The State of the Union, That’s Not Optimistic

13 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, Patriotism, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Work, Youth

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2016 SOTU, Accomplishments, American Dream, American ideals, Congress, Denial, Fables, Faith, Falsehoods, Great Men In History, Oligarchy, Optimism, Plutocracy, Pollyanna, President Barack Obama, State of the Union Address, Supreme Court, Vision

President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union speech, The US Capitol, January 12, 2016. (Evan Vucci, Pool/AP, via http://abcnews.com).

President Barack Obama ended his eighth and final State of the Union address in front of Congress and the nation last night with the words, “That’s why I stand here as confident as I have ever been that the state of the union is strong.” The president’s crescendo came after nearly fifteen minutes of describing the America that he sees and believes in. Obama illuminated individual examples of dedication and hard work and courage he has witnessed since he first began running for president in February 2007.

That President Obama chooses to look at his hundreds of — if not several thousand — examples of individual Americans striving for and maybe even achieving some sort of American Dream is admirable. But in light of the remaining 320 million Americans unaccounted for in his speech, the president’s speech isn’t an expression of optimism. President Obama has chosen the path of too many in power, to ignore how deep the wounds and injuries of the nation go, to fight what the US faces in terms of its cavernous and even cancerous problems with beliefs and limited actions. That’s not optimism. That’s both faith — albeit a bit misplaced — and blind devotion to an ideal that this America in 2016 has been moving away from for decades.

There are just a few examples from President Obama’s speech that point to a combination of near-religious faith and ostrich head-in-sand denial. Most notably:

The idea that the US economy has produced a net +14 million jobs since the day President Obama took office. That number is probably correct, but just like with all previous presidents since FDR, this number is hardly the whole story. Fact is, millions of Americans who lost their jobs during the Great Recession have yet to regain employment. Millions more have taken the jobs that the American economy creates the most frequently: low-wage, part-time, seasonal and/or contract work. And for those Americans who have been able to hold on to employment despite the Great Recession, their real wages are just in the last two years beginning to approach 2008 numbers. More importantly, their ability to move to a better or higher paying position has diminished since 2008, which is part of a four-decade-long trend. Yes, Americans should credit the Obama Administration for stanching the bleed from the femoral artery in 2009, 2010, and 2011. But the American economy still needs an arterial graft and a heart transplant.

2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump meeting with New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, Gillette Stadium, Foxboro, MA, October 21, 2012. (Nancy Lane/Boston Herald;http://bostonhearld.com).

President Obama’s claim that Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant, anti-Latino, anti-Muslim, anti-Black, and anti-feminist populism is just “wrong” and “doesn’t represent our American values.” Trump’s campaign certainly doesn’t represent American ideals or visions of a “shining city upon a hill,” to quote the late former President Ronald Reagan from his 1984 campaign. But despite what Obama said last night, Trump and his supporters and potential voters are a strain of American values and politics that has always been, and perhaps always will be. Trump is very much exploiting a clear-eyed vision of America as a White (and male) Christian nation, one with automatic exclusions from the club of those not entitled to the American Dream socioeconomically, culturally, and even spiritually. While President Obama acknowledged this in his speech, he ignored the reality that this strain of -isms in American politics and culture remains powerful and needs to be fought, not just wished away with a more conciliatory vision of America.

The idea that a better statesman, that an all-time great president like FDR or Abraham Lincoln could have bridged the divide in Congress, with the Supreme Court, and in American politics in general. This is patently false and extremely tongue-in-cheek on President Obama’s part. His great-man-in-politics theme has actually grown tired over the course of the past nine years. For as great as both of those presidents were, President Franklin Roosevelt and President Lincoln presided over an America in def-con-one crises, before America was officially a superpower. As terrible as the Great Recession and its after-effects have been, as deplorable as American use of force in the Middle East, East Africa, and South Asia has been, the Civil War, the Great Depression and World War II were foundational periods of change. President Obama might not have been the GPAT (Greatest President of All-Time), but in an era of an oligarchic Congress and a plutocratic Supreme Court, he did as good as job as FDR and President Lincoln would have. It still wasn’t good enough, but not because President Obama wasn’t a great person or very good president. Americans needed someone willing to make radical changes, and not just a centrist committed to a grand vision of bipartisan compromise and slow, incremental changes.

I will definitely miss President Obama as my president when he relinquishes the office on Friday, January 20, 2017 at 12 noon. But I won’t miss his brand of optimism. For optimism that relies on falsehoods about America as a meritocracy, Americans as a tolerant people, and American imperialism as a force for good in the world isn’t optimism. It’s a fable more vast and more deadly than any the Grimm brothers could have written two hundred years ago.

The Cold Light of Grades

05 Tuesday Jan 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, culture, earth, wind & fire, Eclectic, Jimme, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, My Father, Pittsburgh, Pop Culture, race, University of Pittsburgh, Work, Youth

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Ann Jannetta, Challenge Scholarship, Continental Airlines, Crush #2, Dean's List, Disillusionment, East Asian History, Financial Aid, General Foods, Grades, Grinding, Homesickness, Humanities, Internalized Racism, Masculinity, Mom, Mother-Son Relationship, MVHS, Newark International Airport, Phyllis, Pitt, Racism, Self-Discovery, Sexism, Stereotype Threat, Travel

University of Pittsburgh after a snow storm, Cathedral of Learning, downloaded January 5, 2016. (http://www.everystockphoto.com).

Dateline, Tuesday, January 5, 2016. Exactly twenty-eight years ago on this day and date, I left Mount Vernon and New York for my second semester at the University of Pittsburgh. I sensed, but did not know, that this was a make-or-break time for me as a student and as a person. At least when that day began. I had a 5 pm Continental Airlines flight out of Newark (my last time flying out of there, thank God!), and had plenty of time to kill before catching a cab to East 241st at 2 pm to catch the 2 Subway to 42nd, the Shuttle to Grand Central, and then the Carey Bus to New Jersey.

Then the mailman arrived a bit earlier than I expected, around 12:30 pm. I’d been anticipating and dreading this moment for seventeen days, since Saturday, December 19, the morning of my last final in Pascal.

The day I was scheduled to go back to Pittsburgh was also the day I finally received my grades. I earned an easy A in Astronomy, a B- in Pascal, and a C in Honors Calc. All three of those grades I expected. The C in East Asian History was completely unexpected. My grade point average for the semester gave me a 2.63 to start my postsecondary career. That might’ve been good enough for most folks. But of course not for me. My Challenge Scholarship absolutely depended on me maintaining a minimum 3.0 average at the end of every school year in order for me to stay eligible. That was my wake up call to what I’d allowed Phyllis, and my thoughts of her and me — and of her with me — to do to me. I didn’t even give Mom the chance to see my grades.

Because I was seventeen when my first semester began, my Mom was still the responsible adult and my Mom’s address the primary address for my academic records. This was the first and last time I received my Pitt grades this way.

I was so mad. But I was more disillusioned than angry, especially with myself and my view of the world. I knew I had no margin for error this Winter/Spring semester at Pitt. I needed to raise my overall GPA to a 3.0 or higher in order to keep my academic scholarship for my sophomore year. I could barely afford Pitt as it was, between room and board and books. It wasn’t as if I could depend on Mom and my father to keep sending me money. They had sent a total of $480 my way that first semester. I was still $1,200 behind on my Pitt bill, even with student loans and me working sixteen hours a week.

The days after I got back to my dorm I spent assessing my situation and what to do about it. The first decision I made was to consolidate the funds I managed to secure at the end of December. I had General Foods cover my remaining room and board payments for the school year, increased my Stafford Loan amount for the semester, and marched down to Thackeray Hall. I waited all day to take care of my bills, get my few hundred dollars of leftover cash from all of my aid — all of which I needed for books — and registered for classes. The last part took the most time, and was the hardest to do. The low the second morning of the semester was two below zero, and the high that day was eight above. Fahrenheit, not Celsius. I stood in line outside for over an hour in that weather surrounded by two feet of snow with the occasional winds and snow drifts before getting inside at nine that morning.

But in the moments I had that week, between some quiet time for myself and in discussing my performance with two of my professors (I just couldn’t believe I earned a C in East Asian History!), I realized two or three things. One was that I over-performed, given how depressed I was the last seven weeks of the semester. I missed nearly three out of every four classes in November, and nearly forty percent of my East Asian History class during the entire semester. I went without a textbook for Honors Calc I after someone stole it from my job in the computer labs in the Cathedral of Learning at the end of October. I managed a solid C in the course anyway. It could’ve been much worse.

Two was that my East Asian History professor Ann Jannetta was right. I really was “lucky” to have managed a C in an upper-level history course my first semester of college. I still acted as if I was in Humanities at A.B. Davis Middle School or MVHS, that a C was some indication of low IQ or confirmation that Whites had bigger brains or something. Jannetta was very encouraging. It was the first time any of my professors had made me feel like I belonged in college.

The most important thing I realized, though, was that I couldn’t let anyone or anything get in the way of me bringing my A-game (or A- game, maybe) every semester and in every course. Phyllis didn’t matter. My internalized sexism or what others though of me because of their racism didn’t matter. My idiot classmates or parents didn’t matter. Heck, being hungry, cold, and short on money didn’t matter. All that mattered was my ability to do what I did best back then. Get A’s in bunches when I needed to.

Of course, all these things really did matter. I merely decided to play the game of college that semester with a combination of fear and anger, arrogance and obliviousness. To the tune of a 3.33 and the Dean’s List! Yay me!

But when that semester ended on Saturday, April 30, those demons and distractions resurfaced. Oh, the days before I spent five days homeless and weeks eating tuna fish and pork neck bones!

Black Lives Matter and My Dreamy Heaven

01 Friday Jan 2016

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

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#BlackLivesMatter, Black Lives Matter, Dreams, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, God, Heaven, Institutional Racism, Jordan Davis, Life and Death, Michael Brown, Nature, Photons, Police Brutality, Quantum Energy, Quantum Mechanics, Racism, Renisha McBride, Revelation, Sandra Bland, Self-Reflection, Structural Racism, Tamir Rice, The Universe, Trayvon Martin, Walter Scott, White Vigilantism

A shower of photons, December 31, 2015. (http://www.theallium.com).

It was a strange place, this place of peace and comfort. To realize that at the quantum level, we each were all bundles of energy, that our bodies were but vessels that carried our real selves in our earthly years. That heaven was much, much more. Pearly gates and a white-bearded God? Nonsense! Try singularities and endless connections between the past, present, and future, between multiple universes and realities! We existed everywhere and in every time. There was no pain and no need, because we were everything and everything was in us and with us.

A high-resolution picture of the Pillars of Creation, in the Eagle Nebula, 7,000-light-years from Earth, via the Hubble Telescope, circa 1995, retouched January 5, 2014. (Armbrust via Wikipedia via NASA). In public domain.

In this space and place, I met them. The ones that once left us behind. The entities who once lived in the earthly realm, whose bodies were decimated, whose minds had been wounded. It was here that I met Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Kindra Chapman, Samuel DuBose, Joyce Curnell, Ralkina Jones, Raynette Turner, Christian Taylor, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Jordan Davis, John Crawford, and Jonathan Ferrell.

There were so many more bundles of light and energy in my presence that I felt myself cry. Not real tears, because while I could see and hear everything, I didn’t have any eyes or ears. I wanted to hug them all, but didn’t have any arms. I wanted to embrace them, but didn’t have any lips.

But there was one thing I could do. I merged my little bundle of energy with theirs. It was a joining more real and miraculous than anything I ever felt when tethered to Earth. I felt so alive, so free, so one with the universe. It was as if my material life was a nightmare and a dream, and this heaven the one true real.

In an instant, every feeling and thought I had merged with the feelings and thoughts of hundreds, if not thousands of other lights. And in that instant, the one question I had they asked and answered before I knew what my question was.

Don’t feel for dead. We are alive and well, and will be always so. Feel for the living. For theirs is a world of struggle and suffering.

They do not know who they really are. They do not know that their bodies are but machines, and their lives are not real.

In that singular moment, I understood. How could anyone in the living years truly appreciate the privilege of a corporeal existence when that is but only one form of life? If we as humanity could not know ourselves, how could we protect ourselves from ourselves?

I did get a glimpse, just a brief one, of another answer.

“To make our lives matter, fight for a better world. It doesn’t matter if you lose, but it does matter if you give up.”

As soon as that thought materialized, I woke up, sad to find myself in my middle-aged body, reconnected to my one quadrillion cells and Earth’s gravity and pressure.

————————————————————

A collage of Black and Brown people killed by police and White vigilantes, February 2015. (http://thefreethoughtproject.com/ via Gawker.com).

If I could, I’d want to meet all of the recent victims of police brutality and murder and White vigilantism and have a conversation. I would ask each of them only one question. Something like, “What did you want to get out of life?” or “What did you want your life to mean?” Because ultimately, that’s the most important question any of us can ask ourselves while we are alive in this physical world.

The structures that allow law enforcement agencies to assume those with Black and Brown bodies are criminals and undeserving of life pass those assumptions on to their individual police officers. The fourth estate does at least as good a job of passing these assumptions on to millions of ordinary civilians. The result is that thousands of us never got the chance to answer this most important question in our living years. If we cannot agree that this is a shame and a pitiful way to live, than we truly live in a nation in which Black and Brown lives (not to mention, people in poverty and others of different religions and ethnicities) don’t matter. For that — if for no other reason — is why we need Black Lives Matter, and we need Black Lives Matter to matter more, in the here-and-now linear world right now, in 2016.

The Fountain of Middle Age

27 Sunday Dec 2015

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, Mount Vernon New York, Movies, New York City, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Sports, Youth

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616, 616 East Lincoln Avenue, Aging, Back To School (1986), Beauty, Demographics, Family, Fountain of Middle Age, Fountains, Friends, Health, Philadelphia, Rodney Dangerfield, Self-Reflection, Youth

Alexander Stirling Calder’s “Swann Memorial Fountain,” Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, PA, August 18, 2012. (Donald Earl Collins).

By most measures, today marks my full transition from relative youth to middle age. Although, when I really think about it, didn’t I really hit middle age in December ’07, when I turned thirty-eight? The average life expectancy of an American male is about seventy-seven, right? And for Black males, it’s barely sixty-five. Given my family history, though, I won’t hit middle age for another two years. My maternal grandfather turned ninety-six three months ago, and my paternal grandfather lived until he was ninety-six. Even my father’s still moving along at seventy-five, despite his battle with alcoholism between the ages of twenty and fifty-eight.

I do feel things in my body and mind that until a few years ago were merely minor aches and pains. My right hip is misaligned with my left hip, likely from years of walking at warp speed, lots of basketball, and six years of my running regime. My L-5 vertebrae is a bit compressed, due to years of activity, including many years hunched over a keyboard trying to make myself into a writer, author and educator. My right knee has been a bother since I was twenty-four, but the issue has gotten worse in the past two years (maybe time for some HGH or microfracture surgery?). I now have white-coat syndrome (because most doctors and nurses get on my last nerve), and I’m mildly anemic. No, folks, forty-six isn’t the new thirty-six, even if I can still run forty yards in under five seconds, pop a three over my son’s outstretched hand or leg press 360 pounds.

Me via Photo Booth, December 17, 2015. (Donald Earl Collins).

But I still have good health and a mostly healthy body and mind. Since I turned twenty-seven, my weight has never been higher than 241 pounds (including clothes, wallet, phone, and keys) or lower than 212 (I weight 229 now). I can still memorize when inspired to do so, remember virtually anything important from my life from the age of four to the present, and could still probably win at Jeopardy if I ever got the call.

What’s more impressive, though, is whom remains in my life now that I’m no longer “young” anymore. My friends live all over the map, from the DC area to Pittsburgh to the Bay Area and New York, from Atlanta to Athens and from Seattle to Shanghai. I’ve made peace (mostly) with my family and my past, even if they aren’t always at peace with me. There’s my wife and son, of course, who are mostly likely the reason I’m still “young” relative to my age. Though I remain a Christian, I do not have the blind faith or evangelical -isms of my youth, and I’m at peace with that as well. I’m probably further to the left culturally and politically than I was at sixteen, twenty-six, or thirty-six. Because I’ve learned, sadly, that so much of what I was taught or fed growing up was either incorrect or a complete lie. But even with that sad disillusionment, I’ve come to accept the possibility of change for myself and the Sisyphean task that this nation and world always has been.

Me at 45 and 364.25 days, Pittsburgh, PA, December 26, 2015. (Donald Earl Collins).

Yet even the idea of middle age has changed in the minds of capitalists as the Baby Boomer generation has begun retirement and all of them have received their first AARP cards. Before 2000, the ad folks and entertainment folks had split up adults into the age demographics of 18-34, 35-44, 45-64, and 65 and up. Now, it’s 18-24, 25-54, and 55 and up. This privileges Baby Boomers (as usual) and props up Millennials (folks who used to be Gen Y). My middle age is not the same as Baby Boomers’ middle age. Even in demographic representations, money-grubbing capitalists give us Gen Xers little respect.

Rodney Dangerfield quipped this funny line in Back to School (1986):

Coach Turnbull: What’s a guy your age doing here with these kids?
Thornton (played by Dangerfield): I’m lookin’ for the fountain of middle age.

Maybe when I’m sixty-five (like Rodney Dangerfield was in this film), I’ll be looking for the Fountain of Middle Age, too. But my choice will be to stand in it for the next thirty or forty years!

Hollywood and the Sounds of Empire

21 Monday Dec 2015

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

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Acting, British Accent, British English, Commonwealth English, Cultural Imperialism, Da Vinci's Demons (2013-15), East vs. West, Historical Lies, Hollywood, Imperialism, Leonardo da Vinci, Linguistic Imperialism, Paris Climate Summit, Tom Riley, TV Shows, World History

Da Vinci’s Demons Season 3 Poster, October 2015. (Starz via http://www.ew.com/). Fair use due to direct connection with subject matter and non-commercial use.

I finished catching up on the Starz series Da Vinci’s Demons over the weekend, which included me watching the final episode via Xfinity On Demand last night. I will not provide any spoilers. But, I am at a loss regarding the one constant with most period pieces or fantasy TV series and movies. I simply do not understand the need for a British accent in everything that isn’t American in Hollywood or its near-equivalent. If my understanding of history is correct, Romans didn’t speak in British English with English colloquialisms like “Needs must” or “bollocks.” Alexander the Great was never “knackered” or “gobsmacked.” And Leonardo da Vinci as played by Tom Riley saying “codswallop” or “fortnight” or any of a hundred British sayings with a nasally, pretentious accent is about as accurate as firing a shotgun at a barn’s broadside from 1,000 meters away.

Brit Slang Explained: Translation Chart for a British Slang Bus Blind T-shirt Design, December 21, 2015. (https://anglotees.com.

In general, I love hearing and reading the differences in British and other forms of English when not spoken by Americans. With so many TV series and movies now done with international casts, though, it has turned into a form of cultural imperialism. Especially since I know that until two centuries ago, the average Brit sounded more like the average Canadian or American than like James Bond while attending Oxford. The change in accent was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain’s rise to superpower empire status during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Anyone who wanted to become part of the British gentry class — including newly monied industrialists and merchants — hired speech coaches to train them to speak English in the manner that we hear from most British English speakers in 2015.

Even with the rise of the US as the world’s leading superpower and its gigantic cultural and economic footprint, British English still is the language and sound of empire. At least where Hollywood is concerned. Because British English sounds imperial, high-class, important, urgent, and intelligent, according to the ears of many an English speaker, whether in the UK, the US, or elsewhere in the world. It doesn’t matter if the modern version of f–k didn’t exist until the eighteenth century. It doesn’t matter if some shows like Game of Thrones or movies like Lord of the Rings are complete fantasy and should have no adherence to any particular language or sound. British English is all that and a bag of chips, the cat’s meow, is dope for the English-speaking world.

For me, though, all I’m hearing with shows like Da Vinci’s Demons, Rome, Spartacus and The Borgias (the Showtime version), and with movies like 300 and Gladiator is a narrative framed by imperialism and the triumph of the West. It’s not just the British English accent and the imperialism it represents. It’s also how producers, directors, and actors consistently frame period pieces in the West vs. East, civilization vs. savagery narrative. Be them Ottoman Turks, Germanic barbarians or Persian emperors, they’re all simplistic antagonists for cinematic fodder that reinforces the West as good, godly and victorious. Or, rather, to quote Pittsburgh Steelers’ head coach Mike Tomlin, those without British accents are “the dead Indians” in these modern-day “cowboy” movies.

“Linguistic Imperialism” – what the world might look like if borders were based upon the 10 major languages, May 10, 2014. (The Economist via http://pinterest.com ).

And like Tomlin, in the case of screen entertainment, I’m kind of tired of the same theme running over and over again. Not only is depicting the Ottoman Empire or Achaemenid Persia as evil heathens when compared with Italy in the 1480s or Greece in 480 BCE a historical lie. It also reinforces the idea that when the West wields its power and imperialism, the world is always a better place. If the climate summit in Paris demonstrated anything, it showed how much damage the West has done to the world.

A century or two from now — assuming our globalized world doesn’t fall apart due to wars and climate change — entertainment will likely be highlighted with accents unfamiliar to today’s Western ears. Even if one of entertainment’s primary languages remains English, it will likely have another accent. Ace!

Holiday Traditions (really, not having any)

12 Saturday Dec 2015

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Hebrew-Israelite, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, My Father, Pittsburgh, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Work, Youth

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616, 616 East Lincoln Avenue, Abuse, Chanukah, Chiropractor, Christmas, Domestic Violence, Family, Giving, Haves and Have-Nots, Holiday Traditions, Maurice Eugene Washington, Mom, Mother-Son Relationship, Poverty, Receiving, Suicide, Womanizing

Christmas Holiday and Traditions Around The World ornament bulb, December 12, 2015. (http://johnseville.benchmark.us).

At my chiropractic appointment yesterday morning, my bone-cracking doctor of fourteen years and I got into a discussion of our holiday plans over the next couple of weeks. Her and her family will visit with extended kin in Virginia, while we’re heading to Pittsburgh to see my in-laws. During our conversation, my chiropractor brought up some of the family traditions she’s preserved with her handful of Christmases with her young daughter and two sons. Traditions like Danish pork roast for dinner, ornaments and other hand-me-downs from her grandparents and other ancestors as part of trimming the tree.

“I wouldn’t know anything about traditions. Matter of fact, there were eight years growing up where we didn’t even celebrate Christmas,” I said, with no forethought about what her reaction might be.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” my chiropractor said in a quiet yet somewhat shocked tone, as if I’d ruined the Christmas spirit for her kids.

“That’s what happens when you go up in poverty,” I said apologetically, realizing that I might have cost my chiropractor some peace of mind this holiday season.

Even at nearly forty-six, I can still say things without thinking, causing others to have to think more than they normally would. Sometimes, it’s without intent or malice, sometimes it’s because I don’t give a crap what people may think. Regardless, it’s certainly not because I want people to feel sorry for me or to give me a hug.

The truth is, the only holiday traditions I have come either from my wife or her family or were born out of my circumstances. Like making super-sweet, two-packs of Fruit Punch Kool-Aid and mixing it with either ginger ale or Sierra Mist for either Thanksgiving or Christmas. Or getting our son’s Christmas presents ready for him without him knowing the night before. Or me making some holiday/birthday cake for me and us (since my birthday is two days after Christmas). And often going to a soup kitchen, homeless shelter or other venue to give away clothes, toys, money, my time in knowing that no matter how I might feel about my life, plenty others have it much worse.

The truth is also more complicated than simple poverty. Up until my eighth birthday in ’77, my Mom and me and Darren (with either my father or my idiot stepfather) celebrated Darren’s birthday, Christmas and my birthday as separate or nearly separate events. Some of my best times growing up were those days. Then, when the hyperinflation of the late-1970s kicked in — along with a second marriage and two more mouths to feed — Christmases ’78 and ’79 consisted of a fake two-foot table tree, a new shirt or sweater and a new pair of slacks. There were no birthday celebrations for me.

A contemporary Candelabrum in the style of a traditional Menorah. United Kingdom, Chanukah service, December 2014. (Gil Dekel; http://www.poeticmind.co.uk; via 39james via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via CC-SA-4.0.

Between Christmas ’80 and Christmas ’88, we didn’t even have the fake dwarf tree. Of course, four of those years we were Hebrew-Israelites. But there is this holiday known as Chanukah that also occurs in December, in which Torah believers celebrate the Festival of Lights with eight days of gifts and giving. But these were also the worst of our poverty-stricken years, and we could barely afford one candle for the menorah, much less eight or nine. The best gift I got those years was my idiot stepfather being out the apartment at 616 and on the prowl for other victims for his fast-talking nonsense about making money and living a godly way-of-life. I also attempted suicide on my fourteen birthday, not exactly a tradition worth repeating.

Finally, in December ’89, we had our first Christmas at 616 with my Mom having divorced my now idiot ex-stepfather. She bought a fake full-sized tree. I bought my four younger siblings gifts big and small for the holiday. My mom even made me a Duncan Hines chocolate cake with vanilla icing for my twentieth birthday that year. We didn’t have much, but what we did that year meant so much as we moved into the 1990s.

In all of my adult Christmases, I’ve actually only done one in Pittsburgh prior to our trip coming up in eleven days. It was Christmas ’98. That week, perhaps the only important tradition I’ve ever been a part of began. I moved in with my then girlfriend Angelia, mostly as a cost-cutting measure, partly out of love and concern for our respective futures. We’ve been living together and celebrating the holidays ever since!

Fisher v. University of Texas: Supreme Court Takes Up Affirmative Action (Again!)

09 Wednesday Dec 2015

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

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Affirmative Action, Bakke v. University of California at Davis (1978), Delusions of Grandeur, Fisher v. University of Texas (2015; 2012), Gratz v. Bollinger (2003), Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Clarence Thomas, Narcissism, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), Racism, Social Darwinism, Stereotype Threat, Supreme Court, Supreme Court decisions

Abigail Fisher, second from right, listens as her lawyer Bert Rein, center, speaks with reporters, Supreme Court, Washington, DC, December 9, 2015. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP; http://msnbc.com).

I wrote this a bit more than three years ago, when the Supreme Court first heard the case of one Abigail Fisher against the University of Texas admissions policy in October 2012:

Abigail Fisher has joined Allan Bakke, Jennifer Gratz/Patrick Hamacher and Barbara Grutter as part of a list of Whites who have used race as an excuse because they faced a road block for maybe the only time in their lives. The idea that we should have race-neutral college and graduate school admissions policies in a country that’s far from race-neutral shows an enormous sense of unacknowledged entitlement and privilege.

Here’s why. Using myself as an example, I graduated Mount Vernon HS (NY) in 1987, 14th out of 545 students (the top 3% of my class), with a 3.83 GPA on a 4.0 scale, with an 1120 SAT (a 1220 on today’s SAT). I didn’t get into Yale, but was accepted at Columbia and the University of Pittsburgh. Money was an issue, as I ended up going to Pitt because they offered me an academic scholarship, while Columbia offered a private investigator into my father’s finances. Still, my grades would’ve easily knocked Fisher out of contention at UT-Austin, as well as Gratz and Hamacher.

I also think about the two decades I’ve spent teaching high school, college and graduate students. The most consistently obstinate students I’ve taught have been White students who thought they knew more than me. They didn’t get that context always matters when interpreting history, especially something like affirmative action. For those students, for Fisher, et al., and for the Supreme Court, entitlement matters more than context. Facts, circumstances be damned.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

I was wrong about one thing in my earlier post. I based my comparison of my SAT score from 1986 on revisions to the standardized test in the 1990s, not in the 2000s, when they added a third section. Based on that, my educated guess for a score in that period would’ve been between a 1850 and 2000 (between the 60th and 70th percentile).

Today, the Supreme Court heard from Fisher’s and the University of Texas’ lawyers — again, about the efficacy of using race as part of a larger formula for achieving demographic diversity in the state higher education system. During today’s oral arguments, the ever-brilliantly racist Justice Antonin Scalia pressed the University of Texas on why they needed to account for race (and apparently, for class as well) in their admissions plan at all, considering the academic issues many Black student face.

Scalia said, “it does not benefit African-Americans to — to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a less — a slower-track school where they do well.” He added that “most of the black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas. They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they’re — that they’re being pushed ahead in — in classes that are too — too fast for them.”

It is fairly obvious that Scalia and at least three other justices (including his intellectual puppet Justice Clarence Thomas) would do away with affirmative action sooner than Scalia and Thomas could suck down two one-gallon tubs of rocky road ice cream. But the veneer of racism, the assumption that Blacks are “too slow” for elite public universities, the Social Darwinist interpretation of higher education? Or assuming that Blacks who go to lesser known institutions, particularly HBCUs are getting a lesser and slower education as a result? Scalia doesn’t know his history, and doesn’t care to know the history of Blacks in higher education at all.

Given the direction the Supreme Court is leaning, it may take a burgeoning Black Lives Matter movement of the scope of the Civil Rights Movement of fifty years ago to reverse this court’s attempt at a twenty-first century version of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Let’s not forget, though. There are millions of Scalias and Thomases out there who firmly believe that African Americans — even those with excellent grades, high test scores, and lots of passion and intellectual drive — deserve nothing more than a jail cell, a janitor job, or a bullet to the brain.

But what makes their perspective worse is that Scalia, et. al, are cutting off their collective noses to spite the country’s face. It won’t be just high-achieving African American students losing out if the court curtails or renders race-based admissions policies unconstitutional. A decision like that will hurt millions of White students as well. Not just because segregated higher education could eliminate a diversity of ideas and thinking and will poison the wealth of knowledge and efforts toward a better American society through the benefits of the college experience. It will also mean that Whites like Abigail Fisher will no longer have an easy and vulnerable scapegoat for their educational failures. The Abigail Fishers will be experiencing their own form of stereotype threat. Oh, how will they hold on to their narcissism, their intellectual delusions of grandeur then?