AIG as Allegory

A few weeks ago, Sterling Publishing released the hardcover of Becoming American: The African American Journey. (click title to buy), penned by Scholar in Residence and Director of the Schomburg Library Howard Dodson. Don't the timeline formatting fool you. This is not a typical "Black History Month Special"...the latest iteration of the high school project timeline. Dodson delivers an interactive, ever-expanding web of linkages rather than a straight unbroken line, weaving art, literature, war, politics and social/economic upheaval into a comprehensive chronicle. How else can one sum up a people, as metaphor for a nation, in 144 pages, encompassing five centuries?

Barack Obama is not at the end of any continuum; he's merely at the newest, dew-dripping edge of the intricate web. There's no special adulatory chapter or insert. The web grows.

And so what's the weft and weave at the end of Dodson's web, where Obama spins a new paradigm? Knocking Iraq, world climate and world suffering off the evening news is the AIG morass. In our non-reading, blog news as real news shallow world, we tend to measure history in terms of hot button big name crisises. Naturally this applies to measuring presidents. FDR not with the Depression by World War Two, George W. with 9/11.

A lesson from Becoming American might be that the true measure of a people and a nation--thus the President--might be the response to these non-mythic crisises. Anyone can be hero or scum in the face of the Abyss. It takes true leadership and vision to met a little nugget of that Abyss. So consider it this way:

Not JFK and Cuban Missile Crisis, but JFK and James Meredith entering the U. of Mississippi, or George Wallace barring the doors at 'Bama, or the assaults on Freedom Riders.

Not Harry Truman and Korea, but Harry Truman and the 1952 Steel strike.

Not George Washington forming a our first government under the Constitution, but George Washington responding to the Whiskey Rebellion.

Not Reagan and the Cold War, but Reagan and the Air Traffic Controller Strike.

Not W. and 9/11 or even Hurricane Katrina, rather, W. and his first proclaimation against stem cell research.

And not Abe Lincoln and Ft. Sumter, but Abe Lincoln and the struggle for the Emancipation Proclaimation.

And so Barack Obama faces the same "smaller" yet vicious chimera embodied in the AIG bonus controversy. Small potatoes, relatively. But that's the danger in chimeras. True he tried to do this through channels, honor the ways of the past course of dealing despite his pledge of change. The result? Perhaps he should have pulled Eric Holder off the bench at timeout sooner. What U.S. District Judge wants to be put on the spot by no less than the Attorney General himself, armed with theories both banal and novel (I suggested a qui tam related cause myself) in support of injunctions stopping these bonuses? All this pending Congressional action, such that it is.

Or perhaps he should have immediately emulated previous battles with mini monsters. Harry Truman unilaterally jumping against both fatcats and unions to stop the steel strike. A geriatric George Washington literally mounting his horse as literal Commander in Chief to tell folks look, we have a government, you have to pay taxes and you will follow the law. Teddy Roosevelt taking a hodgepodge of untried or even inapplicable antitrust laws to go after Robber Barons (Rockefeller and JP Morgan would have proud of banks, wall Street, Big Oil, Big Pharma etc...up till this Fall). And Teddy stepped in, uninvited, to halt the "little" 1905 war between Russia and Japan. History grows from this little war. Russia begins its short dive to decay and revolution; Japan becomes a modern empire and begins its long march to imperialism, ending forty years later in the radioactive ashes of Hiroshima. JFK sets the federal government finally in the service of civil rights. And Lincoln decided he needs to somehow memorialize the end of slavery.

Little monsters--chimera--can hold a presidency hostage and taint it for posterity. Many people, riding a populist rage, don't like the way Obama has dealt with this one. Nevertheless, the message to arrogant money powerfolk is clear, and they are scared. Still, we don't yet know if AIG presages Obama as a golden, dew-glittering strand of silk in the web, or a dead knot. Either way, Howard Dodson's interconnected vision of history ravels and grows, ceaseless. We begin our sixth century in America. The journey's propeled and impelled by little, inglorious battles akin to the one Obama fights now. They made us who we are, as this one will make him.

RAFBN-Week 7

USAToday recently announced that explosive growth in Hispanic communities nationwide is now attributable to births, not immigration (illegal or otherwise). Which Hispanics and why, I ask. Like us, they are not monolithic. There is poverty and wild wealth. They endure invidious discrimination yet many practice it to an artform. They want to be "Americans" yet are often more insular than many Asian and South Asian groups. They suffer starker skin color, caste, origin and self-exploitaton issues among themselves than even we blackfolk. So who are "they?" No one's ever answered that question for mainstream USA. Are they "Castillan" (e.g. closer to Spanish roots...white) Cubans who've taken over south Florida? Those folks aren't the same as the legions of Hondurans, Salvadorans, etc. in Maryland, DC or Northern Virginia. Black Dominicans aren't the same as Mexicans. Mexicans--lord...Tejanos and folks in Arizona or New Mexico who've been around so long they are basically cowboys and rednecks with deep suntans and black hair...or the thousands of folks smuggled in VW buses...or what is the defining nature of the difference between the Chicano schoolteacher or dentist in the Valley versus the vatos and chicks in East LA and the ruthless scumbag gangsters of La Eme ruling California prisons? They're the same as the few Argentinians, Chileans running around up here going to grad school? Or the Panamaians descendended from black West Indians? Or...Puerto Ricans?

Geraldo Rivera--yep Gerry Rivers--only tickles theses issues in his book HISPANIC: Why Americans Fear Hispanics in the U.S. (Celebra, 2008). Indeed, much of the monograph becomes a memoir and sprinkled with illustrations and examples other Puerto Rican sucess-over-adversity stories. Trouble is--that's about Puerto Ricans. Culturally and legally (since the Jones Act of 1917) US citizens. More Brooklynesque than Italians, more Bronx than Yankee Stadium, more New Haven than Yalie George Bush. Yes, Geraldo takes on some of his FOX NEWS cohorts--and in this era of info-tainment and target demo fakery you have to wonder how genuine this is--and names names among Mr. Charlie's anti-immigrant crowd. Yes, Geraldo decries this friction between black and brown. But there's no nuance on one level...or blunt force on another which always gets short shrift: differences among Hispanic or "Latino" groups...and thorny social issues such as crime, education, too many young girls having too many kids, nihilism, alcoholism, drugs, lack of health care/insurance. You know--the shit they tag US with hahahahaha.

That Hispanic birth rate? Again--among which groups? Run of the mill families or second generation Mexican immigrants...girls just celebrating their Quinceanera by getting pregnant? Or some of my Salvadoran or Ecuadoran neighbors pumping out kids whilst papa can't find work during the housing slump? Note the birth rate's not some cultural dialectic. They have biology on their side. No one's waiting to finish grad school or make partner or move into the good school district before they get married and have kids; you don't see too many late thirties/fortysomething Hispanic couples at the IVF place. Lots of black people, though. Interesting. Maybe you will in a few generations, as caste/class displaces ethnicity as a determinant? Both Darwin and God say we are set up to be fecund and fertile by age 17-18, and if there's food and no natural stresses, we shall multiply. Hispanics are a testament to that fact. Geraldo? He doesn't delve into the details at all. Not that I expected him to be Bill Cosby in Come on People, but once he's beyond the immigration debate he merely touchs problems with success anecdotes re: Edward James Olmos & famous people. "American Me" is not a tale of inspiration. Then there is the matter of education, drop-out rates, etc. This is even more painful, and rivals anything in HBO's "Hard Times at Douglass High." Again, Geraldo rails against Anglo cretins and oppression, but doesn't winnow into nasty stuff. Finally, there is the seperate issue of Mexico which could fill a whole volume. History? Yeah, they didn't cross the border--the border crossed them. Issues unique to California, Texas? Yeah, and again, no true co-sanguinity with Puerto Ricans. He doesn't even presage the weird doings of Hillary Clinton with respect to turning Hispanics "against" Obama this year. Ironically, his spleen's aimed that Republicans.

Geraldo missed a chance for a multi-volume Michener-esque chronicle of diverse tribes who are thought of as one "nation" onto themselves. Still, there are interesting arguments, insights, stories. Me--I decry the lack of "coverage" for Brazilians (and okay, Portuguese and Cape Verdeans in New England--ya happy?). As black folks we likely have more in common with them...even the "white" ones who cling to their German/Italian roots...than we do most Hispanics outside of Puerto Ricans, Domincans and some Cubans. Best looking women in the universe, too. And you'd have thought THAT would tickle Geraldo's fancy! Talk about BIRTH RATE. Lawd. Anyway, HISPANIC: Why Americans Fear Hispanics in the US. Read and learn.

RAFBN-Week 2

Week Two: Summer's "read a f-ing book, n- "series...

James McBride is my hero. An African American LITERARY author of somewhat popular note. A brother who is not plagiarizing Candace Bushnell and replacing the white girls with obese church ladies lookin' to score wid the pastor. Who isn't writing thug fables and calling it "the reality of the street" (Ha!). Whose lead character isn't a conflicted handsome, mysterious dude romancing female lawyers who look and act suspiciously like video hoes. Whose lead character isn't a conflicted handsome mysterious clown romancing MALE lawyers. His Song Yet Sung (buy it at the right) is a paeon to the Chesapeake, to the slaves who toiled, yearned and struck out for freedom at water's edge; of course I'll try to best him with Yella Patsy's Boys. His first foray into the historical fiction genre came a few years ago with Miracle at St. Anna. I offer this selection in honor of ALL vets and dead soldiers (except Confederates--why the hell should those redneck traitors count?) this Memorial Day.

The setting is Italy, WWII, 1944. The true event is the Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre: retreating German (call them German...stop with this "Nazi" shit) Waffen-SS Panzergrenadiers rounded up about 500 women, children and old folks--in retaliation for guerilla activity--and shot them, then burned them (many were just wounded so they were burned alive). The other element is the 92nd Infantry--a segregated combat unit which encompassed most of the old "Buffalo Soldier" infantry regiments. Led by incompetent and racist white officers, plagued by so-called "Greatest Generation" white boy GIs on the one hand, they must also deal with a desperate enemy hell bent on taking as many Americans with them to the bitter end (the Waffen-SS were the most fanatical German troops).

Here's where it gets interesting. McBride gives us a sweet yet dim witted black soldier (think Lenny from Of Mice and Men with a rifle and a tan) who befriends an orphan against the backdrop of this atrocity. Allegory's all there on many levels, including a symbolic device with a statue's head; pain, bravery, treachery, love, redemption...an miracles...ensue. And don't look for the usual "cross-section of society" stereotypes re: the dudes in the group of four black soldiers caught behind German lines. Read/re-read this book before Spike Lee's film comes out. McBride penned the screenplay but Spike's already up to his old bullshit braying and self-promo--given his pretty much needless attacks on Clint Eastwood for "Flags of Our Father/Letters of Iwo Jima" and Speilberg for "Saving Private Ryan". Interesting as Clint's ALWAYS been a thoughtful, artful director and even did the Charlie Parker biopic. Did you, Spike? Nah. So shut up. Speilberg did The Color Purple and yeah--Amistad. Did you, Spike? Nah. So shut up. Why not A Soldier's Story? Or any number of films and TV-movies of the week on blacks and WWII, blacks and any war (hey you can option Yella Patsy's Boys once it drops and show the freed slaves burning down the White House with the British in 1814 if you want--one of those patented moving shots of your on Dolley Madison realizing she gotta run before she's caught would be cool...). Going into the merits of his attacks on the WWII movies is silly as the attacks are silly; again I'm sure 99.99% of it is just his ego/personality, and I'm praying my hero Brother McBride tempers that stuff. Would he allow Hollywood succubus to steal his soul, a la Mariane Pearl and Brangelina in A Mighty Heart? Likely not. He's my hero, after all. Read and learn.

RAFBN-Week 1

Welcome to the inaugural post of my Summer Reading Campaign. Hope you will enjoy my selections. Every Sunday evening, from now to the week before Labor Day, I will recommend one book and of course hope you will read it. These aren't necessarily reviews, and yeah, there may be a spoiler or two, but come on--most folks read a book based some tease of the spoiler anyway, okay? By the way RAFBN is an acronym for my favorite Hip Hop parody satire "Read a F--- book, N---" Satire's supposed to dig into deeper issues, so if you're offended by the acronym it usually means you're too shallow to get it. (wink)
The first selection is entitled One Thousand White Women, by Gary Fergus. No, the title's not about NFL groupies, or Reggie Bush or the USC hoops/football team's appetite. It is 1875. The Cheyenne Indians ponder the genocide of the East Coat and New England tribes over the course of 200 years. They've seen the futile battles of the Indians of the Midwest under Tecumseh. The so-called "Civilized" Tribes of Seminole, Creek, Choctaw and Cherokee in the South have been ripped from the their lands and hauled away to Oklahoma. They know it will only be a matter of time before the mighty Sioux fall dead on the plains, and the Apache are pried, bloodily, out of the desert. Their only hope of avoiding being erased: in return for ponies, disarming, getting out of the white man's way, they will ask for 1000 white women of breeding age. The aim? Marry them, learn from them, impregnate them, and build a generation of offspring that will have the rights of Americans and thus help the Cheyenne assimilate into this terrifying new world. These children will carry at least some tiny seed and memory of the Cheyenne people forward. Better that than be wiped out.
The chiefs travel to Washington to make a peace plea to President Grant. Though already beseiged by claims of corruption and the drain of Reconstruction in the South, the Grant Administration agrees to a sit-down. The First Lady literally faints dead away when the chiefs share their plans at a White House luncheon in their honor. The 19th Century equivalents of O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity go ape in their newpspaer columns. The Indians barely get out without being lynched...yet secretly, Grant assents to the request. Might not be a bad idea--pacifying the Indians without killing them all. So the word quietly goes out to prisons, debt farms, young womens homes (reform schools/orphanages for teenage girls), lunatic asylums. Along with women who willingly want to start over--including some freed slaves who see nothing but terror and ruin in the South and who likely want kids with good hair--the women arrive in the Dakotas. Chaos ensues...and not the happy sit-com kind.
Of course, this didn't really happen. This brand of historical fiction is a new one and breaths life in the genre. The narrative is that of a fiction character named Mary Dodd, who's sprung from a mental hospital as part of the brides-for-Injuns plot.
Not good for a beach read, but beats picking your ass whilst you wait in airports, train depots, on Metro platforms, in traffic (as a passenger...safety first) or as your kid's in line registering for summer camp. Read and learn...

And yet another mirror...Bill Maher?

Bill Maher is a douchebag(or is it scumbag?), but at least he admits it. And sometimes, not often, he hits things right on the nose. This is from his HBO show this week. Now, if you want to annotate this hilarious solo with a socio-economic-political history of the US from the Revolution to the election of 1800 (Jefferson becomes Prez over Adams...also on HBO!), to Jackson, to the rise of the Know-Nothings to 1860 to the death of Recontruction to the pre-emption of the Populists to the death of the Frontier and the election of 1898 to on and on...whew...go back to college. But, for the quick and dirty as of 2008, regard (and advance to about 2 minutes in if you want the bare, nitty gritty):