You know, I wrote and published a book four year ago titled Fear of a “Black” America: Multiculturalism and the African American Experience. I described how fearful many Americans, White, Black and Brown, are of our multicultural and demographic shift that has been underway since the late ’60s. One that will leave America with no racial or ethnic majority by the time I’m old enough to think about retirement. Which was why White neoconservatives, xenophobic Blacks and homophobic Latinos equated multicultural education with the end of American culture, the “disuniting of America,” Afrocentricity and Black Power, and the takeover of illegal immigrants, “femi-Nazis” (that’s Rush Limbaugh for ya) and sodomizing gays. With the Reagan Revolution in the ’80s and the Republican Revolution under Newt Gingrich in the ’90s came a screeching halt to efforts to bring a serious multiculturalist philosophy to K-12 public education and a backlash to multicultural curriculum at some universities (Dartmouth and Stanford come to mind).

With the wonders of a mismanaged political campaign and a multicultural candidate for President of the United States have come a re-ignition of the ’90s “Culture Wars.” Obama has been called everything short of a child of God in the past two weeks. “Kill him,” “Off with his head,” “Who is the real Barack Obama?,” Terrorist,” “Traitor,” are all things we’ve heard watching McCain campaign and audiences unravel like a falling ball of string since October 3. The racially-transcendent candidate has become “Black” once again because of the attempt to label Obama as an unpatriotic, un-American terrorist sympathizer who also has no trouble with market socialism and radical liberals. And being “Black” in this country normally equals “unpatriotic” unless we die for this country or get our heads bashed in attempted to make the country live up to its ideals.

Most important, though, is this assumption that Obama is neither American nor a Christian (hello, Rev. Jeremiah Wright?). The so-called Culture Wars of the ’90s never made sense to me, and this brush-fire of a culture skirmish in recent weeks doesn’t either. Unless you look at it with the perspective of a social psychologist. Fear, loathing and skepticism (the last two derivatives of fear) are all part of the current set of controversies over McCain’s campaign tactics and his surrogates’ and crowds’ responses to them. I’m hardly suggesting like Rep. John L. Lewis (D-GA) that what McCain’s campaign has done is in any way equivalent to the late George Wallace. But to make it sound as if this is normal in the course of attacking another candidate’s character — as folks like Joe Scarborough (formerly of the “colorblind to race” camp) and David Frum (who couldn’t spend five minutes having a civil conversation with Rachel Maddow yesterday) have suggested — is insulting to any thinking person’s intelligence. The financial collapse on Wall Street is usually the last sign of a recession or economic downturn, not the first. And what happens with every significant downturn. Increased stress, fear, anxiety about the future, a need for scapegoats whom we can blame for our troubles.

McCain’s campaign attempted to give us one scapegoat in the form of Sen. Obama. Despite his almost constant national presence since the Democratic National Convention keynote speech he gave in August ’04, the publication of two bestselling memoirs, thousands of speeches and appearances, Obama’s the great unknown? Give me a break! It might be race-baiting per se, but McCain’s campaign has used some not-so-subtle inferences to imply that Obama wasn’t a typical American. Heck, if you listened closely to Gov. Sarah Palin’s rebukes of Obama, he might not be American at all. In this process, Obama has become more “Black,” possibly more so than even Obama would admit. Long forgotten for most Americans is the fact that Obama is a biracial Black male (based on how he defines himself and how most of his supporters see him). That’s what the exploitation of fear, loathing, and skepticism can do in two weeks.

The question that I think needs to be asked is whether America is ready for its multicultural present and its need for a future based on a philosophy that embraces multiculturalism, and doesn’t just treat it as a “Black,” “Arab,” “illegal immigrant,” or “gay” thing. We’ll learn a lot about the answer in the next three weeks. But even if the answer is “Yes” to Obama, it will be a somewhat shaky yet hopeful “Yes,” one that need to be reinforced over and over again as we move forward in the midst of all of our uncertainties about America’s future.

I’ve never seen myself as middle class. I’m sure that for those of you who read my blog every week, this is about as much a surprise as my constant linking of my posts to my Boy At The Window manuscript. Almost every person I’ve ever met, regardless of income — and especially as an adult — has seen themselves as middle class. This despite the growing gap between the affluent and the rest of us in the past couple of decades. This middle-class delusion defines how our nation’s economic crises affect each and every one of us, and not for the better.

If someone had asked me what my career and financial goals were in 1987, I would’ve said that I wanted to be a computer programmer making at least $25,000 a year. That’s it. No thought of retirement or health care coverage or investing in the stock market. I certainly didn’t care about a truly middle class income or a living wage. Besides having the naivete of a 17-year-old, welfare-poor Black male, my thinking was based somewhat in realism. A standard programmer job with a bachelor’s degree and limited work experience was between $25,000 and $40,000 a year back then. Having a $25,000 per annum income in most parts of the U.S. as a single person would’ve given me middle class status. After all, I spent my teenage years as one of six kids living in a household with an annual income of $16,600. $25,000 might as well have been $200,000 given what I lived with prior to college. Thinking about benefits, investments and
retirement? I might’ve worried about that when I turned 30, assuming that I would make it into
my 30s at all.

So much has changed about my understanding of class and money since the days before the Wall Street crash in October 1987. Including the distance between my and our perceptions of middle class status and the reality of middle class living in the U.S. For starters, even mediocre computer technicians make between $35,000 and $60,000 a year without a degree, and web
designers $25,000 per contract. A job paying $25,000 in most of the country qualifies someone
with a family as working poor and in need of some form of public assistance. In some parts of the
country, including where I live—the Washington, DC metro area—a $50,000-a-year income is
hardly middle class at all. I made nearly $80,000 last year, yet struggled to pay down my student loans and credit card debt. Face it, folks. Middle class isn’t we think it is anymore.

With the current mortgage/credit/debt/financial crises unfolding before us, it’s time to
recognize that most of us who see ourselves as middle class are there because of debt. My income from last year didn’t keep up with my level of debt. Student loans, credit cards, and a car note, about $95,000 in total debt. I would’ve needed an income of at least that much last year in order to successfully service and reduce my personal debt. But to truly be middle class, my income would’ve needed to be at least $115,000, in order to significantly reduce debt, build up savings and have a disposable income not dependent on lines or credit or charge cards. Of course, living in the DC area, my levels of income and debt were probably typical. Many of us, though, have my level of debt and more—and with less income—living in places like Huntsville, Alabama, Des Moines, Iowa, and Spokane, Washington.

Between popular culture and the press, the commercials, videos and ads, we have this impression that anyone making between $20,000 and $1 million a year should see themselves as middle class. Anyone with a job is middle class by this all-encompassing definition. By any realistic standard, a family would need an income of between $150,000 and $200,000 a year to live a middle-class lifestyle with relatively little debt, whether living in Bradley, Arkansas or on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Not good news for most of us.

This is more than a perception problem. It’s a recipe for economic and social disaster. One that cannot be remedied with an economic contact lens like making more credit available. Most of us need radical Lasik surgery to correct our debt-ridden middle class visions. We must restore
balance to our incomes and debts before we are all too blind to see our way into a middle-class
quality of life.

It’s been on my mind now for a few weeks. This whole Sarah Palin phenomenon has me somewhere between disappointed and resolute. Disappointed in that it is unbelievable that with so much going on in our world, with so much at stake in our country, that this shrewd, ambitious, and wholly unprepared politician could be VP in four weeks. Resolute in that I really hope that voters on the fence come to their senses and vote for a candidate based on what they know rather than their ability to sound like they’re from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

But my blog today isn’t so much about the election as much as it is about my goofiness and my knowledge of goofy music. Since the ’84 campaign, both parties have used music to help structure their themes around patriotism, prosperity and peace. Campaigns have made use — or rather, misuse — of songs like John Mellencamp’s “Pink Houses,” Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.,” Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop,” and even U2’s “City of Blinding Lights” over the past 24 years. The McCain campaign went with Heart’s “Barracuda” at the beginning of September. A song about uninhibited sexual desire was used to pump up the volume for the hockey mom who is also an evangelical Christian? Weird, just weird.

There are more appropriate songs for McCain-Palin. As far as I’m concerned, they’re all “Sara” songs. Hall & Oates has “Sara Smile.” Gov. Palin is extremely good at smiling, even when she’s calling Obama a terrorist sympathizer or talking about the issues of climate change and nuclear proliferation. The song, though, about love and inspiration from a loved one, and would only be appropriate for Palin and her husband to use. There’s also Fleetwood Mac’s “Sara.” It could be of use in the case of Gov. Palin, but given it’s connection to Stevie Nicks’ experiences of love and loss — not to mention the song’s ’70s-style slowness, it also wouldn’t be goofy enough.

So I’m left with Starship’s “Sara” from their ’85 album Knee Deep in the Hoopla (I unfortunately used to own it). Starship, formerly part of Jefferson Starship, which was Jefferson Airplane even before that, had former and reformed and split into two different bands over a fifteen-year-period because of the usual issues of sex, drugs and creative differences. A bit erratic I’d say, kind of like the McCain-Palin ticket itself.

But it’s the lyrics and their meaning that make Starship’s “Sara” work well in describing what
Gov. Palin has brought to the McCain campaign and could bring to our country. Let’s take a quick look:

First Verse:
Go now, don’t look back, weve drawn the line
Move on, it’s no good to go back in time

I’ll never find another girl like you, for happy endings it takes two
We’re fire and ice, the dream won’t come true

Chorus:
Sara, Sara, storms are brewin’ in your eyes
Sara, Sara, no time is a good time for goodbyes

Second Verse:
Danger in the game when the stakes are high
Branded, my heart was branded while my senses stood by

I’ll never find another girl like you, for happy endings it takes two
We’re fire and ice, the dream won’t come true

This easily could be McCain singing this in the shower as much as it could be the majority of the electorate singing in their heads about the McCain-Palin ticket come Election Day. Especially if you add the additional line “hurt me, no one could ever hurt me more.” This would definitely apply to all of us if McCain becomes president. It already applies to McCain, Obama and my ears.

Of course, to use Starship’s “Sara” as an electorate, we’d have to change a few words here and there. Like I’d change “I’ll never find another girl like you” to “I hope we never find another girl like you.” Or “We’re fire and ice, the dream won’t come true” to “We’re fire and ice, your dream wont come true.” I know that this is goofy, but trust me, it works. Work with me here. Think about the synthesized drums and acoustic card, not to mention Mickey Thomas’ voice and Grace Slick’s background vocals. I guarantee you Gov. Palin owns this song or the album.

During my interview taping a couple of weeks back for a cable access channel (see blog from two weeks ago), I answered a question about the contrast between what can typically happen to impoverished Black males (anybody, really) exposed to familial and community instability and what it takes for folks like me to overcome it. The host commented, “You’re an outlier,” as if my experience overcoming abuse and poverty didn’t matter. In a way, I guess, she was right. I am unusual. That’s the sad reality in a nation that loves saying, “If you work hard and play by the rules, you can be anything you want to be.” For too many people, though, hard work and following the rules is hardly enough. In some communities and families, doing those things will just leave one bitter and depressed, although not necessarily in the ways that are typical of ex-steel and automobile workers in the Rustbelt.

Yes, I am an outlier, and in more ways than one. Not only because I bucked long odds to escape Mount Vernon, New York, 616 East Lincoln Avenue, welfare poverty, domestic violence, and the Hebrew-Israelite religion to get to the University of Pittsburgh. Not only because I went on to become a history and education foundations professor, a freelance writer, and a nonprofit manager. I’m an outlier because I’ve met maybe one person with a kind-of-sort-of background like mine in the two-plus-decades since I went off to college.

Over the past twenty-one years, I’ve met thousands of people. College classmates, dorm mates, acquaintances, friends, foes, colleagues, professors, deans, provosts, and department chairs. Not to mention doctors, co-workers, bosses, supervisors, directors, foundation program officers, editors, authors, writers, teachers, students, social justice workers and community organizers. Out of all of those people, only a handful revealed anything about themselves that would’ve indicated some sense of understanding of serious poverty. The kind where you’re not sure if there will be food in the house when you come home from school. Or if you’ll have to heat the apartment for the next few days with the kitchen oven because the landlord decided to forego this week’s heating oil delivery. Or knowing that you won’t be able to bring classmates over to see your place because they won’t have a place to sit even if they wanted to come over. These are relatively small things, but they represent mind-numbing poverty, the kind of thing that no one talks about in the public arena, because they don’t understand it or care for it.

Almost no one I’ve met, at least until Boy At The Window, had even come close to discussing or even hinting at experiences with domestic violence growing up. I’ve met one person who had been molested, and one who would eventually become a rape victim. As terrible as their experiences were, neither of them came from poverty, and both went on to earn advanced degrees.

Why is this important? Because it gets at the heart of the matter about being an outlier. People who experience a fall into welfare poverty, malnutrition, domestic violence, betrayal, and bizarre religious practices, and are surrounded by folks who themselves are in poverty or “just barely makin‘ it,” don’t normally make it to their high school graduation. And if they somehow do graduate, they certainly don’t think about going to college. And if they go to college, graduate school or become a professor or writer isn’t the next step. Making money is.

As a result, someone like me has spent years having conversations with colleagues, hanging out with friends and acquaintances, dating or in casual relationships with women who couldn’t get my past even if they wanted to. About a week before I began dating my wife of eight-and-a-half years (the first weekend of December ’95), I bumped into a woman I’d been interested in at a party in a Black section of Pittsburgh. She was working on her doctorate in psychology, her focus on developmental psychology. Even though I was now a Spencer Foundation Fellow (meaning no money worries for a whole year), I knew that I didn’t have enough money to take a vacation from my 500-page thesis. I’d been sending about a tenth of my fellowship money to my mother to help her and my younger siblings out after a fire at 616 had left them homeless. Of course, the woman who I had been talking with didn’t know about my family. Nor did she know how much money was part of the Spencer fellowship.

What she did say, though, reflected the insensitivity of those of us who are truly middle class. “Why don’t you just take out a student loan and use it to go on vacation. That’s what I did. I took out $6,000 and used it to go to the Bahamas last spring,” she said. I was in shock after hearing that revelation. Not only did I think it irresponsible. Her response showed her sense of middle class American entitlement that has consumed anyone with enough income to have a credit card. But her response also told me that I may never meet anyone in my life who has succeeded against similar odds to have a successful life.

The strange thing is, there are plenty of people like me in America and all over this world. They are a silent minority, bucking the odds of their socio-cultural-economic mobility into a middle or even a privileged class. Yet, because there are so few people like us in our circles, our stories are muted, and are treated as if no one else could possibly do what we’ve done. Rather than encouraging us to share our stories, most folks in our lives inadvertently suppress our urge to share ourselves in that way. There is a real point here, though. That even though I may be an outlier — and my story original and unusual — there are lessons to be learned from my and others’ stories about hard work, smart work, serendipity, faith, seeking and getting help, and so many other things that may be helpful. To poor urban Black males, poor Whites, policy makers, and others who could easily give up on this world. Yes I am an outlier. But that doesn’t mean that everyone else has to be typical.

One of the most interesting classmates I got to know a bit while in Mount Vernon’s Humanities Program was a guy named JD. We were hardly friends. But despite our fight in seventh grade, the attempts to intimidate and the put-downs, we talked frequently about politics, religion and philosophy. It was a strange acquaintanceship.

Among many other things, JD saw himself as a Marxist sympathizer, someone who could defend the Soviet Union despite its violations of human rights and propensity for keeping its failures secret. Of course, naive and impoverished me often defending the U.S. against JD’s Marxist mantra that the country was an “imperialist pig” and promoted “greedy capitalism” above all else. This was often a running conversation that we had through our junior year at Mount Vernon High School. That is until he became preoccupied with dating and other issues in his life.

Despite my protestations of JD’s portrayal of America and Americans, I knew that he was right. I mean, who could defend David Stockman and supply-side, trickle-down economics when a generation of American workers — my mother included — were losing jobs or having their wages cut? I knew intuitively that supple-side economics meant that the wealthy would be become wealthier and that families like mine would be left behind. I understood that Reagan would never give a speech that addressed my concerns or my family’s concerns. I felt insulted when I watched as Reagan’s Secretary of Agriculture John Block pretended to live off of a welfare check and food stamps for a month in ’83 — in his own house! Ultimately, I knew that greed was at the heart of American conservatism and capitalism.

Of course, in my responses to JD, I couldn’t fully articulate this. I did sometimes say that communism couldn’t work because it didn’t account for greed. And as it turned out in the former Soviet Union, communism didn’t account for greed. Among the Russian mob, with leaders of the Politburo. Greed, of course, is but one of the so-called Seven Deadly Sins. Greed, though, is based on a desire to have more, to obtain something that may or may not belong to you, to garner something that you may or may not deserve. Capitalism, in a nutshell, is controlled, regulated greed.

That doesn’t make capitalism evil. It is a philosophy of economic realism. Without stocks, bonds, merchants, bankers, traders, businesses and corporations, the only way to become wealthy in human societies would be through raw aggression. You know, when someone could just bully or kill someone to obtain their property. Capitalism allows for folks to obtain wealth in civilized, if unequal means. Besides the reality that capitalism in its purest form can and does create huge gaps between the rich and the poor, the fact is that there is no such thing as pure capitalism or a pure free market. In order for capitalism to work at all, there must be rules and regulations around trade of goods, services, information and money.

For most of American history, American capitalism has had rules and regulations that favored big business, supported industrialization over industrial workers, blocked free trade and and the free flow of information, and put money in the hands of affluent. Only since the New Deal era has American capitalism contained elements of socialism, or what the highly educated call social capitalism. That the rules and regulations of capitalism also account for the needs of workers for living wages, the ability of folks of relatively modest means to obtain access to money, goods, services, information and property, to “raise all boats,” as some like to say. Since the Carter years, American capitalism’s rules and regulations have favored businesses and the affluent over ordinary people. That’s the reality of American life for the past 30 years.

What has happened as a result of this is that that basic human desire of greed has been unleashed in a way that has been unhealthy for all of us, but especially for the poorest among us. Unlike the JD I knew in my Humanities years, I don’t believe in communism or in looking at the former Soviet Union as a shining example of economic equality. But without social capitalism, America isn’t much better than the Soviet Union. We can’t continue to afford feed the needs of those possessed with need and expect to have economic prosperity. Unfortunately for me, all of those years living in poverty during the Reagan years in hopes for a better day may all be for naught if greed continues to win out over social responsibility.