Banning the Term “Legislate Morality”

23 Friday Apr 2010

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Sports

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"legislate morality", Ben Roethlisberger, Culture, Michael Wilbon, Morality, NFL, Pardon the Interruption (PTI), Pittsburgh Steelers, Politics, Pop Culture

I love Michael Wilbon’s work as a sports journalist, columnist with The Washington Post, as a commentator on the NBA on ESPN/ABC, and as co-host of Pardon the Interruption (PTI) on ESPN with Tony Kornheiser. I’ve loved his work for a bit more than two decades, certainly in comparison to Pope Lupica and the other holier-than-thou sports reporters and columnists out there these days. I find him refreshing as a journalist and writer, and an unabashed and unafraid host when it comes to how sports and American society intersect.

But I found myself bitterly disappointed in Wilbon’s “can’t legislate morality” comment on PTI on Wednesday, April 21. Wilbon said this in response to the NFL’s six-game suspension of two-time-Super Bowl-winning-quarterback and Pittsburgh Steeler Ben Roethlisberger for the latter’s violation of the league’s personal conduct policy. The NFL “shouldn’t legislate morality,” Wilbon said, as Roethlisberger “hadn’t committed a crime.” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, the league, and the Steelers ownership were all “overreacting,” according to Wilbon. Well, Wilbon has certainly earned the right to be entitled to his opinion. But, as my wife has said to me on countless occasions, Wilbon’s also entitled to be wrong.

Societies, governments, employers and families “legislate morality” every single day, and have been doing so for as long as there has been a human civilization on this planet. Murder, stealing, banking regulations, adultery, and certainly sexual assault and rape are all examples of us “legislating morality” over the past five millenia. Now, I’m not totally naive — I know what Wilbon was attempting to say (I think). That because Roethlisberger wasn’t arrested, indicted or convicted, that the issue of his alleged encounter with a twenty-year-old White college student whom he helped become incredibly intoxicated is now a moral one, not a criminal one. Yes, this is true. But what would ESPN do to someone like Wilbon in the same situation? What would the University of Maryland system do to me in that situation? Would ESPN let Wilbon continue to show up for work without a reprimand, a suspension, or a quiet termination? Would I continue to teach classes, or would my employer consider not renewing my teaching contract?

We as a people legislate morality in ways that none of us really think about. Like Wilbon, most of us think that crimes are crimes and morals are morals, as if passed down from Moses or Hammurabi completely unchanged for the past 3,800 years. But moral issues have led to things that once were not crimes becoming crimes. The whole notion of illegal drugs or illegal immigrants didn’t exist in this country a century ago. Someone could’ve been a pot-smoking Polish immigrant “without papers” in 1910, and that immigrant wouldn’t have gone to jail. The folks in favor of making marijuana illegal or shutting off immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe didn’t end their crusades (however misguided) by saying, “Well, we can’t legislate morality!”

Or, to use much more recent examples, those White supremacists who said, “you can’t legislate morality” after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. For nearly twenty years, those opposed to Black civil rights argued that the issue of Black equality was a moral issue, not a legal or human rights one. Or those from the Religious Right who said, “you can’t legislate morality” when the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision came down in 1973 or in the wake of the growing Gay Rights Movement in the late-1970s. Of course, in both cases, those in leadership who were influenced by what we now call the evangelical movement have engaged in legislating morality since the early ’90s, attempting to roll back Roe v. Wade and putting laws on books defining marriage as only between a heterosexual adult male and a heterosexual adult female.

On the issue of civil rights, desegregation, reproductive rights and gay rights, what is and isn’t moral isn’t just a matter of perspective. It’s also a matter of power and bias and the people who are wielding that power in order to reflect their bias. I’m not saying that Roethlisberger actually committed a crime, or that he didn’t commit a crime. Yet we cannot say that what Roethlisberger engaged in was simply a violation of the generally accepted morals of American society either. Even if seen in the most optimistic light, Roethlisberger brought significant embarrassment to himself, his team and teammates and the NFL. An executive at a Fortune 500 company could no more get away with going on a bender and attempting to have sex in a public bathroom — an incident that somehow becomes public — than Roethlisberger could. So for Wilbon or anyone else to rally around the “can’t legislate morality” flag is somewhere between idiotic and shameful.

The issue with Roethlisberger isn’t that the NFL’s engaged in legislating morality. Nor is it that the district attorney in Georgia wanted to bring a case to trial but couldn’t because of insufficient evidence. The real issue here is that we as a society have made a thick distinction between what is and isn’t moral behavior and what is and isn’t criminal behavior, because they aren’t mutually exclusive. For progressives and libertarians, the distinction is whether one’s behavior is detrimental to the health and lives of other people. Black civil rights, gay rights, and smoking weed are among the things that most would assume would not harm the lives of other citizens, at least in 2010. Having an encounter in a bathroom that leads to another person going to the hospital with bruising and bleeding, however minor, is detrimental to that other person.

In light of this being Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month, maybe folks like Wilbon should be more careful when choosing words like “can’t legislate morality.” Not only do we legislate morality, societies will engage in this kind of activity as long as there is such a thing as a society. So I ask that everyone with a microphone and a camera pointed at them to stop talking about legislating morality as if moral values are as set in stone as the Earth orbiting the Sun. You’re merely reflecting your own bias, against women, gays, Blacks, drugs, science. Or in Wilbon’s case, a need to stay out of the judgment fray that moves us from one scandal to the next, a need to get to the day when Roethlisberger throws three, four or five touchdown passes in a game. On that part I fully agree. But say that, Wilbon, because that’s what you’re good at. Don’t say you can’t legislate morality, because last I checked, this isn’t your area of journalistic expertise.

My Father and Conservatives

13 Tuesday Apr 2010

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, Politics, Pop Culture, race

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Debate, Discourse, Jimme, NBA on TNT, Parody, Politics, Race

This particular post may be a bit much for some of you. So this is a warning. There are some verbal bombs in this posting. It’s a “What-If?” post about a hypothetical interview between me and my father. My father, though, at the height of his alcoholism, when even on his best days, Miller Beer wasn’t far from his mind. This pseudo-interview would be me as if I was Ernie Johnson as anchor for the NBA on TNT with Charles Barkley, being played by my drunken father from the second half of the ’80s. The topic? The last couple of years of the Conservative Movement, specifically its response to the presidency of Barack Obama and its obsession with spreading fear and fomenting violence, as if Armageddon were on our very doorstep. Remember: you’ve been forewarned.

So I asked, “Do you think the changing conservative movement has been a positive influence on Americans in the past two years?”

My father: “That Reagan a good man dere, but most of those dum muddafuckin’ conservatives don’t know shit. Reagan think you dumb asses too, and he dead! I’m tired of yo’ muddafuckin’ asses sayin’ a bunch of stupid shit all the time! You tea baggers need to go bag some the fuck else where! You dum muddafuckas, and I’m tired of yo’ shit! I beat yo’ ass and keep beatin’ yo’ ass, you dum muddafuckas!” Father Files 1.April 2010

Me: “Wow! I mean, are you in the camp of those progressives and other folks who’ve been using the text messaging acronym STFU in their comments about the Tea Party and other reactionary conservatives? Do you really think that they deserve this kind of language and response?”

My father: “I’m a big shot muddafucka. I make fitty million dollas a week. Look at dis dum lookin’ muddafucka conservative — dat dum muddafucka cain’t do shit fo’ me! Muddafucka! Got thoughts nobody want! I buy an’ sell muddafuckas ’round here! I kick yo’ muddafuckin’ stupid ass! And I’m da boss of the bosses. No conservative tell me what ta do. You conservatives don’t know shit!” Father Files 2.April 2010

Me: “Well, okay. Do you have any final words for the folks who have become part of the post-Obama conservative movement, or do you really care about this at all?”

My father: “You dum muddafuckin’ conservatives — su my dict! You dum muddafuckas. I don’ giv’ no money to no dum muddafuckin’ conservative. If you a conservative, I don’ want you ’round me. You betta get the fuck outta here!” Father Files 3.April 2010

Hopefully most of you laughed and weren’t too offended. Still, I have a few points to make regarding this. Our language toward each other has become so coarse and rough that we sound like my father when he was in his mid-forties, drinking many more days than not, and angry at the world. We’ve reached the point where most of us — me included — refuse to take the high road. In our language or actions. The Tea Party or other conservatives who’ve become like rabid dogs really don’t have anything to say. Which is why President Obama is a Nazi/Communist/Socialist tyrant (by the way, all educated Blacks who are too uppity are Communists, going all the way back to World War I ). Or why health care reform is a form of terrorism, alternative energy the downfall of American civilization, and talking with the world the road to Hell itself. Many of these folks are — dare I say it — closeted bigots who were crushed by Obama’s election in ’08. But we live in an era in which racism should never be mentioned, especially by people who look like me. So I’m saying it anyway.

But for progressives to respond with STFU across Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere? Conservatives, even bigoted ones who are tea-baggers and part of the birther movement, have the right to spout their idiotic ideology. I have a bit of experience with the bizarre form of Afrocentric Judaism that I grew up with or listening to folks spew their venom toward Whites in the form of Melanin Theory in the ’90s. We gain little to nothing with verbal bombs the equivalent of being in a bar with your blitzed father on East 241st Street in the Bronx in ’84 or ’85.

I must admit, though, that this hypothetical conversation (based on far too many real ones between ’82 and ’97) made me laugh a few sheepish laughs. Not of approval, but of understanding. Understanding that not everyone can maintain civility at all times. Certainly not me, and certainly not the likes of Tiger Woods. But try we must, even if the other side’s foaming at the mouth. Others, hopefully, will see that those who are foaming are in need of a rabies shot.

Raised on Hip-Hop?

10 Saturday Apr 2010

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, music, Politics, Pop Culture, race

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Authenticity, Cultural Segregation, Culture, Hip-Hop, Music, Politics, Pop Culture, Race

About seven years ago, I had lunch with a young woman and my former boss (see “What We’ll Do for $$$” post, July ’09) at some overpriced Dupont Circle restaurant specializing in Russian cuisine. It was just before the birth of my son Noah. There was so much wrong in that lunch, in that conversation, in the dynamics of that conversation. But in between the idiotic moments of conversation, there was something completely unrelated to it mentioned that topped everything else. In describing her background in the arts and humanities, the young woman said, “I grew up on hip-hop…”

“Huh?,” I thought. Where did that come from? At the time, I was thirty-three, and she was twenty-seven. That would’ve meant that the young woman was born in ’75 or ’76. Hip-hop was barely an embryo the day she was born, and hadn’t become a truly national phenomenon until the end of ’86. Even then, it would take until the ’90s for hip-hop to dominate the music scene. And, given that this individual had grown up in the mid-Atlantic region and in the Midwest — not exactly hotbeds for the development of hip-hop — I found her statement somewhere between ridiculous and as true as a hollow bell.

It did get me thinking, though, about how circumscribed lives in this country of ours can be when we believe that everyone should see the world the way we see it. As if everyone else’s experience can be encompassed in our little life story. “I was raised on hip-hop” sounded to me like this young woman’s family, friends, community and education was completely immersed in the development and growth of hip-hop. Short of her being best friends with Russell Simmons, Sean Coombs and MC Lyte, the statement’s unbelievable on its face. But it’s also a refusal to recognize that the idealized way in which we describe our lives and world doesn’t really add up to what our world was, is, or the way in which we would like it to be.

Now, there are a whole generation of folks who’ve grown up listening to nothing but hip-hop, dancing in nothing but hip-hop rhythms, reading hip-hop-based novels and watching movies with hip-hop themes. Those folk, born after ’82, have the right to say that they were “raised on hip-hop.” But what does that mean, really? That they see the world through the lens of hip-hop culture? That American politics, globalization, social justice, education, popular culture, sports and entertainment can all be seen by folks simply and completely through the lens of hip-hop culture? If it does mean that, then I guess that’s a’ight. After all, that’s how some of these people in the hip-hop era have grown up.

I suspect, however, that this isn’t what folks like the young woman I described earlier mean when they say that they were “raised on hip-hop.” They’re asserting a sense of Blackness, an essence of an understanding of being Black or African American that they assume cannot be distilled as easily through their parents’ R&B, Jazz or pop music, through dance or art that’s more consistent with more culturally integrative times. For them, hip-hop is being Black — or “keepin’ it real” — a step beyond The Lost Poets, a phase past Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson, a grittiness that can’t be expressed through Diana Ross, Michael Jackson or Quincy Jones. Hip-hop is being Black in an urban and impoverished context — or being real and cool, I suppose — even when the people growing up on it aren’t impoverished or aren’t even Black.

And I have problems with this assessment of what being “raised on hip-hop” means for so many who have embraced it without understanding the eclectic origins of hip-hop. Or without acknowledging that too much drink from this well can be as isolating as only embracing neo-conservative ideology or only believing that one denomination of a religion — much less an entire religious ideology — can provide all of the answers we will ever need in this life.

The rhythms of my voice, my ability to speak and write in standard English, my eclectic music collection and my understanding of math and science, all illuminate the fact that I have lived a life of many textures. Yet I am still a Black man whose life was shaped by poverty, racism, community, education, music, sports and so many other things that other African Americans of similar backgrounds face and often embrace. I would never claim that I was “raised on hip-hop” any more than I’d say that I was “raised on physical abuse.” I heard Sugar Hill Gang, Doug E. Fresh and Run D.M.C. between ’80 and ’86, and I experienced physical abuse, but I wasn’t “raised” by either. My experiences are a part of me, but they don’t define me, and I certainly wouldn’t allow myself as an African American be defined by them.

To misquote Laurence Fishburne’s character Morpheus from The Matrix (1999), I’ll say this: “What is Black? How do you define, Black? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then ‘Black’ is simply a social construct interpreted by our brains.” Being Black isn’t all that’s hip-hop, and hip-hop isn’t all that makes or defines anyone as Black. It’s the totality of our experiences and actions that do so. Even if we were “raised” on country music, lima beans and Ex-lax.

Can Do No Wrong

23 Tuesday Mar 2010

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, Politics, Pop Culture, race

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Accomplishments, African Americans, Blacks, Failures, First Black President, Obama, President Barack Obama, President Obama, Public Criticism

I wrote this piece several months ago, as a way for me to think through why such a stark split regarding those who do and don’t support President Barack Obama. Unfortunately for me, I sent it to TheRoot.com, which apparently receives and rejects about 50,000 manuscripts about Obama per hour. But given President Obama’s major political victory in the passage of the historic health care bill, it seems appropriate to post this piece (with some minor changes) considering the obvious divisiveness that this bill and the leaders who represent it have allegedly inspired, at least according to some of our more unhinged American narcissists.

What does it mean to us as a nation – and Black folk especially – if President Barack Obama fails? Now, I don’t mean failure in an absolute sense or failure as defined by the radical conservative fringe. Nor do I mean failure approaching the proportions of President Bush 43. Failure for President Obama in the sense that the change he promised in 2008 and 2009 doesn’t occur by 2013 or 2017. For millions of us, though, Obama can do no wrong, for he’s already done far more than we would’ve expected.

So, what approximately does failure for Obama look like? It depends on how much his promises for change are fulfilled. If unemployment falls below five percent. When the US has adopted a strong policy on climate change, alternative energy and universal health care – and not just universal health insurance. And even with the passage of the health care bill on March 21, we don’t even have that. It’s better than no overhaul at all, but nowhere near universal.

Other meter-sticks for change fulfilled include the possibility that geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, South Asia and North Korea have been curtailed, if not abated entirely. When the growing debt crisis the federal government and the nation faces have been solved. Or if the administration rolls back the expansive powers of the executive branch around intelligence gathering, detaining potential terrorists or use of torture methods. These are the signs of success, and for many, falling short of most of these would constitute failure. Even achieving half of this ambitious but necessary agenda would make Obama one of the top seven presidents of all time.

But for some African Americans, that would hardly be enough. Especially if they feel they’ve been left behind. If communities of color remain besieged with poor schools, poor health care, high crime and high unemployment, Obama’s work would remain wholly unfinished. If African Americans continue to experience inadequate access to living-wage jobs, affordable apartments and homes, and public services across the board, Obama’s presidency would be about what could’ve been. Without addressing these issues – for some African Americans and the rest of the country – Obama’s status and popularity would surely drop.

Yet, President Obama will still be one of the most popular presidents since FDR and JFK. Many, if not most Blacks, would see Obama as a towering beacon that lit up their early twenty-first-century world. So many will take pride in his achievements – however limited – that it would be as if Obama could never fail. His serving as president is – and likely will continue to be – seen as success by default.

That truth is the reason why few African Americans criticize Obama in the public eye. Nobel Peace Prize, a strong State-of-the-Union speech, honorary degrees, meeting with foreign heads of states. Every step is an achievement, every speech an accomplishment. White progressives and conservatives of every stripe fail to understand. Progressives may be invested in Obama. African Americans, though, have doubled down on the president over the past two years. For so many, anything that President Obama makes happen in terms of domestic policy and statecraft is icing on the cake. President Obama will be seen as successful because millions of us will refuse to see any of his mistakes as failures, to see him in any other way.

Even the reactions that I’ve seen to the health care bill’s passage reflect some of this “can-do-no-wrong sense” among African Americans, a mixed blessing reaction among progressives, and signs of the Apocalypse among teabaggers. It is what it is, and there’s not much more to say than that. Except that post-racial America looks very much like the America that I grew up in and have worked in for the past forty years. President Obama can do no wrong. But as Americans, we still seem unable to do much right as a people or by our people.

Walls and Secrets

11 Wednesday Nov 2009

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, Patriotism, Politics, Pop Culture, University of Pittsburgh, Youth

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Berlin Wall, Cold War, Coming-of-Age, Friends, Friendships, Introspection, Mihkail Gorbachev, Nuclear War, President Ronald Reagan, Self-Discovery

Crane removing part of Berlin Wall at Brandenburg Gate, December 21, 1989. (SSGT F. Lee Corkran/US Dept of Defense). In public domain.

This Monday should’ve been a momentous occasion for us in the US. It was the twentieth anniversary of the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, the effective end of the Iron Curtain and the Cold War. Although it would be a bit more than two years before the Soviet Union collapsed, and with it, the Warsaw Pact. Still, it meant that the fear that I and millions of others grew up with — the one about having a day of mushroom clouds and shock waves, gamma radiation and the end of civilization — was over, or at least, abated somehow. But knowing my fellow citizens as well as I do, I know that most of us gave as much thought to this as we do to where our tap water comes from.

More of us give more serious thought to Chris Brown and Rihanna, my Pittsburgh Steelers and New York Giants, and who our friends date and break up with than we do of our world beyond ourselves. Which is sad. Because if gave the larger world even a modicum of thought, maybe we would have the better world that so many of us want, but don’t want to work for. While the idiot American media spent as much time talking about where they were when the Berlin Wall began to come down, the rest of the world, at least, spent a bit of time thinking about what’s actually happened geopolitically speaking in the past generation.

When President Reagan said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” in Berlin in ’87, even our bungling fortieth president was talking about more than a wall. He was speaking of a geopolitical and cultural wall between peoples who otherwise had so much in common, so much so that it was disheartening, even criminal to maintain separation because another superpower needed nation-states as buffers. Really, what Reagan was speaking of was well beyond his own neo-conservative thinking. For the wall that really needed tearing down was the one in our own minds, the one that says that we can’t do or say or be a certain way because the cultural and political norms of our society say otherwise.

It’s what I took from the fall of the Berlin Wall in ’89 and Reagan’s speech in ’87 anyway. Sometimes, though, we must put a wall around those things in our minds that would keep us from thinking, being and doing those things that others in our lives would ridicule. In my little case, it was majoring in history, finishing my degree and possibly going to grad school for more degrees that would lead to steadier employment, if not high-paying jobs. In our money-is-everything world, that’s an invitation for family and so-called friends to clown on us, to say that what were about is like spending another decade in school to “earn another high school diploma.” It’s limited thinking, the kind of thinking common behind the Iron Curtain in the Cold War era. Or at least, that’s what our leaders and the international academic community have said.

It’s tough to walk to beat of our own drums, especially if we know in our bones, minds and spirits that we were born to do and say certain things in which others in our lives vehemently disagree. And when we become side-tracked by the pressures of people and events and things of this world, it becomes doubly-hard to find our way to our proper path. Without folks in our lives who can help, or at least listen, it can be a lonely, if rewarding road.

Not too many weeks after I was swept up in end-of-the-Cold-War-fever, I realized something about the previous eight-and-a-half years of my life. That I’d been living my life for the sake of others, be it God, my mother, my younger siblings, or for the euphoria of an A or A+. That just about all of the real friends I had came out of my Pittsburgh experience. That I was no longer living in fear of having my chest caved in (as he liked to say) by my now ex-stepfather.

At the beginning of ’90, I did a bit of an experiment. I still kept in contact with about a half-dozen or so of my former classmates from my Humanities days. Which in my case meant that I wrote them far more often than they wrote or called me, if they did any of that all at. I stopped writing. I only wrote them or called if they responded in kind. I found out fairly quickly that I really only had one friend from my gifted-track days.

So I built my own wall in the first few months of the 90s. I deliberately yet unconsciously managed to put everything bad that happened between April 13 of ’81 and September 2 of ’88 inside of that wall. I only opened it up to a handful of my closest friends, and often revealed the most gut-wrenching of events in the most academic and dispassionate of ways. It worked very successfully for nearly thirteen years. But in having a child, being a married man, working with thousands of students and doing work to benefit thousands more, I realized it was time to tear down this wall.

I couldn’t write and revise Boy @ The Window without tapping into this past, and all of the emotions involved with it. For most of us, it unfortunately takes an event like the fall of the Berlin Wall for us to be introspective and conscious of the world beyond our own nose. For me, that’s an everyday thing, something I think we all should aspire to at least a few times a year.

Born In The U.S.A.

08 Thursday Oct 2009

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Mount Vernon New York, music, Patriotism, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Work, Youth

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"Born In The U.S.A.", American Politics, Bruce Springsteen, Economic Inequality, Oligarchy, Poverty, Power of Music, Racism, Social Change, Social Justice

What does it say about a nation or society when a quarter century can go by and the same issues that were front and center then are ones that vex us now? What does it say about us when our standard operating procedure is to avert our eyes to problems that we know must be fixed yesterday? How should we see ourselves if the arguments of our grandparents and parents become our own, especially as we tidy them up for our children and our eventual grandchildren?

If I were Bruce Springsteen (and the E Street Band, for that matter), I might be a bit pessimistic right now. It’s been twenty five years since his groundbreaking single and album made him a household — and not just a New York tri-state area — name. All of his work prior to the summer and fall of ’84 contained threads of social commentary on America’s malaise. But Born In the U.S.A. and “Born In The U.S.A.” raised his level of folksy commentary to a new level, at least for those of us who weren’t listening to Nebraska or who hadn’t heard of the band or Springsteen before.

It was such a simple song. And yet it expressed all of the disappointment, disillusionment and disgust of a generation of folks who grew up seeing America one way. Only to find out that the promise of America the Beautiful and free that they were fed growing up was really somewhere between porridge and gruel. “Born down in a dead man’s town, the first kick I took was when I hit the ground” is such a bitter, yet appropriate way to start a song about a Vietnam veteran whose life never worked out the way it was supposed to. Work hard, do the patriotic thing, and expect to have a job and a comfortable life, if not a happy and prosperous one was the expectation of most Americans. Not poverty, debt, welfare, homelessness, drug addiction, undereducation, unemployment and incarceration.

I became a closet Bruce Springsteen fan because of “Born In The U.S.A.” With my mother out of work and on welfare, my father in the middle of his third decade of alcohol abuse, a stepfather with the familial skills of Charles Manson, I could relate to all of the rage and confusion in the song. It was a refreshing change from the coke-induced pop, R&B and rap of the period. The mid-80s were so weird. Between Springsteen and the E Street Band, John Mellencamp and U2, you had Thompson Twins, Doug E. Fresh, Madonna’s “Like A Virgin,” New Edition’s “Mr. Telephone Man,” Prince’s “Purple Rain” and “I Would Die 4 U,” and battles over who was the real Roxanne. At least some artists were awake and aware enough to write something for those of us whose lives weren’t exactly a Benetton commercial.

Here we are, a quarter-century later, and nothing really has changed. The highly educated have at least something to fall back on, while those of us with a high school diploma or less face a permanently uncertain future. The rich, while not getting as rich as they were just two years ago, remain far richer than those of us working hard but not getting anywhere. We are still fighting wars with little long-term purpose and without sufficient benefits to those who are fighting on our government’s behalf. Our government continues to drag its feet on anything that would benefit anyone with an income under $200,000 a year.

It’s no wonder that somewhere between two and three million Americans are in jail or prison, that three out of ten of us never graduate from high school, and that the richest one percent of Americans have a net worth greater than the bottom 80 percent of us. It’s such a shame that it could render all of us helpless. I, for one, may need to consider refugee status in a nation with even a modicum of universal health care and moderately less hypocrisy in its government.

But Bruce Springsteen hasn’t given up, at least in his music. His work continues to speak truth to power, to say things that most in the music world don’t have the courage or the innate wisdom to say. It’s unfortunate that what sells today is the bling of booty and booty, and not the thought-provoking lyrics and feelings of folks like Springsteen, of artists like Chuck D and Tupac, of those who dare to use music as a weapon of social change (although Pink, John Mayer and James Blunt are occasional exceptions).

With the end of a disappointing first decade of the twenty-first century looming though, maybe we can still hold out hope for a more permanent nexus between our wild world of pop culture and our need for a stimulated social consciousness. That kind of hope is what keeps me going.

President Obama and The Rules of Racial Standing

10 Thursday Sep 2009

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Eclectic, Patriotism, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion

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Birthers, Conservatives, Contradictions, Derrick A. Bell, Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well, POTUS, POTUS 44, President Barack Obama, Race, Rep. Joe Wilson, Rules of Racial Standing

President Barack Obama has a problem. And no, it’s not just emotionlessness, or fringe evangelical conservatives, or his attempts at universal health care. President Obama’s problem is the same one that every person of at least some African descent faces in America. His problem: The Rules of Racial Standing.

Of course, President Obama should know what I’m talking about. After all, he studied under the author of these rules while at Harvard Law, the one and only Derrick Bell. Bell, a two-time New York Times bestselling author in his own right, devoted a chapter in Faces at the Bottom of the Well to these unofficial Rules of Racial Standing. Bell’s point: that few– if any — of those of African descent have the legal, political or social standing necessary to address deeply divisive issues such as race. At least, without being considered irrational and discountable. Below is my summary of Bell’s Rules of Racial Standing, as published in my Radical Society piece “Rules to Live By”:

First Rule
(“Rule of Illegitimate Standing”) …No matter their experience or expertise, Blacks’ statements involving race are deemed “special pleading” and thus not entitled to serious consideration.

Second Rule
(“Rule of Legitimate Standing”) Not only are Blacks’ complaints discounted, but Black victims of racism are less effective witnesses than are Whites, who are members of the oppressor class. This phenomenon reflects a widespread assumption that…cannot be objective on racial issues…

Third Rule
(“Rule of Enhanced Standing”) …The usual exception…is the Black person who publicly disparages or criticizes other Blacks who are speaking or acting in ways that upset Whites. Instantly, such statements are granted “enhanced standing” even when the speaker has no special expertise or experience in the subject he or she is criticizing.

Fourth Rule
(“Rule of Superenhanced Standing”) When a Black person or group makes a statement or takes an action that the White community or vocal opponents thereof deem “outrageous,” the latter will actively recruit Blacks willing to refute the statement or condemn the action. Blacks who respond to the call for condemnation will receive superstanding status…

Fifth Rule
(“Rule of Prophetic Understanding”) …Using this knowledge, one gains the gift of prophecy about racism, its essence, its goals, even its remedies. The price of this knowledge is the frustration that…that no amount of public prophecy, no matter its accuracy, can either repeal the Rules of Racial Standing or prevent their operation.

There are exceptions to these rules, such as when a prominent Black throws other Blacks under the proverbial bus in a way that is consistent with the views of a majority of Whites, or at least, conservatives regardless of race and ethnicity. Or by having someone White or of legitimate standing vouch for his or her otherwise controversial views. These rules not only apply in a legal proceeding. They have found their way into every corner of American culture and politics.

With President Obama, we have a living contradiction of Bell’s Rules of Racial Understanding. Not only is he technically multiracial yet considered by himself and others as Black. Obama holds the most powerful political office in the world, maybe in the history of the world. On most matters he has standing the equivalent of the Sun when compared with the Earth. But because Obama’s also Black, he also lacks sufficient standing on the most controversial issues of our age. Anything involving race, racial bias, prejudice, religion, the growing socioeconomic divide, terrorism, American patriotism, civil liberties, or social justice is potentially toxic for Obama. While being president gives him standing few on the world stage could imagine — much less enjoy, being African American dilutes Obama’s standing at the same time.

And we have neo-conservatives like Limbaugh and Palin — and as of last night, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) — evangelicals, and much more obvious bigots that remind us of this rather interesting contradiction every week, if not every day. Birthers declaring that Obama is an illegitimate president we allegedly haven’t seen his birth certificate. Folks accusing him and Congress of creating “death panels” for the elderly as a way to pay for universal health care. Madmen bringing guns to town halls or hoarding guns because they believe that Obama’s the anti-Christ. The last time I believed that about anyone was when I was eleven years old, and just about as naive about the world as the fully-grown nuts rolling around now.

To say that this has nothing to do with race or Bell’s Rules is to suggest that many of us are so narcissistic that we can conjure up denial at will. But it’s not just Whites or conservatives (or, rather, neo-reactionaries) who can knee-jerk themselves into nonsensical “it’s not about race” answers. Obama and his administration have done the same thing. They’ve treated the political discourse and discord of the past eight months mostly with academia-like silence. Great if one’s attempting to rise up the White male-dominated corporate ladder or trying to get tenure at a predominantly White university. Not so great if you’re the President of the United States. Obama either sees himself as T’Pol or Spock, a logical, emotionless Vulcan. Or he’s taking cues from Michael Douglass’ character in The American President. Both of which communicate a certain degree of cynicism about his opposition and the American electorate in general.

Does this mean that Obama can’t be post-racial, or overcome the thinly-veiled racial, pro-business and anti-intellectual proclivities of his opponents? Does this mean that Bell’s Rules of Racial Standing could place a stranglehold on his presidency? Only if Obama and those who support him take a pessimistic approach to governing and social justice. Despite all the wackos out there, the yellow-journalism that is offered up to the public, and our own hysteria about the decline of our once great nation, Obama has an opportunity. He holds the keys to the kingdom, something that wasn’t supposed to happen until I reached retirement age three decades from now.

This is where Bell’s Fifth Rule on Prophetic Understanding becomes important. Without an understanding that effort on the most gut-wrenching issues is necessary, even if it results in a loss. Otherwise, there would no need for an understanding of the first four rules in the first place. Maybe that’s what has been lacking in Obama for the past five months, at least until yesterday. That sense that striving and struggle — risk-taking — is needed out of our leadership, even when that leadership flies in the face of what is comforting and familiar to most, whether it be shameless supporters or venomous opponents. Hopefully, Obama will do more than give speeches and issue communiques in dealing with Bell’s Rules so that we can truly have change that we can believe in.