ethic that is difficult for me to appreciate at this very moment: If you want the right to help shape the world, you have to give the world the right to help shape you. The same is true of one's country. And these are the very rights—not just privileges—we extend to the person we as citizens vote into the White House.

Obama's decision to leave Trinity is thus deeply political, so deeply political that its public expediency trumps any personal or spiritual considerations. Not that there are no personal or spiritual considerations, but the argument that they are somehow paramount is kinda like arguing the significance of one's flashlight in the flood of a glaring spot light. Yet I do not believe this to be a bad thing. It's probably the most righteous politically expedient thing I've ever seen done.

Free Association: Janet Jackson, High School, Coincidence, Theology & Friendship

2008-05-30T10:59:00.023-04:00

I heard from a friend today
And she said you were in town
Suddenly the memories
Came back to me in my mind...
-Janet Jackson, "Again"

I've been on a real Janet Jackson fetish this week. I watched Poetic Justice late Monday night, and I've been intoxicated sense. Watching old and new videos on YouTube. Remembering my gratitude for her help in puberty. Lamenting her obvious shift in trajectory from Rhythm Nation to The Velvet Rope. Wondering about the trauma that might have precipitated such a dramatic detour.

How can I be strong I've asked myself
Time and time I've said
That I'll never fall in love with you again

My love affair with Janet was primarily middle and high school. So it only stands to reason that last night I should stumble into someone else online whom I've loved deeply since then. It's amazing how such coincidences occur.

This person too was instrumental in my emergence from childhood. She was one of my campus mothers/big sisters in high school. Campus kinship was tremendously important to my intensely relational personality, being away from home at such a formative time in life.

Well, life has led us down similar yet incongruent paths (to draw upon a HS algebra expression). We both live lives on terms other than those we were raised to define as "right". The difference is that she still affirms intellectually the rightness of the SDA message; I do not. More accurately, I no longer view "rightness" as a thing to be pursued.

A wounded heart you gave,
My soul you took away
Good intentions you had many,
I know you did

A conversation with this friend about 5 years ago at my buddies' ordination (curiously enough, back on our old HS campus) was one of the impeti that propelled me toward the Emergent conversation. One of the questions I was asking at the time was "What keeps people so intellectually loyal to a religious system that isn't compelling enough to keep them committed to the actual practice of it?" Such pseudo-fidelity is puzzling to me.

I come from a place that hurts,
and God knows how I've cried
And I never want to return
Never fall again

So she and I spoke last night...

So here we are alone again,
Didn't think it'd come to this

...and because the conversation natural went this direction, I was quite honest about all the theological questioning she had stirred in me (probably to a fault). I shared that since our conversation I had deconstructed much of what we had been raised to believe...

I've come too close to happiness,
To have it swept away

...(not that Adventism isn't a valid path, but it surely isn't the last or definitive word on things). I shared furthermore that I do not believe that her choices to live contrary to her stated doctrinal beliefs are solely indicative of some great moral deficit in her, though she freely expresses such self-indictment. She responded to me like I were the anti-Christ.

Don't think I could take the pain
Never fall again

Well, as fate might have it, this morning I awoke to an e-mail that linked me to this post by Peter Rollins which articulates so well what I was feeling last night:

People who label themselves as ‘backsliders’ [are of particular concern to me]. Here the individual, whether they have left the church or not, are still under the sway of that evangelical [or fundamentalist] worldview and thus any positive step forward is still thought of negatively.
The choice to leave is made within the confines of the evangelical system itself and is thus understood within that system. In this way the explicit rejection of it is implicitly an affirmation of it (I reject it not because it is wrong but because I am wrong). The result is that the majority of people who see themselves as ‘backsliders’ will either return to the group they left or continue to define themselves in opposition to it.

The real choice to be made is thus not between staying or going from a particular church. Rather it is a meta-choice concerning whether I continue to interact with the linguistic system that sustains the church or step into an unknown space outside that linguistic system.

I wish I knew what I might say that would free my friend from believing that it's just her...

Kinda late in the game
And my heart is in your hands

...and open her eyes to the fact that the sheer number of people like her (myself included) who wind up in the same place for very different reasons would suggest that its not just total depravity creating the disconnect. But Adventism does its denominationalism work well (the passing on of language, culture and judgement). I've found that even for former Adventists, some who even consider themselves atheist, its a struggle to comprehend or articulate the world in terms other than those given them by their fundamentalist upbringing. What a horrendous prison?

Don't you stand there and then tell me
You love me
Then leave again

This singular reality would foster great resentment in me, absent the grace and forgiveness I've learned in the way of Jesus. But with it, I think I'm okay, and hopefully resurrected enough to be a good friend.

'Cause I'm falling in love with you again

Love It!

2008-05-28T16:41:00.009-04:00

5-y-o Voted Out of His Class

2008-05-28T16:22:00.005-04:00

What is this Kindergarten Survivor? I have no way of making sense of this, except to say this reinforces Leslie and my choice to home-school our children. We want to instill in them what they need so that they would never participate in something like this, and by God's grace, one day know courage enough to stand against it.

What to Do About a Changing World

2008-05-15T10:50:00.004-04:00

Hey, Democrats never claimed to be the party of Lincoln...

He's the man who puts conservationism back in conservatism...

Finally an Honest Billionaire

2008-05-13T18:44:00.007-04:00

I've been told more times than I can count that reason I feel the way I do about money made through capitalism is because I have none. I finally found someone with plenty of money, George Soros, who admits that there is no such thing as self-correcting capital markets. Rather capital markets are always externally managed to some degree. Corporations and other "free"-market fundamentalists don't like to admit this because they want to perpetuate the myth that markets are inherently and inerrant-ly self-regulating, so that those on top can work to keep themselves on top (e.g. public policy, lobbying, externalizing costs, off-shoring, tax evasion, exploitation, usurping the labor pool) without fear of exposure.

Soros was interviewed today on PBS's the NewsHour with Jim Lerher. I've got to read his book.

The Non-Attack!

2008-05-11T19:33:00.003-04:00

"Hamaus, Foreign Policy, Inexperience, George Bush's 3rd Term, Iraq, Age--all of it on the table--in one exchange!"
-Tim Russert, Meet the Press

If Obama remains true to the high road that is 3 weeks from bringing him the nomination, dyed-in-the wool Republicans will only be left with having to manufacture scandal against him. We got a taste this past week of the non-Attack accusations that are likely to be levied in the general election this fall (yes, I'm feeling hopeful again, possibly for no good reason)...

How Deep the Hole

2008-05-11T13:47:00.002-04:00

The code continues and the algebra evolves: 'real Americans' now becomes 'working Americans = hard working Americans = white Americans'.

How is 'working Americans = hard working Americans = white Americans' less alienating than 'the bitter comment'?

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

2008-05-11T08:21:00.018-04:00

Watch first this NewsHour segment regarding the Presidential Campaign since the Indiana and North Carolina primaries on last Tuesday (up to 6:17).

Now analyze that in the light of this NewsHour segment regarding the reporting of race in this race.

I think the Clintons are brilliant and have understood how to exploit these dynamics long before and far better than many. This is why my biggest contention with Hillary ("since the very beginning") has been that she scares me--particularly her commitment to political expediency.

*I have no desire to perpetuate negativity. This is satire. If any of it comes off as just mean, tell me why and I'll take it down.

If a Candidate Said This...

2008-05-05T15:41:00.003-04:00

If a candidate said this, would s/he be castigated for elitism and racism? If so, by whom?

The Whims of a Highly Partisan Supreme Court

2008-05-05T15:26:00.004-04:00

I found this editorial by Cynthia Tucker highly representative of my thinking about the issue of requiring voter IDs. I just hate having conservatives claim the laws address voter fraud when it is clear they do no such thing, and those same conservatives are unwilling to address absentee voting which has been empirically linked to fraud.

The Bush-McCain Challenge

2008-05-05T12:14:00.007-04:00

I get these e-mail updates from MoveOn.org periodically. I don't really know how I got on their mailing list, but I haven't bothered to undo it yet. Although they can be over the top at times, they're no worse than any other political action org. I agree with many of their policy positions, although often I arrive there for quite different reasons.

This is what their most recent e-mail said:

We've been trying to come up with some ways to make it clear to everyone just how similar McCain is to Bush.

So we did some research and built a new online game called "The Bush-McCain Challenge." Kind of like the Pepsi Challenge, if you remember that.

Thing is, it's way harder to tell them apart than we thought.

Can you test it out here, and tell us if you think it's too hard?

I failed. Perhaps you would do better. Check it out.

Just Mad!

2008-05-05T09:00:00.005-04:00

As I watched Barak Obama on Meet the Press yesterday, I was just mad. Yet I couldn't tell who to be mad with. Is it Obama's own intuitions that compel him to step further and further away from the prophetic tradition of the church—embodied in the untimely protests of Rev. Jeremiah Wright—or is it the dominant culture (of all races) demanding this kind of political expediency from him in an effort to maintain their delusions of blamlessness?

I don't know. What I do know is that the net result is to establish a public square in which no critique of America is ever considered, whether just or not. Such a mindset is just mad within a democracy.

Twisting "God Bless Us" by Christopher Beam

2008-05-02T10:01:00.003-04:00

This was posted on Slate.com this morning [the bracketed statements are my commentary]...

On today’s “state of the race” conference call, a reporter asked about an exchange between Hillary Clinton and Bill O’Reilly on yesterday’s show in which Clinton uttered the words, “Rich people—God bless us.”

Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson denied that’s what she said: “She said ‘God blessed us.’ B-L-E-S-S-E-D.”

That may be what she meant. But it’s definitely not what she said. I just watched the video again with headphones and cranked the volume way up. Not a trace of plosive after the sibilant.

Here's the full context, as described by the Huffington Post:

[O’Reilly said,] “I'm not middle class, I'm a rich guy.” Clinton responded (in an awkward moment), “Rich people, God bless us. We deserve all the opportunities to make sure our country and our blessings continue until the next generation.”

This is not controversial. People know Clinton is rich. It's common for [some] Christians to believe that wealthy people are blessed by God. And the phrase "God bless us" used in this context doesn't mean she's demanding that God smile upon the rich [(that's what the follow-up sentence was for)]; it's clearly a lead-in to her point that wealthy people don't need all their money. Don’t get me wrong—it will make a great clip for the next MoveOn.org ad. But in context, it's a reasonable statement.

So why lie about it?

The Vicissitudes of Agreement

2008-05-02T09:45:00.004-04:00

Although the results aren't outside of realm of the expected, someone please help me understand: When did 618 people become a representative sampling of anyone but themselves? What intentionality do you imagine was given to making sure a multiplicity of demographics were represented?

The Democratic Race in 7 Minutes

2008-05-02T09:28:00.010-04:00

Thanks to Pat Hannon for sending me this. It's amazingly thorough. The only line I don't get is "Obama gets pissy." I have no recollection of such an event. ;-)

More seriously I hate all the unnecessarily negative characterizations: "hillary cackles," donnie mcclurkin as "homophobic," "latinos don't like Obama," even "hillary is a monster." Though some may ring true, they are not helpful public discourse.

If we could do it in 7 minutes, why does it feel like an eternity?

Resurrection: Writing New Stories

2008-05-01T11:47:00.007-04:00

I manage to write my first 750-word anything (well actually a thousand words when you add in the quote from Debbie Blue, but who's counting) and GP decides to post it in 2 parts—such is life...

As did McLaren, I too recently read the conversation between N. T. Wright and Bart Ehrman, hosted by Beliefnet.com. I must admit my incredible bias upfront. I came to this assignment with a deep appreciation for Tom Wright and embarrassingly was quite ignorant of Bart Ehrman. Wright had given me the language and academic credibility for a narrative theology at which I had arrived serendipitously. Furthermore, I had long appreciated Wright's scholarship for challenging the Christian tradition to reckon with the contextual realities that shape biblical claims. Although my faith may require less now in terms of traditional apologetic constructions to substantiate it, I am grateful for Wright's insistence that Christians strive for intellectual honesty when interpreting scripture.

So I freely admit that I brought this bias to my reading, but was immediately captivated by Ehrman's story. It was the best thing he could have done for me. While a fan and student of the quality of thinking that Wright epitomizes, I adamantly believe that everyone has the right to tell his/her own story.

Ehrman's concern for the pain of others, sounding very Jesus-like, completely resonated with me over the course of the first 3 postings. But then Wright's comments took a turn that was seemingly unexpected for Ehrman. Wright introduced Resurrection as God's unprecedented response to suffering that, in a linear sense, infuses the pain of suffering with a promise that heretofore had not existed. Wright's insistence as to the significance of resurrection is not landmark within the Christianity, but his understanding of resurrection is somewhat different from what has come to be viewed as traditional. From that point on, Wright's conversation took a trajectory that embraced the legitimacy of suffering but asserted that it was not the end of the story. Ehrman, however, continued to make his case against the church's traditional and, for Ehrman, insufficient or contradictory explanations of suffering. It seemed as if he could not hear Wright's disassociation from penal-substitution as the only way to tell the story of God at work in the world.

There is a quite subtle form of intellectual dishonesty that dismisses others concerns and insists on making parallel presentations that are not open to conversational refinement. I did not get the sense that this was what Ehrman was doing. Rather Ehrman seemed so use to hearing the language Wright uses (the basic claims of Christianity) aligned in such a way as to bracket out any possibilities except the party line, that he did not appear to recognize that it was not happening quite that way this time.

My heart ached for the experiences Ehrman must have suffered that make his expectations and response ever so reasonable. I wonder how many others have grown accustomed to having their concerns bracketed out of the Christian conversation.

Read more on God's Politics blog>>> Part 1 (comments), Part 2

Back on Message

2008-04-30T23:06:00.003-04:00

Elitist Persecution

2008-04-29T16:02:00.003-04:00

The Cost of Better

2008-04-24T08:51:00.010-04:00

I don't care if it's a double standard. When Obama chooses to engage Clinton on her native 'slash-n-burn' turf, it may always hurt him more than it helps. I'm glad for it. The double standard may be rooted in historic fear-based caricatures of the ever threatening black male. I don't care. I don't want a black President at any cost. I want a BETTER President.

That's the primary reason why I've supported Obama: he captures my imagination and makes me believe better is possible even in national and global politics. If he now chooses to believe his high-priced political consultants when they tell him that negativity is the only way to combat negativity and to show he's tough enough, SHAME ON HIM.

Here are a couple insightful critiques to that affect:
"The Low Road to Victory," NY Times
"How Obama Fell to Earth," NY Times

Speaking in Code: Is It a Lie If You Really Believe It?

2008-04-23T23:55:00.021-04:00

After 6 weeks of such blatant fear-baiting that it successfully reversed the momentum that had reduced the Clinton's 25 point lead in PA to just 5 points, I am aghast at how many intelligent people have convinced themselves that race had little to do with the PA Primary results, but rather that voters' were compelled to support someone who "real Americans" can identify with.

Does anyone else hear the irony here?

"Real Americans" is code for our inability to talk about race. C'mon, the 'melting pot' that is Obama more adequately identifies with more people from more backgrounds than any other candidate in history! He's a white/black, immigrant/native, have/have not, educated/down-to-earth, basketball-playing/pleasure-bowling, Muslim-named/Christian-faith-having, church going/intellectually-honest, community organizing, college professor turned public servant—who's benefited from every opportunity America has to offer, yet knows what it is to be marginalized. Who has ever embodied more of the complexities and dichotomies of what it is to be American? If race isn't the significant factor affecting "real Americans" ability to "identify" with Obama, what is it that alienates him from them that isn't also a part of either of the other candidates' narratives?

(Forgive my infatuation with the phrase "real Americans." After my "Imus/VA Tech" piece on GP, I was told by a commenter that, since and I were elitest kindred, I needed to join him on a long odyssey to discover how "real Americans" live. That is only a small step shy of what I use to hear from "real American" schoolmates: that if I wanted to "complain" about justice in America, I should "go back to Africa.")

Don't get me wrong. It's not that race is the only fear that has been exploited or happens to be the only difference some voters see between themselves and Obama. But race is a reasonable proxy for discussing other religious, cultural, educational and socio-economic differences in our American experience because it's so inextricably intertwined with most of these other 'concerns.' As such, race is far from being the trivial card game it is insidiously portrayed as. It is the thing America can't get past because "real Americans" struggle to admit its pervasiveness, its complexity and its impact on their thinking. But we can't ignore it; we know it's something: so we speak in code.

Michelle Martin of NPR's Tell Me More spent much of her Wednesday show (4/23) on the nexus of race in the media coverage of the political campaign. Do you hear what I hear?

Tell Me More Segments:
Clinton Takes Pennsylvania Primary
Pennsylvania Voters React
Media Experts Discuss Race Conversation

The Death of Political Hope

2008-04-23T15:16:00.013-04:00

I hope I'm wrong, but I think the 2008 PA Primary marks the beginning of the end for the Obama campaign. David Brooks said it well on the News Hour last night: it's hard to be a "tough hope miester." I guess it's just as well that Google never put his name in their spellchecker.

I call it the end because the polls and pundits testify that the establishment has succeed in its two primary objectives (pun intended):

Just enough Blacks have been convinced that it is somehow racial—and thus wrong—to vote for Obama in part out of racial solidarity. Thus, they vote against him, but seldom because of his politics.
Just enough whites have been convinced that they shouldn't vote for him because of some fictitious, nebulous lack of solidarity on his part with "real Americans."

It's a political K.O. combination. And as soon as the polls seemed to show it, the pundits begin to tout it relentlessly. "Obama has a hard row to hoe." "More of Hillary's supporters now say they will not vote for Barak in a general election, than Barak supporters say they won't vote for Hillary." I literally lost count of how of how many times it was surmised on CNN with such visibly sincere regret that it would be 'nearly impossible for Barak to win the general election without the support of the average, white, lunch-bucket voter'—as if, based on the reportedly 2100 Pennsylvanians polled, it were a foregone conclusion that Obama had lost majority white support everywhere and that blacks don't carry lunch-buckets.

(Need we talk about media's ability to shape public opinion. We even use qualifiers anymore, like "90% of the few blacks polled said they voted for Obama," to talk about our supposedly scientific sampling of people. If only 2000 people are sampled how many represent which demographic in order to be an adequate composite sampling of an entire state? I was flabbergasted by the number of times I heard "white" coupled with "won't" last night. It felt like all the language became us-versus-them.)

The way this has played out reminds me of the way voting districts in the South were redrawn after Reconstruction, after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and then again in the 1990s. I remember reading as a student about gerrymandering. Blacks went from having no rights of citizenship prior to the Civil War (1863) to having voting districts drawn in such a way that it minimized the political influence of people of color throughout the period of Jim Crow ( roughly 1865-1965). "After the Voting Rights Act, racial gerrymandering was ironically 'flipped around' to create 'majority-minority' districts. Using this practice, also called 'affirmative gerrymandering,' these districts were created with the stated purpose of redressing previous discrimination to ensure higher ethnic minority representation in government." In the 1990s, this remediation was struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court (right after the 'conservative revolution'). Yet, to the best of my knowledge, the rulings didn't posit a required remedy. It didn't require that lawmakers take maps of their states and cut them grid-like into equal size districts as a way to not favor any particular group. And I remember thinking:

If it is somehow wrong to construct voting districts along racial lines, it has to be just as perilous to deconstruct them for racial reasons as well. How do you determine which districts to redraw? How do you stop predominately white legislative bodies from redrawing every predominately colored district (just because it happens to be a district predominately of people of color)?

Thus, the Supreme Court ruled that the historically privileged could remain so.

I feel the same about the way the Establishment of both parties have come after Obama. Instead of offering intelligent critique of Barak Obama's policies, positions or politics, they have chosen instead to criticize his experience for being different from "real Americans." And a just enough people have bought it and decided to let the historically privileged remain so.

You Call That a Debate?

2008-04-18T09:54:00.007-04:00

The so-called Pennsylvania 'Debate' hosted by ABC's George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson the other evening was so absurd that I almost didn't post on it (PBS's NewsHour summarized it well). Are these the prestigious interpretors of politics and culture for us? God help us!

I take less exception that they inquired about all the tabloid issues than I do with the fact that they didn't ask any question that would have gotten at any more than what we've already heard rehearsed over and over by the media ad nauseam. Will the real journalists among us please stand up?

As John Stewart points out, 60+ minutes in, at question #16, they finally got around to what they described as "the number one issue on voters' minds!" You can't make up absurdity this good.

Class & Racism (Not Race) Harms Our Health

2008-04-17T17:43:00.008-04:00

I found this amazingly interesting. It's a radio interview on NPR's Tell Me More. A new documentary series Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick asks why minorities suffer disproportionately from many health problems. The film's producers discuss new research that suggests the mental stress of racism and poverty can take a direct toll on physical health.

The 7-part documentary will generally air Thursday nights. Check local listings for exact times.

Stephen Colbert on the PA Brouhaha

2008-04-16T22:18:00.002-04:00

Colbert is a satirical genius...

Don Imus and VA Tech—A Year Later

2008-04-15T14:39:00.005-04:00

This is a re-write of some thoughts I posted a year ago after the VA Tech tragedy. It's a tough one, because it asks us to identify with those we viscerally (an perhaps rightfully) despise. But isn't that the message of Jesus on the Mount...

It was only a short year ago that "shock jock" Don Imus chose to refer to the accomplished women playing in the NCAA Basketball Finals as "nappy-headed hoes," later billing the match-up for his listeners as the "jiggaboos" versus the "wannabes." Imus' disrespect came as little surprise. He had a long history of slur and slander against Blacks, Africans, Asians, Latinos, Jews, Arabs, women, homosexuals, the poor, and just about anyone he considered unlike himself. And he had been paid handsomely to be so. The absurd brevity of his time spent off the air is perhaps only surpassed by the financial profitability of his return.

But the story that a middle-aged white man of means in the U.S. showed himself to be (or made his living as a) racist and sexist is not news to me. He is not the first, nor will he be the last. Not that what he did was not news-worthy, but his misogynistic or otherwise bigoted views seemed almost beside the point to me.

The thing that captured my attention regarding the Imus coverage the first half of April 2007 was the power dynamic. You see, power matters, and Imus had plenty of it, which he used unrepentantly to pummel with impunity the dispossessed, disenfranchised, or otherwise already marginalized. Don Imus, who is now with ABC, at the time had a nationally syndicated CBS radio show that was simulcast on MSNBC (how much money was he making?), which NPR reporter David Folkenflik further characterized as attracting "an educated, affluent audience." Most interesting to me, again, was not that this was the case; however, I was floored by the sheer number of "educated, affluent" folks who unreservedly championed Imus' "right" to do what he had been doing. It was as if the unapologetically privileged got together and declared, "How dare you have a problem with us continuing to exercise our privilege at your expense? This is the way it's supposed to be. Haven't you gotten the repeated memos?"

They said it was a First Amendment issue, to which my only response can be: Neither hate, discrimination, nor any other form of exclusionary practice or language is a First Amendment issue. Freedom of speech does not guarantee one the right to be heard. Hate does not deserve a publicly facilitated audience (e.g. radio and television air waves), and those who resource it privately deserve whatever nonviolent (particularly financial) backlash they get.

Then came the story of Seung Hui Cho. The Western world cried out in horror at the massacre Cho perpetrated on VA Tech's campus—"the single largest act of recorded handgun violence on U.S. soil in American history" (the qualifiers "recorded handgun violence" and "on U.S. soil" are important because they help to conceal our selective recollection and shocking history of violence, particularly that which has involved what we would call "state-sponsored terrorism" if it were directed at us from the outside).

And we wept. And so should we weep again in the upcoming weeks, but not just for Cho's victims. We should weep for Cho and others like him, who are victims as well ... of the Imuses of the world.

Complete the post at God's Politics blog>>>

John Stewart on the PA Brouhaha

2008-04-15T09:40:00.004-04:00

Thank you, thank you, John...

he was on a roll...

Daddy's Rules for Dating His Daughter

2008-04-14T16:08:00.003-04:00

I post these here for archival purposes until such time that I need them. My daughter's (who are currently 5 & 3) will begin to memorize them at age 12, so that when they are 16 and able to date they will be able to give potential suitors better than fair warning. I will also begin indoctrinating my son at age 12 on behalf of the parents he will ask to entrust their daughters to him...

Rule One
If you pull into my driveway and honk you'd better be delivering a package, because you're sure not picking anything up.

Rule Two
You do not touch my daughter in front of me. You may glance at her, so long as you do not peer at anything below her neck. If you cannot keep your eyes or hands off of my daughter's body, I will remove them.

Rule Three
I am aware that it was at one time considered fashionable for boys of your age to wear their trousers so loosely that they appeared to be falling off their hips. Please don't take this as an insult, but if you buy into this, you and all of your friends are complete idiots. Still, I want to be fair and open minded about this issue, so I propose this compromise: You may come to the door with your underwear showing and your pants ten sizes too big, and I will not object. However, in order to ensure that your clothes do not, in fact come off during the course of your date with my daughter, I will take my electric nail gun and fasten your trousers securely in place to your waist.

Rule Four
I'm sure you've been told that in today's world, sex without utilizing a "barrier method" of some kind can kill you. Allow me to interpolate. When it comes to sex and my daughter, I am the barrier, and I will kill you.

Rule Five
It is usually assumed that in order for us to get to know each other, we should talk about sports, politics, and other issues of the day. Please do not do this. The only information I require from you is an indication of when you expect to have my daughter safely back at my house, and the only word I need from you on this subject is: "early."

Rule Six
Once you have gone out with my little girl, you will continue to date no one but her until she is finished with you. If you make her cry, I will make you cry.

Rule Seven
As you stand in my front hallway, waiting for my daughter to appear, and more than an hour goes by, do not sigh and fidget. If you want to be on time for the movie, you should not be dating. Instead of just standing there, why don't you do something useful, like changing the oil in my car?

Rule Eight
The following places are not appropriate for a date with my daughter:
Places where there are beds, sofas, or anything softer than a wooden stool. Places where there is darkness. Places where there is dancing, holding hands, or happiness. Places where the ambient temperature is warm enough to induce my daughter to wear shorts, tank tops, midriff T-shirts, or anything other than overalls, a sweater, and a goose down parka - zipped up to her throat. Movies with a strong romantic or sexual themes are to be avoided; movies which feature chain saws are okay. Hockey games are okay. Old folks homes are better.

Rule Nine
Do not lie to me. I may appear to be a potbellied, balding, middle-aged, dimwitted has-been. But on issues relating to my daughter, I am the all-knowing, merciless god of your universe. If I ask you where you are going and with whom, you have one chance to tell me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I have a shotgun, a shovel, and five acres behind the house. Do not trifle with me.

Rule Ten
Be afraid. Be very afraid. It takes very little for me to mistake the sound of your car in the driveway for a chopper coming in over a rice paddy near Hanoi. (Although I've never been to Vietnam, I've watched enough war moves to be adequately traumatized.) The voices in my head frequently tell me to clean the guns as I wait for you to bring my daughter home. The camouflaged face at the window is mine.

As soon as you pull into the driveway you should exit the car with both hands in plain sight. Speak the perimeter password, announce in a clear voice that you have brought my daughter home safely and early, then return to your car. There is no need for you to come inside. And by the way, no one you know scares me.

SNL on Petraeus

2008-04-13T13:47:00.005-04:00

I thought this was hilarious. Everyone was fair game.

Do We Disdain Candor That Much?

2008-04-13T10:49:00.017-04:00

Every time Obama or someone from his campaign makes a candid statement, the Democratic and Republican establishment reacts by saying, "How dare he/she say that? This proves Obama's completely out of touch and a horrible candidate!" From Michelle's expression of new found pride, to Samantha's characterization of Hillary's monstrous political tactics, to Jeremiah's justifiable critique of America, to now Obama's analyses of race and cultural ideology, the establishment's consensus from both sides of the aisle is the same: "He's not fit!"

The most recent brouhaha is over the following comment recorded by telephone at a fundraiser in San Francisco and cited in this Huffington Post article:

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said. "And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

I understand that as a political strategy it's expedient, but I wish for once a politician wouldn't backtrack for fear of being further misconstrued. Neo-cons dig in for ideological reasons in the face of overwhelming empirical evidence to the contrary of the position they are taking. Why should Obama, a college professor as well as community organizer, not be allowed to publicly assess and validate the cultural antagonisms that have had America in conflict with itself and others for the past 15 years? He didn't say cultural conservatives have no right to be. He totally legitmated the right to be culturally conservative, while honestly disagreeing with political positions conservatism compels adherents to take. Isn't that refreshing? Isn't that what we want from politicians, or would we rather they pander for fear of the political cost? One may disagree with his position or his particular choice of words, "bitter" and "cling," yet mitigation only grows out of respectful, generative public exchange of authentically expressed views.

Perhaps more importantly, we, the people, in order to form a more perfect union, have to allow those who would lead to express themselves candidly without worry for how opponents can turn statements into political fodder. If we want to be outraged, should it not be at the political and cultural interpreters of society (journalists and pundits) who obscure the substance of public discourse and spotlight the sensational?

Kudos to Chris Matthews who chose not to fan the flames of this beside-the-point non-story this morning.

*Update: Matthews too fell victim to the sensationalism.

Are You a Real American?

2008-03-29T11:50:00.014-04:00

I found this on Andy Hansen's blog. I love his work with comic strips. He often adapts them. This one he didn't have to.

(click strip to enlarge)

~From Non Sequitur, by Wiley

What to Do with All this Science

2008-03-29T11:12:00.005-04:00

A co-contributor to the Reinventing the Adventist Wheel blog, Andy Hansen, posted what I find to be a most beautiful and incisive poem in response to a recently published article about evolution on Adventist Today, entitled "Debate: Can You Be an Adventist and an Evolutionist?" Two schools of thought square off in the article: Cliff Goldstein, editor of the Adult Bible Study Guide for the SDA Church (pictured below) presents the traditional Adventist view, and Erv Taylor, professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of California, Riverside, presents a progressive view.

What was great about Andy's way in was that it reminded me of all I was taught growing up...

Cliff and Erv,

Religion is a lot more complicated than it used to be when I was growing up
The earth was 6000 years old then and that was that
Dinosaur remains were just collections of mixed up animal bones
The geologic column wasn't discussed and no one at church or school or
In my neighborhood asked questions about who Cain married
And how Noah got all those animals in the ark not counting insects
Shells on mountaintops were evidence of a worldwide flood
That covered everything including Mr. Everest

But now there's Plate Tectonics and geophysics
And we know dinosaurs were real and maybe a comet crash
Or volcanic ash or a shift in the earth's crust did them in
And then there's the vegetation in the stomachs of mammoths
Quick-frozen in the Arctic that's so fresh it's edible
It's hard to believe that a pair of platypuses got to Australia from Ararat
And it sure looks like things died long before Adam sinned

Finish the poem at RTAW>>>

Hillary's Money Woes

2008-03-24T19:47:00.002-04:00

"When someone shows you who they are, believe them."
~Maya Angelou

I don't believe in holding people hostage to their short-comings. Still I've learned that if the same thing keeps coming back up, over and over, in a person's life it is usually because the person is courting it in some way, shape or form. This is true of things good or bad and may at times have more to do with the way a system works than it does with a person's intentions.

Sometimes this is a indicting realization. Some realizations are moments of relief. I've experienced both. No matter tenure, realization can be quite the challenge.

Hillary Clinton's challenges appear to be with money. From White Water to her current reluctance to be release with her income and campaign finance records, forthrightness with her financial dealings does not appear to be Sen. Clinton's strong suit. Yet she remains incredibly adept at diverting attention from the fact.

The following is a 13-minute trail for the documentary Hillary! Uncensored, recently released by US Justice Foundation as a part of its Hillary Clinton Accountability Project. It documents what, if true, is the largest campaign finance fraud in US history. To learn more, visit http://www.hillcap.org. Is it a just representation of the facts? You be the judge.

2008-03-19T09:29:00.011-04:00

Last night's The Daily Show with John Stewart had the best treatment of the Obama speech on race and politics that I heard all day:

He followed that up with an attempt at adulthood:

Colbert also got in on the act:

Then this morning I found this post and this write up on Colbert's interview with Samantha Powers of "Hillary is a monster!" fame.

And major media outlets wonder why a large portion of Americans get their news from these guys. At least they admit their biases upfront--InDecision 2008, Something Approximating Election News with Something Approximating Honesty.

I also found this and figured here was as good a place as any to drop it in:

Exorcising Our Demons

2008-03-18T14:10:00.006-04:00

This is a Home-Training essay...

If properly understood, Senator Barak Obama's remarks today at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, PA, constitute one of the most significant and honest public addresses ever made on America's 400-year struggle with race. Had we heeded DuBois' 1903 prophetic warning, The Souls of Black Folks, it would have found voice in the 20th century. There is a conversation America has, literally in some cases, been dying to have. That conversation is not in favor of any particular presidential candidate. Please don't relegate and dismiss it on those grounds. However, it is unlikely that we would be so inescapably confronted with such issues outside of a person of color experiencing some measure of success in a bid for the highest elected office in the land.

In her God's Politics post, "Putting Rev. Wright's Preaching in Perspective," Diana Butler Bass implored us to listen better to one another. Now let me suggest something to listen for. The thought is simple, but the lesson is not: Not everyone has experienced America in the same way. And we must lay down the self-absorption that makes us think this doesn't matter, if we are ever to begin to appreciate each other.

Permit a timely example. If you are not Black, you may not know that the Black church is the theatre in which Blacks have historically exorcised their demons—with the pastor as both theologue and thespian embodying the collective process of redemption for his/her people every week. Initially, church was the one place we could go that we weren't under massa's whip, which is why we relish it. Eventually, it became the center and sustainer of our community. So most of us understand Rev. Jeremiah Wright in a way that may escape others.

Church equaled life for us. Where else could we go to exorcise the demons of injustice and intransigence? Where else could we go to exorcise the marginalization and invalidation, the defeat and depression, the struggle and scorn? Where else could we go when our children asked—as my daughter did while coloring just the other day—if Jesus were brown or white? My answer was that he was born to Jewish parents, people of color, whom we usually refer to as olive-skinned. And her heartrending response at 5-years-old was: Why can't he be white? In all the pictures, he's white! Where else could we give cathartic voice to our inner demons in hopes of being transformed like the phoenix into "the better angels of our nature?"

Continue reading on God's Politics blog>>> Part 1 & Part 2

“A More Perfect Union”

2008-03-18T13:23:00.014-04:00

Did you hear Obama's speech today?!!!

If properly understood, it should go down as one of the greatest speeches of the early 21st century and, if we had heeded DuBois prophetic warning, should have found voice in the 20th century.

This is the New Politics, and it is as noble as we've dared to dream! (Sorry to disappoint George Will.)

The fact that some have dutifully taken up their roles as cynic is just sad for them. I pray we don't allow them to rule the day.

Here's the video:

And for those who cherish the written word here's the full transcript:

“A More Perfect Union"
Remarks of Senator Barack Obama
Constitution Center
Tuesday, March 18th, 2008
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
(full manuscript, as prepared for delivery)

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way.

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

CONTINUE READING "A More Perfect Union">>>

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

Why Georgia?

2008-03-14T20:34:00.003-04:00

...as it relates to artistic sympathy, john mayer is my metaphysical twin.

MLK and Identity Politics

2008-03-13T11:15:00.006-04:00

I originally shared these thoughts at an early morning prayer breakfast in Marian, Indiana, on MLK Day this past January. I had been invited to Marian by my good friend Pat Hannon who is Asst. Dean of Chapel at Indiana Wesleyan University. Later that same morning I shared a story with the students of IWU and had the pleasure of getting to know several of them as we participated in the festivities of the rest of the day. The following is my inaugural post on the God's Politic's blog:

The 40th anniversary of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination - April 4, 1968 - will soon be upon us. As I remember Dr. King against the backdrop of this 2008 presidential election cycle, I reflect on what a brilliant political strategist he was. He was able to bring corporations to the point of acquiescence without resorting to violence or bribery. He was able to pass legislation that changed the daily lives of not only blacks but also women, people of faith, and immigrants - without ever being elected to public office or attempting to buy political influence. He was able to garner and leverage the attention of the entire international community on behalf of America's poor, marginalized, and disenfranchised - without ever being appointed to an ambassadorship or other high-profile international post. He was able to remind U.S. citizens what a democracy was and to engender a sense of moral responsibility that, more than 40 years later, challenges us to be the good we want to see in the world. King was a political genius.

With a vision this grand, one would think that the lion's share of King's work would have been on the national and international stage, yet somehow King expected to bring all this about by local, contextual, direct action: organizing to gain political access and self-determination for Blacks, advocating on behalf of unemployed Appalachian whites, striking with sanitation workers. I believe his ability to accomplish each of these things was predicated on a very simple, but profound realization: All politics are identity politics. The question is: whom does one choose to identify with?

Complete the article on the God's Politic's blog>>>

Geraldine Ferraro

2008-03-13T09:19:00.018-04:00

Yesterday Geraldine Ferraro stepped down from her official post on the finance committee of the Hillary Clinton campaign for the presidency. I'm glad. I've been wondering how many times the surrogates of the Clinton campaign were going to get a pass on behavior like this.

Ferraro still hasn't come to terms with the fact that her comments were racist--not because she is prejudiced in any way (her record clearly suggests otherwise), but because of who she is (the same reason Hillary invited her to fund raise). Because of who she is, Geraldine Ferraro's words, despising Obama's being black, have the power to negatively and indiscriminately impact Obama's professional aspirations solely for racial reasons: that makes her words racist.

Racism isn't just a synonym for bigotry or prejudice. Racism connotes the unjust power that privilege has to inconvenience the lives of others by virtue of their race, ethnicity or national origin. Bigotry and prejudice are basically how one feels toward another. This is an important distinction. This is why we can speak of racism as being structural and systemic. It is also why we pass laws to limit people's ability to do this sort of thing, at least overtly.

I use to think one could be a bigot without being racist, yet not a racist without first being a bigot. Ferraro's comments--or perhaps the preponderance of inane such assaults coming from the Clinton camp--mark the first time I've consciously noted that one who is not prejudiced can do just as much racist damage as one who is.

Race is undoubtedly a part of who Barak Obama is, but it can't be used to belittle or even critique him--any more than Hillary Clinton's gender can justly be used against her. That's crossing the line.

*After being informed by Keith Olbermann of Ms. Ferraro's history of making such statements, I must reserve the right to alter the temperance of my views regarding her intent. Watch Olbermann's courageous response to Sen. Clinton's tepid reaction to Ms. Ferraro.

A Broader Audience

2008-03-10T09:16:00.012-04:00

I'm so excited! I've been invited to contribute a chapter to the February 2009 release The Emergent Manifesto of Justice, the sequel to the Emergent Manifesto of Hope (shown right).

In addition I've been asked to be an ongoing contributor to the God's Politics blog, a joint effort by Sojourners and Belief.net, which opens up the ooccasional chance that something I submit can maybe possibly catch the attention of Sojourners magazine. (Here's an interview with Jim Wallis, author of the book God's Politics and CEO of Sojourners, on The Daily Show with John Stewart, my third favorite news source behind NPR and PBS.)

The door has even been opened for me to facilitate a diversity of artistic contribution to an ongoing creative writing column. We'll see what comes of it.

This could be the start of something big...

Enneagram Profile

2008-03-10T08:38:00.013-04:00

I took my first Enneagram test. These were the results. I'm a social 8 with 7 in the wing, with an almost matching level of tendency toward 2, which is supposedly the direction of integration and growth for me. Leslie seems to think they are accurate (I had her critique my answers to the questions before I submitted them). It's good to see I have grown a little over the years (better able to express my 2 tendencies).

Enneagram Test Results

Type 1	Perfectionism: The Reformer	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	38%
Type 2	Helpfulness: The Helper	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	78%
Type 3	Image Focus: The Achiever	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	58%
Type 4	Hypersensitivity: The Individualist	\|\|\|\|	14%
Type 5	Detachment: The Investigator	\|\|\|\|\|\|	30%
Type 6	Anxiety: The Loyalist	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	42%
Type 7	Adventurousness: The Enthusiast	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	62%
Type 8	Aggressiveness: The Challenger	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	78%
Type 9	Calmness: The Peacemaker	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	58%

Your main type is 8
Your variant is sexual

Main Type	Overall Self

***Update: I was wrong. My guess was that Leslie is a 5 with 6 in the wing, which She tested as a 1. The more I read about how 8s and 1s tend to interact, the more plausible it sounds. She said she'd let me look over her answers, as she did mine. We'll see.

This information is a composite of these site: The Enneagram Institute and SimilarMinds.com

Farrakhan and Buckley

2008-03-04T12:00:00.018-05:00

"If we think about [our] conversation happening not just here and now but in that larger communion of [all those who have come before us], we are opening up conversational space for people who once killed each other. That is very gentle [work], and you can't just say, 'That [distress, grief, pain or harm] never happened!'"
-Diana Butler Bass

What I am about to say may prove difficult for many of my white and Jewish friends to hear, process and respond to justly. For it not to be difficult would require persons with the power of privilege to imagine a world in which that privilege does not exist—a just world. Not a world in which one's greatest fears have come true and power has been taken from one group and given to another with an ax to grind, but rather one in which equity is not an ideal, but a reality.

In that world my comments could be considered without fear of my assumed agenda. But that world does not exist. We are left with this one, in which the power dynamics are what they are, and have persisted that way for so long that many have confused their homeostasis (acceptance and even contentment) with the way things are with a legitimate equilibrium (justice and fair play) in our society. I am about to disturb that homeostasis by pointing out that equilibrium is a myth and does not exist; this will disorient and unsettle many severely. The knee-jerk reaction in a situation like this is to lash out, but I beg you to consider.

I was upset by Tim Russert's insistent questioning of Senator Barak Obama's ties to Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam in the mist of the last primary-season debate between Democratic candidates Obama and Clinton. Even after the question had been asked and answered more than once, Russert persisted trying to establish for the record a link between Obama and Farrakhan through the person of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a world-renown and widely respect minister, senior pastor (emeritus) of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where Obama and his family are members. In 1984, Wright had traveled with Farrakhan to Lybia and returned to refer to Farrakhan as a "great man". In a post-911 world, any other Christian-Muslim pilgrimage resulting in such interfaith appreciation of one another would be applauded. But not this time, for upon his return 24 June 1984, Min. Louis Farrakhan gave this assessment of the West's policy in the Middle East:

"...America and England and the nations backed Israel's existence. Therefore when you aid and abet someone in a criminal conspiracy, you are a part of that criminal conspiracy. So America and England and the nations are criminals in the sight of almighty God. Now that nation called Israel, never has had any peace in forty years and she will never have any peace because there can never be any peace structured on injustice, thievery, lying and deceit and using the name of God to shield your dirty religion under His holy and righteous name."

This is the speech from which the infamous account of Farrakhan referring to Judaism as a 'gutter religion' is surmised. However, as we can read, that's not actually what Farrakhan says; rather in language steeped in religious allusion and metaphor, he takes issue with what he believes to be the unjust actions of Israel against Muslim people, namely Palestinians. Farrakhan seeks to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, the majority of whom are fellow Muslims.

I do not mean to suggest in any way that what he does say is not hostile, even malicious: it indeed is. Notwithstanding, as an African-American, I've been asked repeatedly and have had to come to grips with the fact that every hostile comment made against me is not automatically racial. I'm not saying this is one of those instances: frankly, I do not know. Being as intimately acquainted as I am with the socio-religious rhetorical patterns of those from African decent, it is honestly a toss up. "Dirty religion" in this context could just as honestly be interpreted 'dirty religious practices' as it relates to the common Christian and Jewish religious justifications for how the Palestinians are treated (in which case the Hebrew and Christian Bibles have harsher things to say). I will say, however, that we seem to suspend the need even to try to make such a determination whenever anyone has anything critical to say about Israel. Bishop Desmond Tutu and former-President Jimmy Carter years later were both maligned for suggesting that Palestinians have virtually been asked by the West to agree to a form of apartheid in relationship to Israel. Whether one agrees with their assessment or not, we should be certain that neither man harbors anti-Semitic feelings.

This conflagration of thought had consumed my attention when I heard that William F. Buckley has passed, and I was immediately filled with ambivalence. On the one hand, I felt the sorrow I always feel anytime I hear of a death. On the other hand, Buckley was the champion of a self-interestedness that I believe can only harm, no matter how civil. Then I remembered a quote I once read from an article Buckley had written:

“The central question that emerges…is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes—the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists.”
—National Review, 24 August 1957

At that point I became resentful, for I knew that I would soon begin to hear all manner of tribute to this man from the same persons who would spend the remainder of the week trying to "clarify" Obama's relationship to Farrakhan.

CONTINUE READING "Farrakhan and Buckley">>>
Now, you have to understand how duplicitous this automatically seems to any person touched with the feelings of the marginalized in this world. Yet again, I am asked to commemorate the life of a man who by inference unabashedly thought of me as a member of an 'undeveloped race,' and at the same time "reject" a man for expressing the same sentiment about white people (never mind the irony). In tribute to Buckley, it has been said that he had a “refined, perspicacious mind”. Furthermore, he is the one, we are told, who “elevated conservatism to the center of American political discourse.” These same tributes can essentially be made regarding Farrakhan vis-a-vis black nationalism (a definite form of conservatism). So what makes it so easy to revere Buckley and demonize Farrakhan in the same breath?

In the time since their articulation of disdain for the Other, the perspectives of both men seem to have evolved. Buckley reportedly renounced racism by the mid-1960s, "in part because his horror at the terrorist tactics used by white supremacists to fight the civil rights movement, in part because of the moral witness of friends like Garry Wills who confronted Buckley with the immorality of his politics." Many see the fact that some of his friends from the 1950s remained adamant racists—notably Revilo Oliver who moved from National Review to the John Birch Society to the fringes of neo-Nazism—as evidence that Buckley’s conversion "was by no means pre-ordained". There were several other issues on which Buckley is reported to have moderated his politics. In the 1980s, he reportedly admitted that if he were a South African black he would likely support the ANC, a thought that "shocked fellow conservatives." Although his evolution in no way involved the radical reorientation of the privilege he benefited from and the power he exercised pre-conversion, it was seen by many as further evidence of his greatness.

There are three things you must understand from the perspective of the historically unprivileged in America. First, at some time Buckley was an unequivocal, unapologetic racist—not because he held bigoted views, but because he exercised his bigotry in a manner that inconvenienced, at times severely, the lives of people of color. This exercise of power against the Other is what makes racism different from simple prejudice. The concepts are not interchangeable. Outside of the ability to negatively impact another's life, a person not liking another for racial reasons is more of a nusance than anything else. Secondly, it is hard—not impossible, but very difficult—for me as a black man to deeply admire or appreciate a conversion of the sort that Buckley went through that does not appear to have cost much. Not saying that it was not sincere, just that it was not expensive, while his racism cost everyone and particularly those unlike himself. Thirdly, despite the zeitgeist of the age of segregation and Jim Crow in American history, I will be forever ambivalent, hopefully understandably so, toward celebrated public persons who do not have the courage to stand up for justice before it is popular and there is a wealth of incentive (economic and otherwise) to do so. None of these caveats has any reason to naturally factor into one's thinking unless she is touched with empathy for the marginalize or formerly colonized.

Farrakhan's evolution has followed a similar trajectory as Buckley's, though met with a significantly more cynical response. In the past 20 years, he has repeatedly expressed in statement after public statement these sentiments:

As a Muslim, I revere Abraham, Moses, and all the Prophets who Allah (God) sent to the children of Israel. I believe in the scriptures brought by these Prophets and the Laws of Allah (God) as expressed in the Torah. I would never refer to the Revealed Word of Allah (God)—the basis of Jewish Faith—as "dirty" or "gutter" . . . Over the centuries, the evils of Christians, Jews and Muslims have dirtied their respective religions. True Faith in the laws and Teaching of Abraham, Jesus and Muhammad is not dirty, but, practices in the name of these religions can be unclean and can cause people to look upon the misrepresented religion as being unclean."

Say what you will about his sincerity, but the exact same thing was considered enough to canonize Buckley not among the fringe but in the mainstream of the dominant culture. In the 1990s, Farrakhan reached out to a group of non-Zionist, orthodox Jews to establish conversation and camaraderie. Repeatedly in the Million-Man March and in other public initiatives, he has called for an "end to the cycle of hate." This may not make him fully chastened, but in as much as is required of others, definitely evolving.

This is where I believe the comments of Diana Butler Bass become particularly instructive. She uttered them while participating in a panel discussion at the last American Academy of Religion conference, the subject of which was the emerging phenomenon in the Christian church. The original context of her comments was the pursuit of friendship (referred to as "convergence") between post-mainline and post-evangelical Christians, yet when I heard them, they struck me as a way forward in my own internal-external debate that wouldn't involve vilifying one side or the other. Her thoughts were as follows (emphasis added):

"One of the things that I sort of genuinely wonder about in any kind of convergence—and perhaps this is because I am a mainliner and I've seen all of the worst that the ecumenical movement can possibly do—is that there was a really bad part of the ecumenical movement that basically did not allow us to have our identities. And one of the things I hold onto when I'm in rooms of clergy and theologians and working with them and we start talking about post-conservatism and post-liberalism is I always remind them that those "posts-" come out of a very distinctive historical experience. And those historical experiences are always going to remain part of our identity. They don't just go away because… [we] say we want to be friends. We're going to be standing in our conversations having coffee[, and] I've got Schleiermacher standing with me all the time, not John Stott. If we think about that conversation happening not just here and now but in that larger communion of saints… we are opening up conversational space for people who once killed each other. That is very gentle [work], and you can't just say, 'That never happened!' We're going to be doing this convergence work, but holding onto the things that we love and the things that make us who we are. So I wouldn't want us ever to slam into [each other].... It is a potential, terrible misstep for people who have been schooled in liberal Protestantism to let go of their identity for the sake of one happy big family. We need not to do that. We need to be who we really are. So post-liberal, post-conservative are 'post-' separate streams, but it doesn't mean we can't form something new together."

Change the context by switching the protestant ideological references to racial and socio-cultural ones and the gist of her argument remains credible. While you may stand with George Washington as the great hero of the American Revolution, I stand with Crispus Attucks. While you may have reconciled with John Brown, Emerson and William Lloyd Garrison—of whom I am ever appreciative—I also stand just as proudly with Nat Turner, Geronimo, and Harriet Tubman. I stand with Frederick Douglass, while you may celebrate Robert E. Lee. To any conversation I will also bring Olaudah Equiano, W.E.B. Dubois, Langston Hughes, Zora Neal Hurston, Paul Robeson, Vernon Johns, MLK, Malcolm X, James Baldwin and many others of varying ideological stripe, and in welcoming me you welcome them as well. As a person of color in America, I have since childhood been constantly asked to honor, even celebrate, white men and women of historical and contemporary note, over and apart from less-than-honorable, glaring, even odious aspects of their public lives. Isn't it time we all saw fit to afford one another the same grace, instead of holding one another completely hostage—I have no issue with accountability—to our previous short-comings? Can we be that vulnerable with one another?

Even if you totally disagree, please don't make the ridiculous accusation that I am professing bigotry or racism in any form or in any way aligning myself with Farrakhan theologically, philosophically or politically. However, I must be able to own that I am inextricably bound to him in a common history of what it means to be black in America and that be okay. Perhaps we would not say we are completely ready for this conversation, but it is the one God appears to be sending us from God's dreams for our future.

In this brave new wiki-world, the privileged must stop making the ahistorical demand that the under-privileged take a moderate, conciliatory, even deferential posture to all past, present and future acts of disrespect, hostility or excess (and vice versa)—if we are to create something more beautiful, conversant with one another. This is, perhaps, the only way we can paddle forward together with so much water under and over the bridge.

*For a practical example of this, learn the story of Robi Damelin and Ali Abu Awwad,
Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers.

Talking to the Canadians

2008-03-04T08:57:00.010-05:00

I'm so terribly ambivalent about the news that a top aid from the Obama camp, Austan Goolsbee, had a meeting with the Canadian Consulate General, Georges Rioux, in Chicago in which his comments were interpreted to mean that Obama's stand of NAFTA should only be taken as campaign rhetoric and not public policy.

I'm conflicted, not because the meeting took place, but that the campaign spent several days denying it. I want to believe Obama when he says he honestly didn't know. Given the wiki-nature of his campaign, that seems feasible. Nonetheless, should Austan Goolsbee and others be publicly chastised or even fired for taking so long to admit the visit to Obama?

The problem for me is that I just don't want Obama to lie. I'm not one of those cynics who is quick to say that all politicians do or must. If Obama were to begin to, then for me it usurps his entire argument for the presidency, because at that point, Hillary is much better and much more experienced at that kind of politics.

A question that must be asked was raised by Anderson Cooper on CNN. Who in Canada (and why), the day before a highly contested primary, would leak a document that's only impact could be to influence politics in America? It's surely not in Canada's interest to sully the man who is allegedly more in their camp. Some part of this doesn't make good sense.

This combined with the overwhelming glut of accusation coming out of the Clinton camp inclines me to believe things are not quite as they seem. I don't know how, and I'm making no accusations, but this seems just a little too convenient for Hillary and McCain. When you spend as much time as the Clinton and McCain campaigns have throwing negativity at your opponent hoping something, anything will stick and slow his momentum, I wouldn't put it pass you to orchestrate something of this defamatory nature.

In fact, it's been reported by the Canadian television station CTV, the one's who produced the memo documenting the Obama campaign's meeting with Canadian diplomats, that the Clinton campaign has been endeavoring to open up indirect channels of communication with the Canadian government for some time as well.

So I'm wary, but not dismayed. My hope is that Obama can find a way to remain above board with the American people.

Yes! The Sequel

2008-03-01T08:11:00.004-05:00

The We Are The Ones Song
by will.i.am

people say Obama’s words are just words...
but...
when was the last time "words" weren’t important...???...

when was the last time a great leader didn’t use words to lead...??...
when was the last time a person didn’t use words to describe how they felt...?...
when was the last time "words" weren’t empowering...?...

and we can all recall the last time "words" were used to divide us and install fear...

Bush used words to fear us into voting for him the second time around...
terror this...
terror that...
nuclear here...
weapons of mass destruction there...

and those words effected a lot of people’s choices...

"enough is enough"...
let’s rebuild...

let’s change ourselves...
let’s allow positivity to guide us...

let's take action....
let’s activate our passion...
we are Americans....

and this is the first time in forever that someone running for president represents "US"...

some say this is all excitement...
I call it “proud to be an American”...

some say this whole Obama movement is "cult like"...
well...
if it comes across cult like...
then...
the cult is called America...

the Obama movement is connecting America.
and it has made "US" realize our importance...
the youth is excited and activated...
adults are passionate and motivated...
the elderly are proud to know the country they built is in safe hands...

we are one...

for too long politics has been corrupt...
separate from the American people...
with agendas that go against what the American people "need"...
education...
health...
safety...
jobs
etc...

politicians have spoken a different language...
making it so the youth and poor people feel as if voting was only for the wealthy and old people...
making "US" feel as if "we" had no voice...
making "US" feel powerless...
making it feel like if "we" did vote it wouldn’t change anything...

but wait...
that did happen...
some of us voted, and it didn’t change anything...

we were in the dark...
we had no voice...
we were powerless...

because America was not a united America...
and "they" spoke a different language...
and they had an agenda different from our well being...

correct me if I’m wrong... or speak up if I’m missing something...

we want education, health, safety, and good jobs...right???...
oh yeah...
and "a healthy planet to live on"...

but here we are...

in a war... poor education... poor health programs... the dollar is down... the planet, polluted...
the rich, richer... and the poor, struggling...
with sky high gas prices to top it all off...

and now even the rich aren't really rich internationally because our dollar is has fallen so far down...

in our slumber... a very small few got really rich...

because when you’re sleeping...

"it’s hard to change agendas"...

we know what happened in 2000 and 2004...
but in 2008...
it’s different...

we are awake...
and there is a movement...

and "it’s hard to change a movement"...

last time "we" didn’t have a movement...
America wasn’t united...

and now "United and "Standing"...for something...
we know the power of "US"...
and we have a person who represents the "U.S."...

"US"…

"we are the ones we’ve been waiting for"...

I’m proud to be an American...

will.i.am

"So what, if he's Muslim?"

2008-03-01T08:00:00.005-05:00

I've been wanting to write about this for about two weeks, since my wife received the e-mail about Obama being a Muslim. Omar's thesis question is the exact same one I voiced, but is strengthened by the power of his personal narrative. I found this article on the God's Politics blog (a collaboration between Beliefnet & Sojourners), Omar also published it on his blog, which is where the hyperlink to finish the article sends you.

The Politics of Names
by Rev. Omar Hamid Al-Rikabi

My parents had an agreement: If my father could name his children, then my mother could raise us in the church. So I was given a full Muslim name, but I was baptized as a Christian. Growing up I never really liked my name very much - Omar. For a little kid in Texas, a foreign sounding, deeply ethnic name was a nuisance. It stood out too much. It made a scene. In classrooms full of Mikes and Peters and Amys and Stephanies, Omar felt like the person who wore jeans to a wedding while everyone else was in suits. Very out of place. I always wanted to be a David.

Over the years, in classrooms and sanctuaries, as different Middle Eastern dictators and terrorist groups made headlines, my name was the butt of many jokes, varied translations, and stupid questions (imagine the fun in junior high when "Moammar Gadhafi" sounded too much like "Omar Rikabi").

Not too long ago, I was given the opportunity to preach in a Baptist church in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Before the service started I was introduced to the senior pastor. "Hello," I told him, "my name is Omar and I'll be doing the preaching tonight." As he shook my hand, he pulled me close and asked loudly with his southern drawl, "Omar? You're not a terrorist are you?"

I have to admit that this was not the first time my Muslim name was taken as a suggestion that I was "one of them." By "them" I mean "the enemy." The politics and preaching of fear saturates us. Representative Keith Ellison, the Muslim congressman from Minnesota, had to endure talk show host Glenn Beck's ridiculous questions about his loyalty to "the enemy." And now Senator Barack Obama is under attack because his middle name is Hussein.

But here is my question: What if Obama were a Muslim? So what?
complete the article>>>

There's Nothin' Like Good Music

2008-02-23T20:08:00.012-05:00

I found this on a fellow vagabond's website. It reminded me how much I love fun music, particularly indie artists. Enjoy!

Her name is Imogen Heap. I love it partly because when I am inspired myself, snapping, patting, clapping and verbal sound effects are all I can muster: I can't play any instruments. It's good to see that's catching on :-P. In some tangential way it took me back to 1991, Shanice and I Love Your Smile--go figure! (I think that was the first song I consciously admitted to liking because it was fun--that was a big step for an insecure 18-year-old male.)

These next two I love just because AD is the truth...

Folks have forgotten how to throw parties like those.

This next one is a human voice band headed up by a friend of mine. It was shot live on a Paris subway. These brothas are nice...

What's even more amazing is to know that these guys (Naturally 7) never use instruments (even in the studio) and every thing is done live--no loops, overdubs or sampling. So when you watch the slick music video remix of "Feel It", it's still all voice, just better sound equipment!

Most recently, I've been diggin' my girl Angie Stone and my man Wyclef. So I'll end this musical homage with a little sump'in for the season.

If you've got some good vibes to share, holla at ya boi!

The "I'm-Every-Women" Myth that is Hillary

2008-02-20T12:59:00.026-05:00

In their coverage of Tuesday's Wisconsin primary, CNN hosted several commentators, one of whom was Amy Holmes—a political force of nature. In reference to Hillary Clinton's non-concession speech delivered that evening just after Wisconsin had been called for Obama, in the mist of the other analysts' commiserating about just how same-old, same-old Hillary's speech seemed though billed as new, Holmes remarks:

"Something that I heard tonight that I found very peculiar was when she wrapped it up by saying that we will shatter the hardest, highest glass ceiling that there is, inferring electing a woman. This is an argument Gloria Steinem tried to make in the New York Times, and it's preposterous on so many levels, that a white multi-millionairess who is married to a former president would somehow have a tougher time [or] road ahead of her, becoming president of the United States, than Barack Obama. It was new. I think that it will actually be rejected."

What?! This girl laid down the gauntlet! And reading it doesn't give you the sense of how quickly she was able to put it down. Obama needs to hire this women as his 10-second-response coach. Not that Obama could have gotten away with the same comment, but Holmes' ability, in just 10-seconds, to deconstruct the myth that has become Hillary's calling card was incredible. And, listening to her, you got the idea there was definitely more where that came from.

Hearing Holmes articulate in such an unapologetic manner this most incisive observation—and seeing that the only rebuttal the one Hillary-supporter on the panel could muster in the moment was to try to dismiss Holmes out of hand—in a tangential way shed light for me on why conservatives are trying to seize on Michelle Obama's comments earlier in the week, believing them to be a chink in the armor of the juggernaut that is becoming the O-campaign (almost 1 million strong). Michelle said:

Hope is making a comeback. And let me tell you, for the first time in my adult life I am really proud of my country—not just because Barack is doing well, but I think people are hungry for change.

"How dare this be the first time in her adult life that she is proud of America," some have said. "What kind of non-patriot is she?!"

This may come as a surprise to some, but not everyone has experienced America in the same way. Not everyone's history and personal experience affords them the indiscriminate conviction that—at all times and in all places and in spite of all evidence to the contrary—one should always be "proud to be an American." And perhaps not everyone saw it coming, but having to grapple with this disturbing (perhaps even inconvenient) truth is an inescapable part of rallying for "CHANGE"—particularly behind one who shares history with those who have at times been victimized by the status quo.

Privilege seems to blind people to the reality that everyone has not experienced America in the same way. But one must know that this is particularly important to the heirs of America's promises who have been historically marginalized within her boarders. I imagine that most intelligent people understand that no two people, no two groups, share the same experiences. Nonetheless, we must also understand that even those who do share the same experiences don't interact with those experiences in the exact same way—for lots of different reasons. Though we often rehearse the contrary, we must reckon that it is not necessarily true that if our friend had just had a mother who could cook as well as our own, then they would like beans as much as we do; or that if they had just come from where we come from, they would understand a certain thing the same way; or that if they had just been the recipient or beneficiary of the same opportunities that they would have leveraged them the same (or been able to). It's just not the case. And we must lay down the self-absorption that makes us think it is, if we are to ever begin to understand one another.

Senator and Mrs. McCain sought to embarrass and chasten Mrs. Obama by declaring their unwavering, indiscriminate pride in America. Why wouldn't they cherish that which has always accrued to their benefit? However, isn't the real promise of America worth cherishing one of equity for all and not privilege for a few?

No one should be upset or dismayed by Michelle's honest reflection. There is much in America's past, present and, undoubtedly, her future of which no one should be proud. And if one is touched with empathy for those who suffer for the sake of others' privilege, that person should not have to pretend that all is well when she can see and hear clearly that it is not. Pretending isn't patriotism; it's the most odious form of self-congratulations.

By identifying, as MLK did, with those who still struggle and suffer in hopes of America beginning to live out "the true meaning of her creed," Michelle proves herself to be the real patriot and also becomes the "Every-Women" that Hillary can only pretend to be. You go, sista!

Addendum: For more on Hillary's "I'm-Every-Women" myth,
check out Ariel Werner's "Open Letter to Gloria Steinem".

john.he.is

2008-02-19T17:37:00.007-05:00

Can there be a better comparison of the two...

"like HOPE, but different."
How great is that!

Election08's post on YouTube was accompanied by the following:

"Will.i.am totally stole this idea from us, we've been thinking for a long time that earnest people reacting to a candidate is the future of music video.

By Election08 On Youtube
Andy Cobb
Josh Funk
Nyima Funk
Marc Evan Jackson
Mark Kienlen
David Pompeii
Marc Warzecha

Special guests:
Beth Farmer
Matt Craig
Rebecca Allen
Kai Pompeii
Kevin Douglas
Victor Lopez

The work that we face in our time is great
in a time of war
and the terrible sacrifices it entails
the promise of a better future is not always clear
there's gonna be other wars
I'm sorry to tell you there's gonna be other wars
there's gonna be a lot of combat wounds
and my friends it's gonna be tough
and we're gonna have a lot to do
That old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran?
Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb...
I'm still convinced that withdrawal means chaos
and if you think that things are bad now
if we withdraw--you ain't seen nothing yet
was the war a good idea, worth the price in blood and treasure?
It was a good idea
President Bush talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years
Maybe a hundred, that's fine with me
I don't think Americans are concerned if we're there for a hundred years, or a thousand years, or ten thousand years."

Bray Family Update

2008-02-17T14:26:00.007-05:00

January marked the end of unemployment benefits for the family and I. I pick up a lucrative but temporary tutoring gig that will last to the end of March. And just when I discovered I would not be paid on the 1st of February, as I had been led to believe, I got calls for two quick contract gigs that carried the family through. Help may not come when you want it, but it's always on time.

I had been waiting since December to hear back from Emory U to find out if I made it into the Anthropology program this year. I found out unofficially that I had not. I later discovered that I am in good company. I have several friends (smarter than I) looking at 2nd and 3rd attempts at doctoral programs. Meanwhile I have made connection with two Emory professors and have a year to get to know them and convince them champion my cause.

After a long interview process for which I was a final candidate, I was recently turned down for a position I really wanted as coordinator of the Interfaith Children's Movement, ostensibly because my experience in advocacy and community organizing (more specifically, working with volunteers) has only been volunteer or perhaps because I didn't sell it well enough.

That leaves me with a part-time (Sunday and one other evening a week) possibility on the horizon as Creative Director for a neighborhood church plant; the under-explored possibility of providing contract janitorial service to a friend's physical therapy facility (twice a week); and the unexplored possibility of subcontract book editing and book review for a friend of mine.

These possibilities are accompanied by a joint epiphany with Leslie, my bride and significant hottie, that there is no reason I can't resurrect Kid Cultivators as a way of life--which is only my favorite thing in the world! Only this time, Leslie would be coordinating a local home-school cohort to network and create a support system for local homeschooling moms in the broader metro-Atlanta area as well as initiating a homeschool co-op specifically for SW Atlanta, all under the Kid Cultivators banner. In addition, I am seeking funding for an interfaith youth service-learning project ($55-75k), to be coordinated by a friend, Yaisha Harding, who is the service-learning coordinator for the Atlanta Girls School (Kid Cultivators is a community partner for their 6th grade).

The impetus of all this new dreaming about Kid Cultivators is that I have been contacted by 3 sets of parents to provide home-school tutorial for their 3 boys. If those parents are serious and can identify 1-3 more students, I can do it. I miss being on the farm and doing intensive, integral work in the lives of kids--its my niche--so I can't help but be excited by the mere possibility of getting back to it sooner than I thought.

Not to overlook, a friend of mine, Troy, I and our families are ever closer to planting a faith guild in our neighborhood. It is probably best described as a monastic endeavor, in similitude to Benedictine or Dominican orders. It will probably be initially resourced by primarily Presbyterian money, yet have no real organizational affiliation. We'll exist for the good of the neighborhood and hopefully help to set the tone for development and reconciliation in our community, that has gentrified a significant bit, but not totally, in the past few years.

There is an old church building that sits on the corner of the major intersection in our neighborhood (you can see it behind Troy in the picture on his blog) that has been temporarily spared from demolition but needs to be integrated into the development of the rest of the square block on which it sits, if it is to be saved. Our task is to bring a developer with missional vision to the table who will buy the building outright from the partners who are developing the other two-thirds of the land for commercial and condo space. Our developer would renovate the church, turning the basement into a coffee shop or restaurant, dividing the rear office space up into possibly live-work units and reconditioning the sanctuary into a multi-use assembly space which we would rent, use and also sub-lease as a local performance venue, gallery and community-building spot. We'll see what becomes of these dreamers...

I spent a year and a half trying to plug back into the Matrix. It just hasn't worked. So we will do what we do and trust God to continue to send us the future of which she dreams. Thanks to everyone for your prayers. Blow, Spirit, blow...

Stuff

2008-02-16T15:14:00.006-05:00

If you haven't seen it yet, The Story of Stuff is a phenomenal 30 minute flash video that puts our consumption in global perspective and challenges us to imagine better ways of living.