Paul's Gall

Now this is some deeeeeelicious racism.

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The last time I had some tasty racism like that, I was still in school.

God bless America.

peace.

Chin Check

After spending a considerable amount of editorial capital on Jay-Z and Kanye in the past week or so, a close friend reminded me of a few recent events that may have not received their fair exposure. I couldn't agree with her more.

This is a clip from BBC Newsnight involving a discussion between British historian David Starkey, British author and broadcaster Dreda Say Mitchell, and British author Owen Jones. In all the coverage I've seen and heard about the London riots, this may have been one of the most frustrating.

For more information on Mr. Starkey, see here.

I'll make this quick, because I have a research paper to continue.

It turns out David Starkey is gay, a fact I didn't know until I read more about him. I can't help but to consider what he would make of a commentator questioning the influence of "gay culture" on straight people, with some outlandish claim that stereotypes, denigrates, and marginalizes the community of Old Compton Street.

Then again after seeing this, he would probably just lick the guy's shoes.

Besides, racism in a British dialect doesn't quite do it for me. It needs that go ol' American edge for me to feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

peace.

Quietly Militant

So I work at a restaurant waiting tables. It's not easy or glamorous or even fun most of the time, but it's half-way decent money and a flexible schedule. Consider it the actor's way.

One of the pluses/minuses of what I do is conversing with all sorts of interesting, weird, moody, gregarious, and comical people. Sometimes it's actually pretty fun. Others it's tedious and frustrating. And every once in a while, an exchange becomes uncomfortable, bordering on offensive.

Today I had one of the uncomfortable versions. This is an exchange I had with a middle-aged white cat who was having lunch with seven of his coworkers:

Dude: Hey, you look like Spike Lee! (Disclaimer: I look nothing like Spike Lee. For one, I'm taller.)

Me: Really?

Dude: Yea, you do!

Me: He and I actually went to the same school.

Dude: Well, that must be it! (laughing to his friends)

Me: (big smile) Yup, because everyone that goes to Morehouse looks exactly the same.

(slightly nervous guilty-white-liberal laughter from the table)

Now, I'm not as fiery as I used to be. When I was in my early twenties my temper would flare up when the wind blew. These days I'm usually a little more reserved and selective with my energy. And to be honest, I really hadn't put too much thought or effort into my response. It wasn't until I had walked away and began tending to other things when I realized the gravity of my reply.

I really aced this guy.

I was actually proud of myself. I was able to communicate my distaste for his comment without alienating the rest of his party and find a balance between breath and aggression. And I didn't take it so seriously as to let it ruin my day.

It's fun being quietly militant.

peace.

Locked in Paradox

This is almost too easy.

University of Missouri student Benjamin Elliott, 18, was temporarily suspended from the school this week following his arrest on Saturday for allegedly spray-painting racist graffiti on a campus fixture reports the Maneater.

The offensive phrase was discovered early Saturday morning by a student who reported the find to officials, the Riverfront Times reports. According to the Kansas City Star, Elliott was arrested after campus security watched surveillance footage which implicated him in the incident. Campus police added that witnesses confirmed that it was Elliott in the video, but Elliott told police that he was drunk at the time and does not recall what happened.

More here.

This type of thing happens all the time, so when I first read this story I wasn't surprised. I mean, I went to graduate school at Louisiana State University where the white football fans fly purple and gold confederate flags on game day in support of an unpaid group of black college athletes. So hypocrisy and racism are old news to me. But then I had a look at the kid's mug shot...

Wait for it...

Seriously, homie? You're a racist white cat with DREADLOCKS?

Listen up, Benji. I'm sure you're a decent enough kid. You probably play World of Warcraft during your spare time. There's a girl at your school that you really want to know better. You skip class every once in a while and spend all day at the student center making inside jokes with your friends. And you probably locked your hair because you really identify with Bob Marley.

If Bob Marley were alive and saw you do what you did, he would most likely smack the sh*t out of you; not because of what you spray painted on a wall. He's seen that crap before. Rather, because you have chosen to make a definitive ideological statement about your distaste for people of color while adopting a headdress that is quite literally THE SYMBOL of everything for which he stood as a person of color.

Your ignorance nullified your perspective before your ideology was even heard. You are cartoonishly contradictory. Until you make some honest and difficult decisions about who you are and what your life means to this world, very few people you encounter will be able to take you seriously; on all sides of the topic.

The good news is you're 18. Consider this event your first quiz in "Life 101."

Learn something?

peace.

Legend of N*gger Twain

What? They're taking "nigger" out of Huckleberry Finn? What's next, a remake of Dolemite without the word "honkey"?

From The Guardian UK:

A new US edition of Mark Twain's classic novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is to be published with a notable language alteration: all instances of the offensive racial term "nigger" are to be expunged.

The word occurs more than 200 times in Huckleberry Finn, first published in 1884, and its 1876 precursor, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which tell the story of the boys' adventures along the Mississippi river in the mid-19th century. In the new edition, the word will be replaced in each instance by "slave". The word "injun" will also be replaced in the text.

The new edition's Alabama-based publisher, NewSouth books, says the development is a "bold move compassionately advocated" by the book's editor, Twain scholar Dr Alan Gribben of Auburn University, Montgomery. It will have the effect, the publisher claims, of replacing "two hurtful epithets" in order to "counter the 'pre-emptive censorship' that Dr Gribben observes has caused these important works of literature to fall off curriculum lists worldwide."

More here.

Few things unnerve me nowadays. I'm actually finding it quite spooky. I frequently encounter rude, aggressive, and depressing individuals who have overwhelming and unmanageable personal challenges weighing them down. I feel empathy and compassion for them, I really do. But it's seldom that I'm really shaken by them.

This has shaken me a bit. Feels great.

In many ways, we should be exceedingly grateful that we live in a world that allows us such remarkable access to information. These types of revisionist tactics have continued to cloud, puncture, and erase our true sense of human history. Now that we have this incredible and extensive network of information sharing, perhaps the truths of who we are will always live on somewhere in the vastness of cyberspace. That doesn't mean, however, that we should ever allow these revisionists to have their way and let our technology iron out the wrinkles.

I don't know what I believe about the n-word. Even now, it's appeared in this post twice in its normal form, but somehow at the moment of writing this particular section I feel the need to make it safe. "N-word". It drives me nuts! But what I do know is that it resonants the history of Americans who fought both for and against the beliefs and complexities within. Even though the era of its inception was the most oppressive and violent episode of American history, that does not excuse us from the obligation to intimately know and understand that history. Our faults are just as important as our advantages.

This is the greatness of American debate; and let me tell you something. As a black male in America I don't think I've ever felt true patriotism or compassion for "the great experiment of democracy" or "the land of the free", except in the instances where I was either an observer or participant in healthy, difficult, productive, reasonable discussion. Considering the polarizing climate in Washington during the last 20 years or so, and trends in the public's opinion of D.C. politics, I would argue many in this country share this particular sense of "Americaness". It's the debate that makes us special; that makes this whole thing worth it.

Mark Twain, in his brilliance, was writing from a fundamentally American perspective. He threw our vitriol in our faces and amplified sounds to which we forgot or neglected to listen. AND he was doing this in 1885, a time in America where being a "nigger lover" could get a white person hung as quickly as black person.

In the final press conference scene in the 1995 film The American President, President Andrew Shepard (played by Michael Douglas) makes this declaration on the sophisticated nature of American citizenship:

You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the "land of the free."

Unless Doctor Emmett L. Brown figures something out in the next few years, we will never be able to change who we were. But maybe we can anyway. By acknowledging those parts of ourselves, collectively processing the hows and the whys, maybe we'll change who we were by bettering who we are.

I always get this way when I watch National Treasure. Damn you, Nicholas Cage.

And so without further ado, a silly youtube video compliments of my cousin Nina, and staring our old friend "nigger."

Why? Because it's funny!