Segregation, Poverty and the Blackness Deficit

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday December 26, 2010 · 10:52 AM PST

2010/12/26 · 10:52

I spent Christmas day entertaining, and enjoying the intimate company of very close friends. An unlikely trio, really, economically speaking:

One—female, mid-thirties, wealthy family background (like millionaire-range: parents were owners of a mega-multinational advertising firm), currently not exactly “rich” (because the economy has taken its toll on her family’s business, and because she’s in the final throes of a graduate program, and presently applying for jobs in the $70,000 range—obviously, not in the US), but still, a bona-fide member of the “upper” class.

Another: male, pushing 50, stable middle-class background (father was a professor, mother an elementary school English teacher), current income approaching 6 figures, has been in the same job for 25 years; solidly (upper) middle class.

The third: female, pushing 50, born into the welfare class; former ward of the state with no “family background” to speak of, but with the trappings of middle-classness, hard-won from years of tugging at non-existent bootstraps; over-educated, over-qualified, underemployed, with current income hovering near poverty level, but clearly able to “pass”, economically, for a member of the middle to upper class.

b4uknowit

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday December 10, 2010 · 6:40 PM PST

2010/12/10 · 18:40

This is the third in a series begun in Fall of this year. Parts one and two dealt with the way hate and indifference (respectively) came to occupy the top two spots on my “fuckit-list”. Since September, there’s been radio silence, not because I’ve anything less to be pissed about--more because I’ve been preoccupied with my new job as an adjunct professor of English composition at a community college-like institution of “higher learning.”

The day before Thanksgiving, I found out I no longer have that job. The decision is apparently part of an anti-union-organization effort my employers assume I’m involved in. I’m not. Not officially. I support the effort, but have not signed on as an employee.

b4uknowit

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday September 15, 2010 · 10:42 AM PDT

2010/09/15 · 10:42

This is the second in a series of essays inspired by a comment from a fellow Kossack who said, in response to a flippant potshot posted in one of my late-night bouts of cantankerousness,

I hope you can write about those things you are angry about, specifically.

As I got to thinking about the specifics, I realized I was so pissed about so many things that I had to make a list. In the first installment, entitled Pissed, I talked about how "hate" came to rank number one on my "Fuckit-List". Now I'm not so sure because indifference takes a close second to hate in my book, and in fact might have to be the number one thing that pisses me off. So maybe my FuckIt-List is going to have to be horizontal rather than vertical--a series, not a ladder.

b4uknowit

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday September 12, 2010 · 2:04 PM PDT

2010/09/12 · 14:04

I’m pissed. Chronically. Irredeemably perhaps. Someone asked me the other day to write about the things that piss me off, and I realized: I’m so pissed about so many things, I’ve lost track. So I thought maybe it time I prioritize—what pisses me off most? You know, come up with a Late Show-list of the top ten things that piss me off, then figure out how each one made the cut.

Hands down, the thing that pisses me off most is hate. I realized that the other day as I was making my rounds, driving by one of several mosques I pass on my way to work and back each day. There was a Nation of Islam guy going from car to car in the meridian selling the latest issue of the Final Call with a headline that read STOP THE HATE.

b4uknowit

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday December 27, 2009 · 6:16 PM PST

2009/12/27 · 18:16

who are braver than I could ever be.

That’s a line from the Roches, the New York City vocal trio which, since the early 1980s, has been a constant source of inspiration to me—as musician, as woman with a mission and a vision, as flawed human being and champion of random acts of kindness.

OK, so I’m distorting the context here. The song was written as a tribute to the citizens of New York City, victims and survivors alike, who experienced the tragedy of 911 live in situ.

b4uknowit

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday March 04, 2009 · 12:51 PM PST

2009/03/04 · 12:51

This is a story from Barack Obama’s neighborhood, a place I have called home for the past decade or so; one I recently saw described as the “Center of the Presidential Universe” and have referred to it thus ever since. It’s just a story, really, but for me, it confirms what Marian Robinson once said about the south side of Chicago (a place I’ve often described as one where the ghetto and Gucci coexist):

I keep saying this: Michelle, Barack, and my son are not abnormal,” Marian Robinson said. “All my relatives, all my friends, all their friends, all their parents, almost all of them have the same story. It’s just that their families aren’t running for president. It bothers me that people see Michelle and Barack as so phenomenal, because there’s so much of that in the black neighborhood. They went to the same schools we all did. They went through the same struggles.”

(source: The Atlantic)

b4uknowit

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday February 03, 2009 · 6:28 PM PST

2009/02/03 · 18:28

It’s Black History Month, originated in 1926 by Carter G. Woodson as “Negro History Month.” What that means to me, for one, is that it’s the busiest time of year. As an educator specializing in West African cultural arts, and living and working in predominately African American communities, every month is “Black History Month.” “Black History” isn’t an event, it’s what I do. It’s my life. Day in, day out. The good, the bad and the ugly. It’s just that during the month of February, the rest of the country is reminded of this fact, and my services are suddenly in high demand.

b4uknowit

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday November 03, 2008 · 6:39 AM PST

2008/11/03 · 06:39

I've been an ardent Obama supporter from the beginning. And I remember, in the beginning, how a lot of fellow cynics accused me of "drinking the koolaid" (some of them are still at it!). At the time, I tried to explain what it was about Obama that convinced me he was the real deal: It wasn't the man himself--at the time, he hadn't yet achieved "rock star" status. Not quite. The Secret Service hadn't yet blocked the road to his house. He was still considered the underdog, and everyone pretty much assumed Hillary would be heading up the Dem ticket. I was taken by the effect he had on my students.

It's fun looking back and seeing how much of what I said at the time has since been amplified, magnified and brought to light. To the skeptics among us: I told you so, dammit. ;-)

Here, with minor edits, a blogpost I wrote in February 2007.

b4uknowit

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday October 27, 2008 · 2:34 PM PDT

2008/10/27 · 14:34

South 70th and Yale. I pass the place at least 4 times a week, often more. I run after school programs on the south side of Chicago. Our center is located a few blocks north of the posh Hyde Park neighborhood that is home to Barack Obama, but many participants live further south, within a 6-block radius of 70th and Yale, and I drive by there regularly to pick up and drop off kids in the neighborhood. Most of the 31 Chicago school children who were shot and killed last year on the “mean streets of Chicago” attend schools that are serviced by our programs in this neighborhood and others on the west side, where the body of a young African American male was found—presumably that of Jennifer Hudson’s nephew, Julian King.

b4uknowit

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday October 17, 2008 · 9:02 AM PDT

2008/10/17 · 09:02

I’m not sure whether issue 1064 has hit the newsstands yet—and the Rolling Stone is going to make us pay for the bad news this time: in an apparent follow-up to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2006 piece Was the Election stolen?, the current issue contains an article co-written by Kennedy and Greg Palast in which they claim “election has already been stolen”:

b4uknowit

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday October 13, 2008 · 1:33 PM PDT

2008/10/13 · 13:33

Wow.

b4uknowit

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday October 09, 2008 · 9:35 AM PDT

2008/10/09 · 09:35

This story is to surveillance law what Abu Ghraib was to prison law.—Jonathan Turley, Professor of Constitutional Law, George Washington University

As the nation prepares for a period in American history in which the President is actually having sex with his wife (and no one else) in the White House, a period in which real family values are on glorious public display—tastefully so, ABC News is reporting that

Newer
Older

RSS

Segregation, Poverty and the Blackness Deficit

Pissed. Pt. III

Pissed, Pt II

Pissed.

Here's a Song for the Heroes

The Misadventures of the Misses B4 and B.

Black History Month: Where did all these Black people come from?

The Rear View Mirror: Looking Back at A Post from February 07

On Barack Obama's Doorstep

Shit don't stick to a Rolling Stone: Obama Interview in Rolling Stone

Wow. The Toledo Speech Video

Sex, Lies and the NSA: Eavesdropping on Military Officers’ Private Phone Calls Home