Sunday Evening Thoughts

Mad Men
Wow, what an episode of Mad Men. Just when I thought this should be the final season, they wow us with two doozies. Great writers, great story lines, great characters. This show is threatening The Wire as the great American story of the last ten years, and one of the greatest series ever.

Racial Identity
At a recent social gathering I was given the opportunity to have a rather lively discussion with mixed company about race, social identity, and the post Obama year(s). Here are my thoughts…
I find some people’s perception of race (more specifically black people’s experience in this country) perplexing. In a country where children go to years of counseling to deal with their parents’ divorce, where alcoholics and drug addicts go to rehab to end addition, and civil courts hear million dollar lawsuits to remedy disputes, time after time, black people are told to “forget” and “move on” about racism, as if somehow, magically, if blacks forget it happened, then everything will be better, and suddenly, it will never have an affect on your life. If one does talk about it, they are branded a whiner, someone that has a chip on their shoulder, a person that lives in the past, and part of the problem.

This is not only wrong, but the root of our racial problems in this country. Here’s why:

1. Since racism stems from racial superiority (whites to blacks) and was used to justify trans-Atlantic slavery, the subsequent establishment of the economy of this nation (free labor = easy southern planting and profitable northern shipping), the legal denial of rights based on skin color (which still governs the way we live our lives, from the neighborhoods people choose to settle, to whom people choose to marry, to who we choose to socialize with), thus it is not black people’s responsibility to fix racial superiority. We didn’t start the fire; it's on other folks to deal with that issue, not black people to “change peoples minds” about us. Fuck that.

2. Forget? Who tells people to forget stuff? When’s the last time you heard a logical person get on television and tell Jewish people, “Why do you celebrate Passover? That was such a long time ago. Why don’t you just move on?” or “Why are you still talking about the Holocaust? It was a long time ago. That’s just the way some people thought at the time.” Exactly.

And just what exactly are we forgetting? My Grandfather knew his Great-Grandfather, born in 1853 as a slave in Virginia. Hell, he went to a baseball game with him. I’ve spoke to my Grandfather about his Great-Grandfather, again, a slave. To put it simply, my mother’s father knew a slave. I’ve seen the man’s picture, know his name, and, share the same prolific eyebrows and dark circles around my eyes. Every morning I see his face. Sorry, can’t forget that.
Moreover, one forgets what they don’t want to remember. I, for one, want to remember what happened to my relatives, my ancestors, and people I never met. I want to remember what happened to Jack Johnson, George Stoval, and Nat Turner. That is history, it is what makes us strong, knowing that all the hell folks went through was not in vain, and the ultimate disrespect would be to forget what they went through. Again, Fuck that.

3. Our racial issues were not solved by electing a black president, although some people would like to think so. We’ve never had a national discussion about the impacts of racism through slavery, segregation, and economics. Our country has been built on an unfair playing field that generously benefitted white males for centuries, yet, we don’t talk enough about it, and how we can move forward to even out society. In today’s world, networks still rule the corporate world, networks that often are based on where you when to school, where you daddy when to school, and how much ass you can kiss. Have you seen Wall Street lately? When my parents when to college, schools were just being “desegregated” and blacks were just starting to go to traditionally white colleges. I’m not the exception to the rule.
Contrary to popular belief, being an angry black man doesn’t make you a self-destructive, unproductive individual. In fact, the anger can be used to motivate, and turn you into an amazingly productive and driven individual. Anger, intelligence, and strategy can turn you into a force.
See also: Booker T. Washington, Jack Roosevelt Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Eldrick Woods, Serena and Venus Williams, John Carlos and Tommie Smith, Huey P. Newton.

My Favorite Books, Pt II

Almost forgot:
The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand

Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

Endurance - Alfred Lansing

Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe

The Souls of Black Folk - W.E.B. DuBois

The First Tycoon - T.J. Stiles

The Books That Helped Make Me Who I am

In no particular order:

The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Alex Haley

Manchild in The Promised Land - Claude Browne

Roots - Alex Haley

The 48 Laws of Power - Robert Greene

The 33 Strategies of War - Robert Greene

The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell

The Alchemist - Paulo Cuelo

Lies My Teacher Told Me - James Loewen

Fallen Angels - Walter Dean Myers

The Game - Neil Strauss

Rich Dad, Poor Dad - Robert Kiyosaki

Up From Slavery - Booker T. Washington

New Stadiums, High Standards, and Random Thoughts

Editor's Note: Okay, so I am going to make a concerted effort to blog daily. Its something that I've talked about doing, and have been much too lazy, unfocused, and not serious enough about to actually do. Well, there are no more excuses. I'm going to share my thoughts, regardless of how unedited, and disjointed they might be. I'm committing myself to do this, therefore it will be part of my daily routine!

Romo is not Eli!
I am all about capitalism and the spoils of victory that enable you to build a billion dollar stadium in the worst economy since the Great Depression. However, I took it personally when the NFL allowed the Cowboys to schedule the new stadium's grand opening against my Giants. I guess the Giants did as well, as they terrorized Tony Romo and Eli led the boys in blue to another 4th Quarter victory, capped off by a Lawrence Tynes field goal. Note here: do not invite a better team to your grand party. Jerry should have picked on the Bengals, or even the Redskins, but not the New York City Varsity Football team!


High Standards and Achievement Gap
This semester I am taking a great charter school design class. It is basically a seminar in how to build a successful, high performing charter school, with leaders in the field coming to each class to tell us how they do it or select schools to do it. Last night, I was able to, for the first time, confront a person that had perplexed me for a while. Eva Moskowitz, former City Council member, and CEO of Harlem Success Academy, has been a person of interest for me. I saw a few NYTimes articles about her, and her aspirations to one day become mayor. I was impressed that she had a PhD (in history no less) and I almost began to become hopeful about politics, until, I read further that she ran the Harlem Success Academy and would be staking her future aspirations on education little black kids in Harlem. My admiration turned into red flags. Why?
Well, I get very suspicious of people when they speak of Harlem. Harlem is not just a neighborhood; its an allegory of black America, as it was one of the most important cultural centers in decades past. Its definitely no longer that, but the historical connections has made it a place where many white people don't go. (One of my colleagues in Real Estate, a woman that is almost double my age and grew up in New York, thought that Harlem was part of The Bronx.) Of course, whites have controlled the real estate there for years, so its not like there was an unbelievable amount of home ownership, or less crime, but it was a segregated version of Times Square, I guess.

I'm not going to wax poetic about bygone eras; however, 125th St. is a tour bus destination, the brownstones and new construction has risen and prices have fallen, and Columbia will be expanding northward, further into the outer reaches of where many downtowners will go. Which is why I found it murky that the leader of a school of predominantly black kids was a wealthy Jewish woman from the neighborhood that moved to the Upper East Side, then moved back to Morningside Heights to tackle this job after she failed to be elected as Manhattan Borough President. This whole thing stunk of paternalism, political gain, and yet another opportunity to re-brand "Harlem."

Here's what the Times says:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/nyregion/04eva.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=eva%20moskowitz&st=cse

and the News:
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2009/02/26/2009-02-26_former_city_council_member_eva_moskowitz.html

I guess the media, and a lot of other people are skeptical as well. I have to say, I was impressed with her "passion" and ability to stay on message during her presentation. She kept on saying the "achievement gap" and talked about "high standards" for kids, and setting the highest standard for teachers. All of this is edutalk for the moment; the new reformers are trotting out "new" school concepts to shake up the system, and all the while erase historic, embedded racism by hiring ivy-leaguers to teach them chess, ballroom dancing, and everything else that is taught to the rich white kids that go to private school. Except, those rich kids come from rich families, with generational wealth, and ties that will get them into an ivy-league school regardless of their SAT scores, and there is no guarantee that Dr. M's charter school network can produce high functioning high schoolers, let alone college grads. I'm not saying it can't be done, but, ultimately, what will be the result? With the limited number of charters available, does Dr. M hope to influence the Department of Education after she has continued to trash it? Is the solution to fix the system actually reforming the system?

The Youth
I hate to sound like an old head, but I am completely perplexed by the way young black males dress. I walk through Harlem everyday, and I have no idea why young dudes have their jeans halfway (literally) down their legs, and they have to hold their pants up by the button (in the front) to keep them from falling. Where the hell did this trend come from? HOW stupid can you be? Is this yet another jail fashion trend that is one in a long line of ways to keep brothers from truly getting forward in life?

Also, while working my uber fun part time job at Yankee Stadium, I get a great chance to interact with the young Black and Hispanic guards that accompany the tours. For the most part, they are great, but a recent conversation bothered me. A young brother, with a great personality and a truly likeable disposition, and I were talking about Harlem day, etc, and he proceeded to use the phrase "my nigga" literallly twenty times in a three minute span. What gives with "my nigga" and using "nigga" as a way to describe other black folks? I really don't get it.

Over and out!