Excuse Me If I Don't Salute...

It's not quite 24 hours since "the announcement". We got him, he's dead. Our special forces and intelligence community after almost 10 years finally tracked him down and killed him. The guy who took credit for masterminding the 9/11 attacks was shot dead and there are reports that he may have used one of his wives as a human shield before being shot through the eye by one of our skilled soldiers. Excuse me if I don't salute...

Now, don't get me wrong, I support our troops and anybody who would bring such horror on foreign soil must obviously understand the old saw, "Live by the sword..." but as I watched the coast to coast celebration of the death of a figurehead, a chilling but familiar thought crossed my mind. Whenever we have these world figures with overt ties to this government, our government's sideways dealings in other countries, there's a disturbing trend that sees these individuals rubbed out before they can reveal the extent of those ties. Look up Ngo Dinh Diem, Park Chung Hee, Idi Amin, Anastasio Somoza, Rafael Trujillo, Anwar Sadat, and Sadaam Hussein. By the way, has anybody seen Manuel Noriega? Excuse me if I don't salute...

Somehow the stories of what's being done by our government on behalf of mega-corporate interests go largely unreported and untold. Would there have been an Al Quaeda without the Reagan-Bush training and manipulation of Bin Laden and the Saudis to do their bidding. They were funded and deployed by the US to fight the war in Afghanistan that the Reagan administration knew they could never get support for in Congress. So after the Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of fighting an un-winnable conflict against Bin Laden's forces in the same barren wasteland that is the Afghani border today, what did we do? Did we reward them with funding, equipment, and materials to build an infrastructure? Did we send them nation-building consultants and engineers? Did we retrain them to embrace the democracy we so dearly love to export? Did we at least say thank you? The answers: nothing, no, no, no, and no! We left them high and dry with weapons and festering anger in that same barren wasteland that we're caught up in today. Did you ever wonder why we had a war-front there in addition to Iraq? "They hate us for our freedom." Right! Excuse me if I don't salute...

What's the point? I'm glad you asked. A reporter at today's White House press briefing asked the Press Secretary, "Under what legal authority did you go into Pakistan?" After the cursory response about believing that there was credible evidence to support the apprehension or killing of a HVT (High Value Target), the follow-up question was, "So would you have gone into any country to kill someone you considered a HVT?" The answer, "Since, we were able to get him there, there's no need to engage in that sort of speculation." So, here's my question: If Bin Laden was responsible for thousands of deaths and destruction here which made him number 1 on our Most Wanted List, then what would happen if the Iraqis decided that Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Blair-Rice whose deceptions are responsible for millions of deaths and untold destruction in their country decided to exact the same type of "justice"? So, while I'm trying to figure it out, please excuse me if I don't salute...

Where Are The Classics?

Some friends and I have had some lively discussions about our musical culture. Recently, the question was: "What are the new classics?" I'd like to invite you to participate. In other words, can you name 10 songs from each of the last couple of decades that will have true staying power? I attended the NCAA regional tournament games recently and each of the 4 teams had a pep band there. After hearing a couple of songs (Proud Mary & Billie Jean), I began to count the songs from the various decades. Over the 2 games, I noted 36 songs. These were portions of songs played during the various breaks in the action including timeouts, tv breaks, at half-time, and between games. Some of the groups also played the same songs. The tally: 3 from the 60's, 21 from the 70's, 8 from the 80's, 3 from the 90's, and 2 from the 00's. That meant there were 24 songs (2 of every 3) that were over 30 years old and 8 that were over 20 (1 out of 4). Therefore the definition that we were using as a classic is really quite simple. Which songs will not only maintain their signature sound (remember there wasn't any sampling in the 70's) but also still be played at parties, weddings, sporting events, cruises, reunions, and other fun social events?

We tried to identify some modern classics but perhaps because we're all coming-of-age products of the 70's and 80's, we found it extremely difficult to come up with more than a handful. So where are the tracks that in 20 years will compete with "Shining Star", "Flashlight", "Rockin' Robin", "Get Down Tonight", "The Horse", "Word Up", "September", "Rock the Boat", "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now", "We Are Family", "Boogie Wonderland", "Heard It Through the Grapevine", "My Girl", and on and on? Your input please...

Why is this a cultural question? Well, it seems to me that too many modern songs have become homogenized into this slurry of sameness that makes it challenging to remember them across the last couple of decades. Couple that with the extreme corporatization of the music industry that has mass-produced a formulaic sound that no long represents any particular culture other than youth and it seems that we may need to start our own counterculture revolution to bring classic back!

Identity Crisis...

While I was waxing nostalgic as I listening to some of the greatest music that this world has to offer: The 70's - Isaac Hayes, The Emotions, EWF, The Staple Singers, Mandrill, P Funk, Curtis Mayfield, Michael Henderson, Minnie Riperton, Heatwave, The Jacksons, Norman Connors, Chic, Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, and on and on and on, I had a sobering exchange with a female "friend", a sister, on Facebook. She posits herself as a member of the clergy and she had posted a picture of a very African-looking man that she was making fun of. She posted a caption that this was her "future husband - hahahaha". I privately mentioned that perhaps this wasn't the way that we Christians, especially those of us who purport to be called into ministry should be singling out another fellow human being. Her reply in short as she decided to "block" me: 'I was too serious and needed to recognize that GOD Has a sense of humor'. There the thought occurred to me -- what happened to pride that we used to have in our identity? What's happened when an ordinarily intelligent person considers prominent African features, GOD's Joke? Have we become like the sister in the Chris Rock documentary "Good Hair" who said that wearing her hair naturally had made her something of an outcast? No, this isn't a topic meant to create an ethnic divide but simply to try and reclaim something very useful...

Growing up in the 70's, I remember the zenith of black pride when we were willing to shake off the accepted standards of what was considered beautiful and aesthetically pleasing. We rejected the idea that natural hair and dark skin was unattractive and undesirable. To the contrary, we relished in black expression as defined by us. Some we borrowed from our African brothers and sisters like dashikis and wooden jewelry but others we originated or adopted such as blowout afros, hot pants, and platform shoes. The bottom line is that we took James Brown's seminal track, "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud" as our national anthem. And it comes as no surprise that this represented the most progressive period of gains in civil rights, politics, and relations between ethnic groups. Our numbers grew in Congress, State houses, mayor-ships, and government positions in general more than at any time in the history of this country. The music of the time was also uniquely expressive of who we were as a people. We weren't rejecting anyone else's music forms, we were simply celebrating our us-ness! "Free Your Mind...", "That's the Way of The World", "Everyday People", "People Get Ready", "Respect" and "Respect Yourself", "Shining Star", "To Be Young, Gifted, and Black" and again the list goes on...

Fast-forward to the new millennium and we as black Americans have lost so much ground in spite of the more noteworthy gains. Sounds contradictory but here's the truth of the matter. Notwithstanding a black man in the White House, a governorship or two, and a relatively stagnant number of blacks in Congress; we have not only lost but continue to lose ground in so many areas. We have lost ground in Church membership while we've exploded the prison population. We have lost ground in owning businesses while we've exploded black-on-black crime statistics. We have lost ground in the number of black professionals and exploded the number of deaths due to gangs. We have lost ground in the number of black healthcare professionals while we've exploded the number of deaths due to HIVAIDS. We have lost ground in college presence while we've exploded the number of high school dropouts. We have lost ground in the number of nuclear families and exploded the number of teen pregnancies. We have simultaneously lost ground in corporate boardrooms, C-suite offices (CEO, COO, CFO, etc...), and MOST IMPORTANTLY in our homes and our communities. We used to have grass roots power that sprang from the embrace of our cultural differences...

What happened? Today, there's a sameness to our music, our styles, and our lack of passion for non-material things. That pride used to care - about and for each other. We loved our music and we loved ourselves -- and there's nothing wrong with that! Loving yourself doesn't mean hating anyone else. It doesn't mean disparaging anyone else, it just meant standing up for who and what you are. While we could once easily recognize the distinct sounds of both male and female vocalists along with the different rhythmic harmonics of the bands and even the regions of the country (Motown, Philly, Memphis, Chitlin' Circuit, LA, Chicago, DC, Texas, etc...); it's difficult to tell today's "artists" without a program. More disheartening still is the fact that the overall emphasis on cultural individuality has been so watered down that other ethnic cultures can rather easily replicate a passable facsimile (Justin Timberlake, Robin Thicke, Michael Bolton, Christina Aguilera, Pussycat Dolls, etc...). Well, as I said earlier, this isn't about division. It's simply a suggestion that perhaps we need to reclaim that pride that led us out of 400 years of subjugation and third-class citizen status to claim our rights to be celebrated for our contributions and our place in the multicultural diaspora of this nation. Where we're headed doesn't appear to me to be where those who fought and bled and died for us would have dared to see us end up in their worst nightmare!

Black History Month?

An old saying in essence goes, "I'm laughing to keep from crying!" which reminds me of the conflicting sentiments that arise over the notion of a Black History Month. There are supporters who make jokes about the fact that the shortest month of the year is devoted to Black History while opponents get rankled over the fact that there is a month designated to a single ethnic group. Well, this may come as a surprise but I think they're both right!

Black History in the USA is the history of this nation. Without us there would be no nation. The early settlers needed the Natives to help them learn to survive and they were ill-equip to do much more than that. Their next move was to try and enslave these indigenous peoples to perform the herculean task of building an infrastructure for a fledgling nation but that proved to be a "peace pipe" dream. It's awfully hard to beat a man on his home turf playing by his rules.

So, along came option number two. Let's dehumanize and bring in a new group that will make us the home team and we can create our own rules. It was indeed a successful strategy for a couple of hundred years and it illustrates why Black History is American History. From agriculture to the industrial revolution to the advent of modern technology, we have been an irreplaceable part of the story not only as labor but just as importantly as inventors and innovators. Yes, without a Black History Month perhaps all of our contributions would quickly become obscure and forgotten but that's because we, all Americans, don't demand that all ethnicities be given their rightful place in the history books of this nation.

You may have noticed that I denote ethnicity and not race. That's because race as a fictionalized frequently redefined term is the primary underlying factor in the process of keeping people divided. Here's how the American Anthropological Association (AAA) stated it in its recommendation to the US Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for the 2010 Census:

The American Anthropological Association (AAA) recommended that OMB combine the "race" and "ethnicity" categories into one question to appear as "race/ethnicity" for the 2010 US Census. The Interagency Committee agrees, stating that “"race" and "ethnicity” were not sufficiently defined and “that many respondents conceptualize "race" and "ethnicity" as one in the same underscor[ing] the need to consolidate these terms into one category, using a term that is more meaningful to the American people.”^[4]

The AAA also stated,

"The American Anthropological Association recommends the elimination of the term "race" from OMB Directive 15 during the planning for the 2010 Census. During the past 50 years, "race" has been scientifically proven to not be a real, natural phenomenon. More specific, social categories such as "ethnicity" or "ethnic group" are more salient for scientific purposes and have fewer of the negative, racist connotations for which the concept of race was developed."

"Yet the concept of race has become thoroughly--and perniciously--woven into the cultural and political fabric of the United States. It has become an essential element of both individual identity and government policy. Because so much harm has been based on "racial" distinctions over the years, correctives for such harm must also acknowledge the impact of "racial" consciousness among the U.S. populace, regardless of the fact that "race" has no scientific justification in human biology. Eventually, however, these classifications must be transcended and replaced by more non-racist and accurate ways of representing the diversity of the U.S. population."

The bottom line here is that race is a made-up term that is used to classify people in ways that make it possible to discriminate based on artificial attention to perceptions about physical differences. Biologists have long acknowledged that there is one race of humans with many different surface characteristics but underneath we all possess the same physiology influenced only by our ancestral location origins. These are ethnic differences. Race is a better term for animal types. There are races of birds, monkeys, fishes, etc. because they can have physiologies that are not interchangeable.

So with that backdrop, let's use Black History Month to launch a more ethnic friendly version of history for all people. Otherwise, we may be forced to call attention to the fact that all humans can trace their ancestry beyond Europe, Asia, and the Americas to Africa meaning that ultimately we're all simply displaced Africans...

Critical Thinkers the Latest Dinosaur...

On this icy day in Jersey, I'm waxing a bit nostalgic and remembering the best thing that I experienced in college: the opportunity to grow intellectually. My collegiate career had a couple of turns along the pathway. First, I attended a post-high school summer program at then Clark College in Atlanta called the Rowland Scholars before spending my freshman year at Tennessee State University in Nashville. A year in Tennessee was all I needed to convince me that I wanted to return to Atlanta as soon as possible but that's a story for another day. Suffice to say, I returned to finish my undergraduate schooling at Georgia Tech . In my mind today, I was lamenting the fate of an oft overlooked commodity - critical thinking, and I was wondering how many people are out there who feel the same? If not, you can, and probably have stopped reading by now. Otherwise...

Do you recall the time when you simply gathered together to share your thoughts and exchange ideas? There wasn't any planned agenda or list of discussion points. All that was required was a group of those willing and able to engage in a dialog of thoughtful opinions. Yes, sometimes the discussion got heated and intense, and yes, there were plenty of times when the topics were the mundane, "who's the best, funkiest, prettiest, dumbest, etc..." or the silly, "cartoon characters, Stooges routines, off-color jokes, etc..." but ultimately you left the conversation knowing that your own knowledge base had been enhanced.

And here's a little known fact about those gatherings: all of us weren't friends and we certainly didn't all share the same perspectives. Often these were spontaneous sessions that arose whenever the opportunity presented itself. Sometimes there was a particular topic that we wanted to address but that was more the exception rather than the rule. While we did discuss our own varying degrees of political activism around subjects like on-campus support for minority students or local/state/national elections, we were more likely to engage in talks about the plight of our generation and the future based on what actions we took. Certainly we didn't have any consensus except for one: that we needed to do something other than talk.

Out of those conversations, we not only planned for our futures but we continued to evolve in our thinking as to shape our societal and political insights to this very day. My only regret is that during that time period, the late 70's and early 80's, there wasn't more openness in the Churches to help us reconcile our spiritual beliefs with our secular knowledge. Unfortunately, this is still somewhat problematic but progress is being made in that when today's children ask questions relating the spiritual to the secular, due to the preponderance of information available to them, we adults are required to pay more than lip service to their questions and that often means searching for answers that we had simply taken for granted ourselves.

That, friends, is the core observation at the root of my lamentation. All around us there are people in decision-making capacities who have shunned the critical thought process in favor of simplistic rhetoric. And while there's nothing wrong with simple rhetoric which is a preferable form of communication, there's something dreadfully abhorrent about those who would try to address the complexity of today's challenges with a refusal to entertain a variety of potential solutions as warranted by the fact that new problems can't always be solved by old answers. And, yes, even back in the day, there were those around who practiced the same narrow-minded approach. It was the old, "My great granddaddy said this or that and nothing is going to change my mind!" Even when the fallacy of their argument could be demonstrated on multiple fronts, they'd say, "I don't care!" They were sad then and they're even sadder now but we used to be able to ignore them expecting that that type of thinking would only take them so far.

This world demands critical thinking now more than ever before and yet it appears that those of us who practice said art are slowly descending into the tar pits and not being replaced. The saddest part of it all is that in the absence of critical thought, evil flourishes. When no one challenges convention, those intent on practicing evil gain strength because they are the loudest and the boldest. One reason for their obfuscation actions is the fear of being found out. If required to support their positions with real facts supported by truth, their arguments and indeed their power, both founded on lies, would soon disappear. There's so much more to be said but before another "critical think-asaurus" vanishes into the ether, please take an opportunity to enjoin your children or any children that you interact with to explore the meaning of deeper thought. It's the only hope outside of GOD that this world has, and if you read the Bible, you'll see that when people give themselves over to evil, GOD Has a tendency to get Fed up Himself and Decide that people are no longer worth the trouble...

New Year, New Decade, New Millenium, Same...

There's an old saying attributed to the philosopher Edmund Burke that effectively goes, "Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it". You may have heard it more contemporized as "Those who forget the past..." or "Those who ignore the mistakes of the past..." but I'm convinced that the original quotation is the most accurate. Our modern American society has become one of unparalleled ignorance. While Chris Rock famously joked that 'some black people take pride in being ignorant and call it keeping it real', this is obviously not a condition that has been relegated to blacks only. A recent study showed that overall, American students finished 17th in science and 24th in math out of 57 countries that were measured. While that's disturbing enough, what's even more distressing is the category that we did finish on top - you guessed it - self esteem! We're stupid and we're proud!

I'm convinced that the vestiges of both of these problems can be traced back to two factors: Reagonomics and soccer moms. Few people remember where the Alzheimer's president and his cronies made most of their deepest funding cuts in the 80's to partially fund their trickle-down economic theory tax cuts. They came from education. Many socially responsible and academically needed programs were gutted in the process of igniting the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the world. Programs like headstart and the much maligned midnight basketball were not only providing a platform for students to receive help but the environment was conducive nationally to fostering a competitive spirit in the classroom across ethnic groups. It was the old "rising tide lifts all boats" adage. Parents and students took advantage of opportunities to allow their kids to participate in environments that were evocative of learning because there were trained professionals available just as there were at the police athletic league facilities and the boys and girls clubs.

But underfunding and cut funding either eliminated or marginalized these programs and the dumbing down of American began. And scarcely a single generation later in the 90's and early 00's, we had the first celebrations of ignorance. Remember the Jaywalking segments on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Street Smarts the game show? Both of these actually made "fun" of our spreading ignorance by asking simple questions to people on the street which they regularly got wrong to the delight of the studio and television audience. Oh, what hilarity!

So, what of the other culpable group that I mentioned earlier, the soccer moms? Well, here's the skinny. They're responsible in largest part for the pride in ignorance. Because they seemingly have a vendetta against competitive sports activities, they've undermined the very best aspect of competition which is to bring out the best in us. The overarching theme in sports has always been to prove who's best by providing recognition for the efforts of those who perform the best. But leave it to soccer moms (and wimpy men) to decide that competition is not only a bad thing for the psyches of little Johnny and little Susie but that superior performance incentives should also be squashed flat. Everyone must play and everyone should receive the same recognition. Never mind that there are kids who simply aren't any good at particular sports and many that actually don't want to play sports but are forced to anyway because far be it from Ms. soccer mom to have a kid who wasn't on the team! In an ironic twist, these parents have actually created this environment of non-competition among the children because they want to be able to compete with the other parents in having their kids involved in all the same activities.

So here we are in 2011 with our kids getting dumber by the minute and yet so proud of their non-accomplishments. That's why I'm convinced that the original saying in the 1st paragraph is correct. Ours is a new society that simply doesn't "know history"...