Road Song
Commentary by Chitown Kev
Old Walt Whitman
Went finding and seeking,
Finding less than sought
Seeking more than found,
Every detail minding
Of the seeking or the finding.
Pleasured equally
In seeking as in finding,
Each detail minding,
Old Walt went seeking
And finding.
Langston Hughes
The Ku Klux Klan-endorsed racist misogynist xenophobic Mangled Apricot Hellbeast won the 2016 U.S. presidential election and sent the Democratic/left/progressive/far left blogosphere into seemingly endless loops of their best Nancy Kerrigan impersonations.
(And...let’s face it...being electorally kneecapped by thugs working in the best interests of the opponent is probably as good an explanation as any.)
There’s good bits of truth, exaggeration, and bullshit in all of the various explanations that I’ve read; explanations that continue to be delivered and posted as if they have the authority of the stone tablets that Moses carried as he descended from the mountain.
Two of those stone tablets are inscribed with the headings “Identity Politics” and “Economics.”
One of the major discussions taking place is whether we take the (pick your color) pill of “identity politics” or the (pick your color) pill of “economics” or do we take ½ of one pill and ½ of the other pill?...and so on...
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There’s a poem by Walt Whitman that I never took the time to memorize and that I haven’t been able to locate in my copy of Leaves of Grass (perhaps Justice can help me out with this one!). In the poem, the persona (who was probably Whitman, himself) talks of his desires, especially a small room where he could simply write his poems. The other things desired were quite simple and seemingly easy to attain.
I first read the poem when I was twenty years old, I believe, as I was living and working among some of the most powerful and ambitious people in the world in a city dedicated to and designed for catering to those quests for power and ambition.
I’ve always known that I was a black man (or as we call it nowadays, African American, and I first read the Whitman poem that I can’t identify during the time of that switch in cultural nomenclature, I believe).
At some point before I became a teenager I knew that there was something else about me that wasn’t...in the norm, I suppose, and later I discovered that the word of the moment for that was “gay.”
I felt then...and feel even now, that being black and gay is, at bottom, some of the least interesting information that you can know about me, personally.
Being black and gay is information about myself that I’ve really never been able to hide, it has never really occurred to me (personally) why I should “hide it” in the first place and...it’s really not all that important to me and if I were living in an ideal world, it would be insignificant to me...and to everyone else.Were it up to me, I would probably identify myself as a member of the race of the open road or something.But...I don’t live in an ideal world, I live in the real world.
In the real world, there are those who think that I have no right whatever to walk the open road of my choice in any way, shape, or form, much less anything resembling being “afoot and light-hearted.”
Miss Toni:
Under slave laws, the necessity for color rankings was obvious, but in America today, post-civil-rights legislation, white people’s conviction of their natural superiority is being lost. Rapidly lost. There are “people of color” everywhere, threatening to erase this long-understood definition of America. And what then? Another black President? A predominantly black Senate? Three black Supreme Court Justices? The threat is frightening.
In order to limit the possibility of this untenable change, and restore whiteness to its former status as a marker of national identity, a number of white Americans are sacrificing themselves. They have begun to do things they clearly don’t really want to be doing, and, to do so, they are (1) abandoning their sense of human dignity and (2) risking the appearance of cowardice. Much as they may hate their behavior, and know full well how craven it is, they are willing to kill small children attending Sunday school and slaughter churchgoers who invite a white boy to pray. Embarrassing as the obvious display of cowardice must be, they are willing to set fire to churches, and to start firing in them while the members are at prayer. And, shameful as such demonstrations of weakness are, they are willing to shoot black children in the street.
Of course, I (and my ancestors familial and otherwise) have had access to the open road blocked by law and by deeds quite literally.
Heck, I’m not even all that ambitious.
I simply want an open road where I am “Healthy, free, the world before me,” politics and political candidates notwithstanding.
Instead, a majority of Americans, mainly on the right but also a few on the left, are as willing to deem me and mine to be every bit as much of “a problem” to be solved (or ignored) as me and mine were when Dr. DuBois named it at the turn of the 20th century.
For myself, I refuse to be silent or even to “reduce the boiling to a simmer.”
For myself, I will smile...and wave...and continue down the open road of my choice.
I love traveling companions, so you can come along for any reason that you choose but I will walk that road alone, if necessary.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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In 1986, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was—correctly!—deemed by a Republican Senate to be too racist to serve on the U.S. District Court. This was a highly uncommon step: Sessions at the time was the second federal judicial nominee in 50 years to be rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee. However, the bipartisan consensus that open racism is unacceptable is, alas, now completely shattered. In the logical culmination of the Republican Party’s transformation from the party of Abraham Lincoln to the party of John Calhoun, President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Sessions to be the top law enforcement office in the United States.
It is hard to overstate what a calamity this is. The Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act are just paper without active federal enforcement. The Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice, for example, has to decide what kinds of cases to prosecute, what kinds of problems need to be prioritized, and how the law should be interpreted and applied. Under both Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch—the first African-American man and woman, respectively, to serve as attorney general—President Barack Obama’s DOJ had a strong record of advancing the rights of African-Americans, women, LBGT people, and the disabled. Obama’s DOJ was also especially active on behalf of voting rights.
The DOJ is about to change course, hurtling back towards Jim Crow. When he was a U.S. Attorney, Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general declared that “I wish I could decline on all” civil rights cases. Sessions called the NAACP and the ACLU “un-American” and “communist-inspired” organizations. He joked that he used to think the Ku Klux Klan were “ok” until he found out they were “pot smokers.” He once called a black former assistant U.S. Attorney “boy.”
And his actual record is arguably even worse. “Jeff Sessions got his start prosecuting voting rights activists in Alabama on bogus voter fraud charges,” notes Sam Bagnestos, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and the number two official in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division under Holder. “Throughout his career, he has shown hostility to the historically important work of the Civil Rights Division. The damage he can do to civil rights enforcement as attorney general is incalculable.”Nothing about his subsequent history suggests that he’s changed.
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The legendary basketball coach's comments may not have been racially malicious, but they indicate a paradigm shift in pro basketball. Ebony: The Racial Undertones of Phil Jackson’s ‘Posse’ Remark About LeBron James
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Jackson was recently interviewed by ESPN’s Jackie MacMullan and was revisiting James’ departure from the Miami Heat to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the summer of 2014 and how that decision affected Miami Heat President Pat Riley.
Here’s what he had to say:
It had to hurt when they lost LeBron, “Jackson said. “That was definitely a slap in the face. But there were a lot of little things that came out of that. When LeBron was playing with the Heat, they went to Cleveland, and he wanted to spend the night. They don’t do overnights. Teams just don’t. So now [coach Erik] Spoelstra has to text Riley and say, ‘What do I do in this situation?’ And Pat, who has iron-fist rules, answers, ‘You are on the plane. You are with this team.’ You can’t hold up the whole team because you and your mom and your posse want to spend an extra night in Cleveland.
“I always thought Pat had this really nice vibe with his guys. But something happened there where it broke down. I do know LeBron likes special treatment. He needs things his way.”
This is now.
A 70-year-old white man calling a young rich Black man and his friends a “posse.” Uncomfortable yet? Don’t be because that’s the optics of the story that the mainstream media will sell to get you to engage in click bait.
Racism sells.
Do I think Jackson is a racist? Absolutely not. I’m not as naive as some who points to the fact that’s he played with, coached and been around African-Americans essentially his entire life as proof that he’s not a racist. However, I can’t speak to his personal feelings, but he certainly hasn’t come across as being racially insensitive in years past.
In fact I’ll go as far as to say Jackson’s comments were not racially motivated, rather they were a product of wrong place (social media age) wrong time (post Trump election). Jackson’s interpretation of the word “posse” is different from James’s because all things don’t mean the same thing to all people. I wish those who criticize Colin Kaepernick for his stance on the flag and not standing during the national anthem would understand that fundamental difference, but I digress.
Perception is greater than reality and Jackson is smart enough to know that. The reality of the situation is that Jackson’s comments come across as condescending and they were said in a breath to demean, belittle and embarrass James and the people he associates himself with. Jackson was trying to make James seem like the typical primadonna superstar who felt entitled to special treatment.
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Willie Rogers, the oldest surviving member of the original Tuskegee Airmen, has died.
He was 101.
Rogers largely served in logistics during his time with the famed, groundbreaking World War II aviation unit, CBS News reports.
Rogers, who lived in St. Petersburg, Fla., for the last 50 years of his life, was so low key about his participation over the years to the point where some of his own family members did not know about his historic past.
In 1942, Rogers was drafted into the army and served as part of the 100th Air Engineer Squad. He also served with the Red Tail Angels. In 2007, President George W. Bush awarded Rogers with the Congressional Gold Medal.
“Rest in peace, our friend – St. Pete’s 2015 Honored Veteran and Tuskegee Airman, 101-old Willie Rogers,” St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman tweeted.
The Tuskegee Institute was selected during World War II by the U.S. military to train pilots. In the first civilian pilot training program, students completed their instructions in May 1940. The program was then expanded and became the center for African-American aviation during the war.
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ON A cloud-dampened morning in Jérémie, the capital of the department of Grand’Anse in south-west Haiti, André Tham walks along a muddy road with a loudhailer, urging passers-by to get vaccinations against cholera. Farther on, a colleague empties a small vial into the mouth of a motorcyclist.
More than 3,700 people are thought to have contracted the waterborne disease since Hurricane Matthew washed over Haiti on October 4th, felling trees, destroying houses, schools and clinics, and polluting sources of clean water. More than 1,000 people died and 1.4m still need immediate assistance. Farms and fisheries, the main source of livelihood, were ruined. Some families remain in their derelict homes, trying to keep out the rain as best they can; about 140,000 are living in government-run shelters. Mr Tham and his wife, who has suffered a broken leg, are among them. “I lost everything,” he says.
Recovery is slow. Aid agencies say it is difficult to deliver food to many of the hurricane’s victims, in part because roads remain impassable. Rebuilding has barely begun. Jobless refugees are crowding into Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital.
The country’s presidential and legislative elections, scheduled for November 20th, are the last thing on the minds of the inhabitants of Grand’Anse, one of the worst-hit areas, on the tip of Haiti’s southern peninsula, where about 15% of voters live. Many of the 20-odd candidates running for president have visited the region, bringing aid (often in packages emblazoned with their names) and promises of reconstruction. But it is not clear that valid elections can be held, or that they will result in a government better able to cope with the hurricane’s aftermath.
“You can’t speak of elections to people living in the open, who are hungry and protesting for food,” says Marie Roselore Aubourg, minister for commerce and industry in Grand’Anse. Many have lost their voting cards. As The Economist went to press, there was still a possibility that the election might be postponed.
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Grammy nominated soul singer Sharon Jones has succumbed to cancer after a prolonged fight, according to a statement from her official website. She was 60.
“We are deeply saddened to announce that Sharon Jones has passed away after a heroic battle against pancreatic cancer,” the announcement read. “She was surrounded by her loved ones, including the Dap-Kings.”
Back in August, Jones spoke with EBONY.com about her illness and recovery, which was chronicled in the critically acclaimed documentary Miss Sharon Jones!
“They had to remove my gall bladder, the head of my pancreas, and more than half of my small intestine,” Jones said. “From June to September, I could barely walk. I couldn’t eat solid food. I was really bad.”
Despite the physical challenges after her initial 2013 diagnosis, which included multiple surgeries and chemotherapy, Jones fought her way back to the stage. After going into remission, she returned to the Dap-Kings, performing in a sold out show at New York’s Beacon Theater before heading out on a tour with Hall and Oates.
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