Amy Alexander Community Forum

A Communicator's Quandry: Silence is Golden....or Silence = Death

2012-01-03T12:42:00.001-08:00

I've been making the acquaintance of silence lately.

This is not an unpleasant development, as Pico Iyer recently outlined. The growing array of electronic devices holding ever-louder levels of chatter can be an Issue. For example, I'm on the record as experiencing mixed feelings about my use of Facebook and other social media channels. As a Content Producer, also known as a Professional Communicator, I kind of dig the opportunity to spend hour after hour in complete silence.

Same time, I'm also a divorced Mom of two school-aged children. This means two things, where silence is concerned:

-- No matter what happens during my "normal" weekday, whether I operate by day in solitude or mingle in a bustling metropolis, I will indeed be required to talk by the time Lights Out arrives in my home. Electronic devices -- TV, iPods, or computers -- are likely to be deployed at some point during most evenings, though I do impose moratoriums now and again. Also, I am compelled to advocate for my children in settings and contexts, sometimes, that are not ideal or comfortable, even for a relative extrovert like me.

-- Secondly, work (which I must engage in) usually involves talking. As a Professional Communicator I have for many years earned income by, well... Communicating: ideas, messages, narratives expressed to various audiences, across a variety of delivery vehicles.

Thus the concept of hours' worth of consistent "silence" is new and intriguingly, now somewhat sexy to me. The prospect of utter Thoreau-level quietude is appealing to me...to a point. I can't say that I recall appreciating silence very much before in my adult life, not profoundly or meditatively. As Iyer recently observed in his essay in the Times, it has become an expensive luxury for people to be able to "afford" silence. Which is to say that if you have to get out in the world and work, you probably will suffer a range of distractions. Being able to "drop out," or more refreshingly, check in to an off the beaten path retreat takes money.

I came of age during the 1980s, when ACT-UP and swaths of other Americans regularly marched the streets chanting, "Silence equals Death!," an understandable response to the Government's inaction on the growing AIDS crisis. I come from a culture and time when Speaking Out was expected, encouraged, praised. The Personal is the Political, is how I was brought up. Obviously ideally, there is a separation between between one's personal life and one's work-life, particularly in the context of when and where it is appropriate to speak up or choose silence.

Increasingly, though, I'm questioning the pragmatism of the viability of being outspoken in any context. Speaking up these days may not be the best course, even in the face of crazy-bad domestic and international problems and with the advent of cheap and available "communications" devices. We are drowning in data and information yet far too short on goodwill, understanding and compassion. Folks are especially tetchy these days, no matter where you find them. Economic insecurity is not new for America but it does feel to me at this time as if our body politic is experiencing an epic level of paranoia and fearfulness. A collective kind of spiritual corrosion that is blurring the line -- in all kinds of spaces and contexts -- between integrity and unscrupulousness. We've been forced to get "lean and mean" in a growing number of places, not inherently a bad thing. Except that in too many instances, the emphasis is on the "mean" end of that equation.

There is precedent for such technology-driven cultural paradox, to be sure. As a student of American history, I take comfort (however cold) in understanding that such tension is not new. And while I do not live in the past, I am willing to consider all manner of historic scenarios, even in fiction form, to find tropes, metaphors, themes, that may help guide me.

During the recent holiday break, I brought my 12 year-old daughter to see The Artist at the American Film Institute Silver Theater and Cultural Center near where we live in suburban Washington, DC.

If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it, especially if you are interested in the enduring dilemma of old technologies replacing new, and the forced obsolescence of workers that can result. I won't review the film here but will say that it's protagonist, a silent movie actor name of "George Valentin" -- wonderfully portrayed by Jean Dujardin -- is an updated version of Gene Kelly's silent film heart-throb "Don Lockwood," from the 1952 Hollywood classic musical Singin' in the Rain.

Valentin, like Lockwood, is a big film star in the silent movie era....until he is thrown for a loop by the onset of "talkies," state-of-the-art films that required actors to not just look great and be hyper-physical but to actually master the refined art of speaking a part; to actually give voice to a character.

Unlike Lockwood, though, Valentin stubbornly resists the changing winds, and spirals to despair: He can't get work, he won't accept the help of an actress who sincerely wants to draw him safely into the new sphere, he becomes paralyzed and then despondent. The Artist's director cleverly employs some of the most cliched conventions of silent films and parodies them all at once. Valentin's chosen solution to his misery will not surprise you but the plot's resolution is crisp, believable, and sweet.

We talked about how fun the movie was, my daughter and I, as we darted out of the Silver Theater on a chilly, gray post-Christmas day. She is a fan of American films from the '30s--'60s, and is developing a refined eye and ear for nuances. Storytelling, of course, is at the core of effective Communicating, so I lean toward indulging her in this burgeoning interest.

Yet what I didn't share with her as we huddled beneath an umbrella along Colesville Road following our viewing is this: I identified with "George Valentin" profoundly. His character, it turns out -- and yes, here is a "spoiler alert" -- experiences paralysis at the prospect of diving in to talking films because he is.......insecure. Acutely insecure. And it paralyzes him.

Despite his luminous physical talent and solid intellect, he freezes up at the thought of having to verbalize a character. The director of The Artist, to his credit, gives viewers hints of Valentin's insecurity-cum-malady in a handful of subtle visual cues and with two astonishing sound-oriented pieces. I didn't quite connect the puzzle piece until the curtain had drawn at The Silver, which is in its restored Art Deco splendor, the perfect place to see such a movie.

But when I asked my daughter why she felt Valentin had so stubbornly held out from diving in to talkies, she said, "Oh, he had a THING about talking. He may have had a speech impediment, or some kind of similar issue. For whatever reason, he didn't think he could do it," she continued. "So at first he tried to be cavalier and pretend it didn't matter. But then he got stuck, and he couldn't move forward even when it was obvious that he had to."

And so,....well. There it was, from the mouths of not-quite babes.

My sub rosa agenda in taking my daughter to see The Artist was --at least this is what I thought it was before the film got underway -- primal foremost and intellectual second. I had wanted to sit among a crowd of people and experience art in relative silence; I wanted to see a story about someone who was struggling with a new medium. I wanted an artistic take on the potential costs and benefits, in the political context, of keeping silent.

I received that and much more: A finely drawn story of a skilled practitioner who freezes up in the face of looming change. It isn't that George Valentin could not easily adapt it is that he could not easily compartmentalize. Like many 'creative types," he felt his emotions perhaps too strongly, failed at shutting down his receptors. Valentin was sentimental about his trade, and yes, there was a purity and integrity to silent films....but who was to say that talkies could not also achieve those virtues? Wasn't George Valentin such a sap and loser for failing to Get with It?

Faced with the prospect of having to stretch and grow beyond merely physically emoting, Valentin preferred silence in those crucial moments when external forces imposed a need for transition, for action. It was a fear-driven preference that nearly killed him.

Of course, any viewer who comes away from this film and blames Valentin for becoming "stuck," has got to be one fucked up cold hearted asshole indeed. And yet, in the space where artistic and historic metaphor meets contemporary realities? The cold-hearted, fucked-up assholes today have pretty much rigged things in such a way that it can be impossible to know. You can be stuck, or unstuck, sailing along with the new program, faking it, or stopping momentarily to smell the flowers and it won't matter: You quite easily could be steamrolled based on dumb luck or due to a fleeting unwillingness (not the same as being "stuck") to Give it Up quickly.

Well then. I am learning to accept silence, to seek it and embrace it. Hopefully I can continue Communicating in the pro context but also find the space to go Silent and to speak up when and where I need to -- on my own terms, and not to the detriment of my livelihood.

Go Ahead, "Lean Forward." But Watch Your Back...and Don't Get Taken In.

2011-10-26T18:26:00.001-07:00

The videos of the ill-fated OWS street action in Oakland the other day churned my stomach.

I mean, really. So many urgent questions, starting with, Who is training these activists?

Followed fast by, Will any cable TV political chat show hosts take responsibility for having ginned up the OWS-ers, for having worked them up to such a degree that they felt safe enough to face off with cops?

From what I have viewed of the recent Oakland situation, and the Wall Street, pepper-spray incidents of a few weeks ago, there are apparently more protestors concerned with turning cameras on cops than on getting the hell out of the way.

I chalk this up to youthful ignorance -- but also to the influence of partisan cheer-leading found on a multitude of news-ish sites on the Interwebs, and on the 24/7 cable TV news channels.

In particular, MSNBC's prime time programming is to be singled out for its egging on of the OWS-ers coast to coast.

"Lean Forward" is the cable network's marketing "house-ad" message-frame, and the spots (which air daily, across all the cable network's programming) feature hosts Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow, and Ed Schultz, earnestly sharing their (liberal-tinged) thoughts about how America is in a battle between Good and Evil. I am a San Francisco Liberal, and media Old Head, which is to say that I appreciate the ads for their slick ability to convey clearly the high stakes bound up in our present political landscape.

Yet I do worry that the "Lean Forward" ad campaign -- accompanied by a weeknight prime time line up that is vociferously, unapolagetically Left-leaning -- is not serving well the American people. No, I am NOT going neo-con, and I am equally opposed to the Fox News Channel's equally one-sided (Conservative) political bent.

But the Liberal me lives within the same spirit, brain, memory, and body as my Journalist. And I am inherently -- well, from training and experience -- reluctant to let the Liberal in me drive the Journalist unquestioned.

The cops in SF, Oakland and Berkeley are widely known (among natives) for being militarized. This is not news....unless you don't know the history, or have the wherewithal to look it up...or don't care to report it.

The videos of the Oakland "Occupy" protest demonstrated to me foremost that even the best-intentioned among us -- including high-profile Liberal, "activists turned TV news people" -- are ignorant about key aspects of our recent American history. The folks we see in the recent Occupy Oakland videos are not mindless 'bots but I bet you dollars to donuts that they felt emboldened by what they view on MSNBC and what they have heard in the past two weeks on other liberal-leaning broadcasts. They did so at their own peril.

Has anyone in MSNBC's editorial braintrust at 30 Rock in New York watched the KRON TV footage showing how the cops responded during the multitude of protests in the '60s and '70s in the Bay Area? (KRON was the NBC affiliate in SF for many years.) How about footage of the cops' handling of the homeless camps that sprang up around San Francisco City Hall during the 1980s, anybody at MSNBC bother to watch those images? Probably not.

I ask because I know from those situations that cops will brutalize OWS activists; I know this because I have seen them brutalize homeless advocates, ACT-UP members, and the shaggy Food Not Bombs kids. So what I want to know is:

Why wouldn't a responsible "newscaster" in 2011, especially one who flies proudly the flag of "activist," not warn their viewers/followers of this, even as they gin them up with segments and reports clearly designed to spur street activism?

Sure, Frank Rich delivered a sweeping piece in the recent edition of New York magazine on a long-ago showdown between Real People fed up with being left out by the Fat Cats. Rich tells the story of the Bonus Army, those Depression-era, middle and working class Americans who thronged the District of Columbia in protest of income inequality and job losses in the bleak years following an orgy of excess from early corporate titans and Robber Barons.

Rich's piece is instructive, if thin on the role of media back then. The piece does mention a favorite touchstone figure of postmodern Liberal media columnists, Father Coughlin, a "populist" who railed against class inequality on a popular radio program during the '30s.

Well guess what? The speed, vehemence, and utter pervasiveness of media today is even more influential than in Father Coughlin's day, far outstripping what existed in the '30s or in the intervening years. And more acute, too, is the vast income gap that exists between those who hold media perches that have wide reach -- such as cable TV political show hosts, and top editors and writers at the NY Times and the Washington Post -- and the rest of Americans.

David Carr at The NY Times wrote a cute, timely column early this week suggesting that Journalists should consider an "Occupy the Newsroom" movement, spurred by the crazy lucrative exit packages and bonuses received by some media company executives even while their editorial operations are vanishing. I think Carr didn't go far enough: The experienced, trained, well-paid Journalists still hanging on in "legacy" news organizations should protest the disappearance of black, brown, and others from their ranks who are "non-traditional," aka, from working-class families.

Yes, I am pissed off. No, I don't give a crap if you think that All Black Women are Pissed Off. My professional profile is what it is, I am quite accomplished, thank you very much; I am capable of (and spoiling to, frankly) standing up on this. The alleged "thought-leaders" of media today -- whatever the delivery platform -- are either "vets" who helped screw up the old model or "digital natives" who are so clueless about life that they might just screw up whatever comes next.

Much as the Fox News "journalists" ginned up the Tea Partiers in the summer of '09 with their highly-partisan, ill-informed reports, the "journalists" at MSNBC have ginned up the OWS-ers who are now getting their asses kicked on the streets of our cities.

Rachel Maddow, Lawrence, O'Donnell, Bill Maher, and their kin at FOX, ABC, and NBC have not, to my knowledge, ever been street reporters.

They claim to be "truth-tellers," yet the 50-thousand foot altitude of much of their rhetoric is absent a crucial element known to any Old School Journalist who has covered large-scale domestic disturbances in the US during the past half-century: Verify and report. Yes, people, Cops in many cities nationwide are militarized. They have been militarized since the street actions of the '60s.

It doesn't matter if you are politically opposed to this admittedly unfortunate reality. If you are a "news anchor," what matters is that you refrain from presenting reports that are wholly designed to inflame your (politically partisan) viewers to engage in confrontations with these local armies....without letting them also know that the local cops will fuck them up.

The decimation of the ranks of qualified, trained journalists of color is not discussed by Maddow and others, likely because they are the beneficiaries of this development. While we were learning the ways of Corporate Journalism -- whitewashing, downplaying, masking, the grit and resolve that led us to become Journalists in the first place -- these late-coming arrivistes were hanging out in their parents' homes, or attending college or knocking around in activist or entertainment, or corporate environments.

And when the winds of corporate media turned away from "objective, Just the Facts Ma'am" reporting that had been the standard for more than a century, toward a product that is infused with entertainment, the gatekeepers looked not for black and brown trained journalists -- many of whom also have "agendas" -- but to academics and activists who were telegenic, and "familiar," if highly partisan.

If you care about the process of verification (which is what Journalism IS, people, not a big mystery, but not easy to carry out faithfully, day after day), you might ask yourself this:

What will it mean in the future if everyone in the US who calls herself a "Journalist" is really not interested in verifying anything more than what they already think they know?

"Lean Forward," indeed, Dear Viewer.

Just be sure to verify, as much as you trust. And do your best not to blindly fall in.

On True Radicalism: Talk Softly, Wield Big Ideas, Solid Values

2011-10-10T13:42:00.000-07:00

Derrick Bell had a very soft voice.

I first learned this during our phone conversations, which began in 1996. That is when I approached him to contribute to a book I was editing.

He lived in New York City, I was in Cambridge, Mass.

In my early 30s at that time, peripatetic and over-confident, I quickly learned to be calm, thoughtful, and focused whenever we spoke by phone. Derrick Bell, an NYU Law School professor, certainly was.

Why did I ask him to contribute to The Farrakhan Factor, a collection of essays by black writers, economists, academics, journalists and activists?

Two reasons:

I consulted with more than a dozen people as I sought to build a pool of 15 contributors for the book. It works like this: You contact people who probably won't write for the book but who in all likelihood can A) cogently brainstorm with you, and B) recommend or steer you to others who will write for the book. In that process, which took nearly six months, everyone I tapped mentioned Derrick Bell.

Second, I had read Bell's book, Faces at the Bottom of the Well, and enjoyed it immensely.....even if I didn't get all of the allegories and metaphoric imagery bound up in Bell's brand of high-minded Critical Race Theory. I did get its main message, though: African-Americans face a host of big systemic obstacles that no single silver bullet will instantly vanquish.

More than a decade later of course, I know that I was very fortunate to have made Derrick Bell's acquaintance. I am fortunate, too, that he made the time and found the energy to contribute to The Farrakhan Factor.

His essay in that book, published by Grove Press in 1998, is titled, "Farrakhan Fever: Defining the Line Between Blacks and Jews."

Given the contemporary discussion over the question of whether President Barack Hussein Obama can count on votes from Jewish Americans in the 2012 presidential race, I suggest you take a look at Bell's essay on Farrakhan's outsized place in the imagination of some Jewish Americans.....back in the mid-1990s. Characteristically, Bell's delivery in that essay was gentle, the literary version of his soft voice in real time. But the intellectual rigor, forceful logic, and compassionate values -- from anyone else, it would have been called "radical" -- is unmistakable.

Nowadays, of course, high-pitched rhetoric and slick presentation are what rises to the top of search engines and (apparently) the public's consciousness, coming from our "leading" black public intellectuals (many who now crowd the cable TV airwaves daily), and from just about anyone else who carries the mantle of "expert" on the Big Four topics of our social discourse -- politics, race, education, the economy.

Derrick Bell, of course, made television appearances in his time, too. In contrast to what we see now, however, he may as well have been sleeping upright during his infrequent on-camera turns. Not long ago, this understated demeanor was valued and appreciated for conveying a sensibility that read as Serious. I am not trying to sound like the cranky Old Gal on the front porch, railing about the Krazy Kids and their Hippity Hop Music but the high volume of what passes for "intellectual discourse" these days really does drive Americans farther apart, I believe.

Derrick Bell, like a few other of the "Old School" black intellectuals that I've been lucky to work with, would not be booked on the "leading" national political talk programs of today....unless he agreed to boil his complex, thoughtful theories about intra-ethnic tensions (blacks v Jews), and Critical Race Theory down into incendiary buzz-words.

I worked closely with Derrick Bell to shape his essay in that Farrakhan collection, and, when the book published, we finally met in person.

I traveled from Massachusetts to New York City via Amtrak along with another of the book's contributors, Rev. Irene Monroe of Cambridge. We two met up with Derrick Bell, and sat down at WNYC with Leonard Lopate; we spoke with Lopate and his audience for an hour about Minister Farrakhan, the state of black leadership, and the ways that blacks' history of oppression in America has influenced the definition of "black leadership."

After, we three repaired to a local eatery -- it was a blue-sky, crisp late-winter day in New York, and for a couple of hours, we drank hot tea and traded stories about our respective families.

Derrick Bell had been, by that time, widely described as "controversial, "mostly because he had quit a tenured position at Harvard Law School a few years hence in protest of that institution's inability to hire more diverse faculty. That word -- "controversial" -- popped up again in some of the obituaries that published last week, after Bell died at age 80. The usage of that word is flat and rote....to my ears, it fails to capture the quiet confidence, good humor and inner-calm that I picked up from Derrick Bell in my admittedly limited contact with him.

As I encountered Derrick Bell, he was a gentleman and a scholar, a smart black man from a generation that knew first hand what is required to bring about radical change in the US. Bell succeeded in his brand of quiet radicalism without assistance from non-stop exposure on national cable TV programs, or Tweetable soundbites. I do wonder what he'd make of Herman Cain, and the ceaseless carping from TV noisemakers about President Obama's style and his supposed lack of intestinal fortitude, aka "fight."

I wish I'd checked in with Derrick Bell in recent years. But I am very fortunate to have known him and to have learned from him the power of steady, low-pitched strength.

The POTUS Speaks to Blacks, Foolishness Ensues in The Media

2011-09-27T18:38:00.000-07:00

President Barack Obama recently addressed the Congressional Black Caucus in Washington, D.C.

Some of the reports of President Obama's recent CBC address painted a picture of what the President said that is very different from what he intended -- and what the fullness of his talk actually conveyed.

This discrepancy is not unique.

For example, I was at the New York Hilton on July 16, 2009, when President Obama spoke to the the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People during its Centennial celebration.

I post his speech below, in full, exactly as it arrived in journalist's hands a couple hours before he stepped to the podium at the New York Hilton on that humid July evening. What gripped me about this address at the time, and which still resonates, is the President's firm grasp of the history of race relations in the US and his nuanced (if also tough) analysis of the mounting barriers to racial and economic equality in America.

Those nuances were not discussed much in the day-after coverage of the President's NAACP address in '09....a dynamic that apparently hasn't improved in the interim.

First, here is a link to a big news story that appeared in the press the very day after The POTUS made this NAACP address in '09....ostensibly written by a "respected journalist" who covered the very same event. Please find another link below, and of course, feel free to search other "live" pieces from this July 2009 address on your own: It truly was a historic speech, in my view.

As the saying goes, You Decide: In this case, read this material -- the links I've provided and the actual speech, below -- then consider whether there might be a bit of a....perception gap between some in the mainstream, Legacy press corps who follow The POTUS, and...the rest of us.

At the same time, in fairness to my colleagues in the MSM press, there were also black outlets that criticized President Obama following that'09 NAACP speech for allegedly having been "condescending."

Oh, and as I was writing this post tonight -- Tuesday, 27 September, 2011 -- I learned that someone yelled out during a talk by President Obama yesterday that he is "the anti-Christ.

At best, blatant disrespect.

At worst?

Some citizens of our great land continue -- three years into his term -- losing their minds over the presence of a black Commander in Chief. Sigh.

So, to the transcript: I recommend you read President Obama's speech first, then click the links I've provided.

Feel free to let me know what you think in the Comments or to ignore, cogitate, seethe, or celebrate in private. I've covered this sort of media shortcoming for a long time -- yes, it has become most tiresome but still: it must be placed into the record, especially since the "media reporters" at what remains of the MSM for the most part ignore diversity gaps in newsrooms.

For now, here's that 2009 speech that President Obama made to the NAACP on its 100th Anniversary.

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

________________________________________________________________________________

EMBARGOED UNTIL DELIVERY

July 16, 2009

Remarks of President Barack Obama – As Prepared for Delivery

NAACP Centennial

New York, New York

July 16, 2009

It is an honor to be here, in the city where the NAACP was formed, to mark its centennial. What we celebrate tonight is not simply the journey the NAACP has traveled, but the journey that we, as Americans, have traveled over the past one hundred years.

It is a journey that takes us back to a time before most of us were born, long before the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, and Brown v. Board of Education; back to an America just a generation past slavery. It was a time when Jim Crow was a way of life; when lynchings were all too common; and when race riots were shaking cities across a segregated land.

From the beginning, Du Bois understood how change would come – just as King and all the civil rights giants did later. They understood that unjust laws needed to be overturned; that legislation needed to be passed; and that Presidents needed to be pressured into action. They knew that the stain of slavery and the sin of segregation had to be lifted in the courtroom and in the legislature.

But they also knew that here, in America, change would have to come from the people. It would come from people protesting lynching, rallying against violence, and walking instead of taking the bus. It would come from men and women – of every age and faith, race and region – taking Greyhounds on Freedom Rides; taking seats at Greensboro lunch counters; and registering voters in rural Mississippi, knowing they would be harassed, knowing they would be beaten, knowing that they might never return.

Because of what they did, we are a more perfect union. Because Jim Crow laws were overturned, black CEOs today run Fortune 500 companies. Because civil rights laws were passed, black mayors, governors, and Members of Congress serve in places where they might once have been unable to vote. And because ordinary people made the civil rights movement their own, I made a trip to Springfield a couple years ago – where Lincoln once lived, and race riots once raged – and began the journey that has led me here tonight as the 44^th President of the United States of America.

And yet, even as we celebrate the remarkable achievements of the past one hundred years; even as we inherit extraordinary progress that cannot be denied; even as we marvel at the courage and determination of so many plain folks – we know that too many barriers still remain.

We know that even as our economic crisis batters Americans of all races, African Americans are out of work more than just about anyone else – a gap that’s widening here in New York City, as detailed in a report this week by Comptroller Bill Thompson.

We know that even as spiraling health care costs crush families of all races, African Americans are more likely to suffer from a host of diseases but less likely to own health insurance than just about anyone else.

We know that even as we imprison more people of all races than any nation in the world, an African-American child is roughly five times as likely as a white child to see the inside of a jail.

And we know that even as the scourge of HIV/AIDS devastates nations abroad, particularly in Africa, it is devastating the African-American community here at home with disproportionate force.

These are some of the barriers of our time. They’re very different from the barriers faced by earlier generations. They’re very different from the ones faced when fire hoses and dogs were being turned on young marchers; when Charles Hamilton Houston and a group of young Howard lawyers were dismantling segregation.

But what is required to overcome today’s barriers is the same as was needed then. The same commitment. The same sense of urgency. The same sense of sacrifice. The same willingness to do our part for ourselves and one another that has always defined America at its best.

The question, then, is where do we direct our efforts? What steps do we take to overcome these barriers? How do we move forward in the next one hundred years?

The first thing we need to do is make real the words of your charter and eradicate prejudice, bigotry, and discrimination among citizens of the United States. I understand there may be a temptation among some to think that discrimination is no longer a problem in 2009. And I believe that overall, there’s probably never been less discrimination in America than there is today.

But make no mistake: the pain of discrimination is still felt in America. By African-American women paid less for doing the same work as colleagues of a different color and gender. By Latinos made to feel unwelcome in their own country. By Muslim Americans viewed with suspicion for simply kneeling down to pray. By our gay brothers and sisters, still taunted, still attacked, still denied their rights.

On the 45^th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, discrimination must not stand. Not on account of color or gender; how you worship or who you love. Prejudice has no place in the United States of America.

But we also know that prejudice and discrimination are not even the steepest barriers to opportunity today. The most difficult barriers include structural inequalities that our nation’s legacy of discrimination has left behind; inequalities still plaguing too many communities and too often the object of national neglect.

These are barriers we are beginning to tear down by rewarding work with an expanded tax credit; making housing more affordable; and giving ex-offenders a second chance. These are barriers that we are targeting through our White House Office on Urban Affairs, and through Promise Neighborhoods that build on Geoffrey Canada’s success with the Harlem Children’s Zone; and that foster a comprehensive approach to ending poverty by putting all children on a pathway to college, and giving them the schooling and support to get there.

But our task of reducing these structural inequalities has been made more difficult by the state, and structure, of the broader economy; an economy fueled by a cycle of boom and bust; an economy built not on a rock, but sand. That is why my administration is working so hard not only to create and save jobs in the short-term, not only to extend unemployment insurance and help for people who have lost their health care, not only to stem this immediate economic crisis, but to lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity that will put opportunity within reach not just for African Americans, but for all Americans.

One pillar of this new foundation is health insurance reform that cuts costs, makes quality health coverage affordable for all, and closes health care disparities in the process. Another pillar is energy reform that makes clean energy profitable, freeing America from the grip of foreign oil, putting people to work upgrading low-income homes, and creating jobs that cannot be outsourced. And another pillar is financial reform with consumer protections to crack down on mortgage fraud and stop predatory lenders from targeting our poor communities.

All these things will make America stronger and more competitive. They will drive innovation, create jobs, and provide families more security. Still, even if we do it all, the African-American community will fall behind in the United States and the United States will fall behind in the world unless we do a far better job than we have been doing of educating our sons and daughters. In the 21^st century – when so many jobs will require a bachelor’s degree or more, when countries that out-educate us today will outcompete us tomorrow – a world-class education is a prerequisite for success.

You know what I’m talking about. There’s a reason the story of the civil rights movement was written in our schools. There’s a reason Thurgood Marshall took up the cause of Linda Brown. There’s a reason the Little Rock Nine defied a governor and a mob. It’s because there is no stronger weapon against inequality and no better path to opportunity than an education that can unlock a child’s God-given potential.

Yet, more than a half century after Brown v. Board of Education, the dream of a world-class education is still being deferred all across this country. African-American students are lagging behind white classmates in reading and math – an achievement gap that is growing in states that once led the way on civil rights. Over half of all African-American students are dropping out of school in some places. There are overcrowded classrooms, crumbling schools, and corridors of shame in America filled with poor children – black, brown, and white alike.

The state of our schools is not an African-American problem; it’s an American problem. And if Al Sharpton, Mike Bloomberg, and Newt Gingrich can agree that we need to solve it, then all of us can agree on that. All of us can agree that we need to offer every child in this country the best education the world has to offer from the cradle through a career.

That is our responsibility as the United States of America. And we, all of us in government, are working to do our part by not only offering more resources, but demanding more reform.

When it comes to higher education, we are making college and advanced training more affordable, and strengthening community colleges that are a gateway to so many with an initiative that will prepare students not only to earn a degree but find a job when they graduate; an initiative that will help us meet the goal I have set of leading the world in college degrees by 2020.

We are creating a Race to the Top Fund that will reward states and public school districts that adopt 21^st century standards and assessments. And we are creating incentives for states to promote excellent teachers and replace bad ones – because the job of a teacher is too important for us to accept anything but the best.

We should also explore innovative approaches being pursued here in New York City; innovations like Bard High School Early College and Medgar Evers College Preparatory School that are challenging students to complete high school and earn a free associate’s degree or college credit in just four years.

And we should raise the bar when it comes to early learning programs. Today, some early learning programs are excellent. Some are mediocre. And some are wasting what studies show are – by far – a child’s most formative years.

That’s why I have issued a challenge to America’s governors: if you match the success of states like Pennsylvania and develop an effective model for early learning; if you focus reform on standards and results in early learning programs; if you demonstrate how you will prepare the lowest income children to meet the highest standards of success – you can compete for an Early Learning Challenge Grant that will help prepare all our children to enter kindergarten ready to learn.

So, these are some of the laws we are passing. These are some of the policies we are enacting. These are some of the ways we are doing our part in government to overcome the inequities, injustices, and barriers that exist in our country.

But all these innovative programs and expanded opportunities will not, in and of themselves, make a difference if each of us, as parents and as community leaders, fail to do our part by encouraging excellence in our children. Government programs alone won’t get our children to the Promised Land. We need a new mindset, a new set of attitudes – because one of the most durable and destructive legacies of discrimination is the way that we have internalized a sense of limitation; how so many in our community have come to expect so little of ourselves.

We have to say to our children, Yes, if you’re African American, the odds of growing up amid crime and gangs are higher. Yes, if you live in a poor neighborhood, you will face challenges that someone in a wealthy suburb does not. But that’s not a reason to get bad grades, that’s not a reason to cut class, that’s not a reason to give up on your education and drop out of school. No one has written your destiny for you. Your destiny is in your hands – and don’t you forget that.

To parents, we can’t tell our kids to do well in school and fail to support them when they get home. For our kids to excel, we must accept our own responsibilities. That means putting away the Xbox and putting our kids to bed at a reasonable hour. It means attending those parent-teacher conferences, reading to our kids, and helping them with their homework.

And it means we need to be there for our neighbor’s son or daughter, and return to the day when we parents let each other know if we saw a child acting up. That’s the meaning of community. That’s how we can reclaim the strength, the determination, the hopefulness that helped us come as far as we already have.

It also means pushing our kids to set their sights higher. They might think they’ve got a pretty good jump shot or a pretty good flow, but our kids can’t all aspire to be the next LeBron or Lil Wayne. I want them aspiring to be scientists and engineers, doctors and teachers, not just ballers and rappers. I want them aspiring to be a Supreme Court Justice. I want them aspiring to be President of the United States.

So, yes, government must be a force for opportunity. Yes, government must be a force for equality. But ultimately, if we are to be true to our past, then we also have to seize our own destiny, each and every day.

That is what the NAACP is all about. The NAACP was not founded in search of a handout. The NAACP was not founded in search of favors. The NAACP was founded on a firm notion of justice; to cash the promissory note of America that says all our children, all God’s children, deserve a fair chance in the race of life.

It is a simple dream, and yet one that has been denied – one still being denied – to so many Americans. It’s a painful thing, seeing that dream denied. I remember visiting a Chicago school in a rough neighborhood as a community organizer, and thinking how remarkable it was that all of these children seemed so full of hope, despite being born into poverty, despite being delivered into addiction, despite all the obstacles they were already facing.

And I remember the principal of the school telling me that soon all of that would begin to change; that soon, the laughter in their eyes would begin to fade; that soon, something would shut off inside, as it sunk in that their hopes would not come to pass – not because they weren’t smart enough, not because they weren’t talented enough, but because, by accident of birth, they didn’t have a fair chance in life.

So, I know what can happen to a child who doesn’t have that chance. But I also know what can happen to a child who does. I was raised by a single mother. I don’t come from a lot of wealth. I got into my share of trouble as a kid. My life could easily have taken a turn for the worse. But that mother of mine gave me love; she pushed me, and cared about my education; she took no lip and taught me right from wrong. Because of her, I had a chance to make the most of my abilities. I had the chance to make the most of my opportunities. I had the chance to make the most of life.

The same story holds for Michelle. The same story holds for so many of you. And I want all the other Barack Obamas out there, and all the other Michelle Obamas out there, to have that same chance – the chance that my mother gave me; that my education gave me; that the United States of America gave me. That is how our union will be perfected and our economy rebuilt. That is how America will move forward in the next one hundred years.

And we will move forward. This I know – for I know how far we have come. Last week, in Ghana, Michelle and I took Malia and Sasha to Cape Coast Castle, where captives were once imprisoned before being auctioned; where, across an ocean, so much of the African-American experience began. There, reflecting on the dungeon beneath the castle church, I was reminded of all the pain and all the hardships, all the injustices and all the indignities on the voyage from slavery to freedom.

But I was also reminded of something else. I was reminded that no matter how bitter the rod or how stony the road, we have persevered. We have not faltered, nor have we grown weary. As Americans, we have demanded, strived for, and shaped a better destiny.

That is what we are called to do once more. It will not be easy. It will take time. Doubts may rise and hopes recede.

But if John Lewis could brave Billy clubs to cross a bridge, then I know young people today can do their part to lift up our communities.

If Emmet Till’s uncle Mose Wright could summon the courage to testify against the men who killed his nephew, I know we can be better fathers and brothers, mothers and sisters in our own families.

If three civil rights workers in Mississippi – black and white, Christian and Jew, city-born and country-bred – could lay down their lives in freedom’s cause, I know we can come together to face down the challenges of our own time. We can fix our schools, heal our sick, and rescue our youth from violence and despair.

One hundred years from now, on the 200^th anniversary of the NAACP, let it be said that this generation did its part; that we too ran the race; that full of the faith that our dark past has taught us, full of the hope that the present has brought us, we faced, in our own lives and all across this nation, the rising sun of a new day begun. Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.

It was in this America where an Atlanta scholar named W.E.B. Du Bois, a man of towering intellect and a fierce passion for justice, sparked what became known as the Niagara movement; where reformers united, not by color but cause; and where an association was born that would, as its charter says, promote equality and eradicate prejudice among citizens of the United States.

We know that even as we imprison more people of all races than any nation in the world, an African-American child is roughly five times as likely as a white child to see the inside of a jail.

And we know that even as the scourge of HIV/AIDS devastates nations abroad, particularly in Africa, it is devastating the African-American community here at home with disproportionate force.

The question, then, is where do we direct our efforts? What steps do we take to overcome these barriers? How do we move forward in the next one hundred years?

That is our responsibility as the United States of America. And we, all of us in government, are working to do our part by not only offering more resources, but demanding more reform.

That is what we are called to do once more. It will not be easy. It will take time. Doubts may rise and hopes recede.

But if John Lewis could brave Billy clubs to cross a bridge, then I know young people today can do their part to lift up our communities.

If Emmet Till’s uncle Mose Wright could summon the courage to testify against the men who killed his nephew, I know we can be better fathers and brothers, mothers and sisters in our own families.

Six Years in DC: Seven Things I Have Learned

2011-05-15T09:34:00.000-07:00

For more than two centuries Washington, DC has left footprints across the globe. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, then, that living here during the past six years has changed my life too, if not my core identity.

I came here from Minnesota in early June 2005, not exactly of my own choice but not exactly reluctantly, either. I was a "trailing spouse," aka The Wife (and 2 Kids) who relocated to suburban DC for the Husband's job....a mere two years after we'd left Boston for St. Paul, for the same reason. In the late spring of 2005, when we alighted at Washington's Reagan National Airport -- while our household goods traveled overland in a big Graebel Moving Company truck -- I also was a veteran Journalist.

I recognized the career advantage of relocating to DC from the Upper Midwest, where I had lived -- and shivered and fretted over my withering work prospects -- for two years with my (now former) husband and our two children.

In St. Paul, I had appreciated the low "friction factor" of life in the Twin Cities -- few traffic jams, affordable real estate, good public schools, low crime rates -- not to mention the calm sensibility of the Lutherans and Methodists who are the Establishment in those parts. I wasn't totally enthralled with the idea of living in the Mid-Atlantic but I was pragmatic enough to understand that nearby DC might be a good place to re-enter the workforce fulltime, following a long child-rearing break.

Yes, well.

Timing may not be everything but it does matter.

The news business had began to contract in earnest in 2006, with national and regional news organizations shedding jobs by the thousands. By 2007 in Washington, DC, two outlets where I received semi-regular work starting in the fall of 2005 —NPR and The Washington Post—began eliminating hundreds of jobs.

That development coincided with the end of my 11 year-long marriage. And just when I sought to re-enter the industry where I had worked for 15 years before stepping out in the late 1990s, the once-reliable stream of jobs slowed to a trickle, then dried up altogether by early 2008. At least it did for me.

On to what I have learned in DC.

1) DC Provides...With Conditions

Given what I've recounted above, I am very fortunate to have "landed on my feet," at least financially. Psychologically, and emotionally, however, the reinvention process has been slower.

In the macro, being in DC has been a mostly blessing. Watching the President and First Lady come into their own, having a decent range of news biz-related work options to explore. Yet living here since '05 also has felt sometimes like a curse— witnessing the death of the news biz, an industry in which I'd worked since college; falling prey to the boundless ambition and delusions of power that grips many "professionals" in the District.

Not trying to be a martyr here, or to say that I am without agency in this (I agreed to marry the now ex, after all; and, with his approval, to step out of what was a thriving career). I'm fortunate to have been able to learn from these mistakes, however dearly the learning came. For example, I now know the value of financial literacy, having learned it the hard way.

But I have also felt frustrated when attempting to gain professional traction in the insular, often maddeningly frivolous culture of DC media and political circles. In micro, this has meant that I often felt like a fish out of water two times over: A laissez faire Californian accustomed to superhighways, wide open spaces, and ease of job mobility, stranded in a thick swamp of rigid professional hierarchy and Beltway Insider status quo. And on top of that, in the upper-middle class Maryland suburb where we had moved in '05 -- the kind of place where Competitive Parenting is the order of the day -- I was by the end of '06 a Stay at Home Mom who suddenly had neither a high powered career, or a husband or a stable dwelling to call my own.

2) Inside the Beltway Values are Different From Yours' and Mine

What are "values" in DC? Depends on which precinct you travel in. I can say that hypocrisy, misogyny and showbiz under-gird much of what happens in the media politics-political operative spaces....and that lots of folks around here just seem to accept it.

For example, a “man” can retain a high-level professional position despite knowledge by many and apparent acceptance by a few that he has abandoned his children, refuses to pay their expenses, mentally and spiritually abuses a former wife -- and I do mean ME -- and receive not an ounce of social or professional condemnation. In DC, a "man" can do such a thing, and still turn up on national political television talk programs, experiencing no social or professional stigma whatsoever.

At the same time, I can't help but get it, the way things are in DC: Every week day, I walk past the Mayflower Hotel (pictured above) on Connecticut Avenue in DC ....and therefore have a hard time taking Elliott Spitzer seriously as the host of a CNN weeknight political talk program. I read the reports about how a DC-based International Monetary Fund executive allegedly attempted to rape a hotel worker in New York. And now, in California, I understand that there is a small army of former Arnold Swarzenegger for Governor supporters who are going public about their sense of "betrayal" following the ex-Governor's admission of infidelity. (This too is a DC story, as Arnold has not kept his presidential yearnings a secret; also, in a terrible kind of historic symmetry, his soon-to-be-ex wife, Maria Shriver, happens to come from a DC political family in which marital infidelity has been a long-running motif.) Perhaps it is my problem, I think, as I sometimes sail past the gilded entrance of the Mayflower Hotel, this naivete or whatever it is that allows you to feel betrayed by hypocrites. Clearly, career success -- and by implication overall Worthiness -- of even the rankest philanderer or deadbeat dad is what matters, right?

If you are thinking this last sounds "very," personal, well there it is. Does that make the question less legitimate?

In Washington, there is a long-standing adage for male politicians, appointees, and high-level professionals: Anything goes -- just don’t get caught with live boy or a dead girl!

A horrible joke. Yes. But in the realms of politics, media and business, men have all the power—even when they haven't earned it or don't deserve it. Even when they come right to the edge of that perverse adage. The recent disclosure by Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC that she was paid 14-times less than her co-host, Joe Scarborough, though they are supposedly equal partners on the popular, DC-centric "Morning Joe" weekday national political talk program is disheartening—but not at all surprising. And throughout the glossy media companies, trade groups, law firms, and private political strategy and communications outfits that are the engine of Washington, DC -- apart from government agencies and contractors, which at least have to hew to the pretense of an HR structure -- men routinely receive much higher pay than women, no matter if their women counterparts are better educated, smarter and more emotionally qualified to lead than they. And among elected officials in these parts...? Well, the file marked Senators and Congressmen Behaving Badly is nearly too large to carry these days, isn't it? (And hat-tip to Gawker.com for bringing us the indelible image of Republican Chris Lee, posing in front a bathroom mirror, shirtless in his surreptitious bid to cheat on his wife; as a language freak, I am eternally grateful for the phrase, "Shirtless Congressman," now handy way to describe the actions of some of these winners.)

Further, women in DC carry the double-burden (as is the case elsewhere in corporate America) of having to manage their children's lives and their own careers, if they choose to stay in the working world. This is not new, or unique to DC.

The double standard as it plays out here makes for an acutely thick air of hypocrisy in DC, given the high degree of "messaging" and national coverage emanating from here that argues for equitable treatment of women in the workplace and in society. Sometimes, the hypocrisy is thicker than the summer humidity that chokes the region in August.

3) One Good Thing I Have Learned in DC

There are exceptions, of course but I have been fortunate to learn that women in DC's shrinking news universe RAWK. Without the women I have been honored to know in DC media, including a few Boldface names at The Post and at NPR, I very likely might have been evicted along with my children, back in '06-'07. You ladies know who you are—thank you. Oh, and ditto for other women friends in media coast to coast, too, who helped me in a multitude of ways between 2005-09 with money, job leads, hard-headed advice, their large hearts, spirits, and patient listening. (And yes, in fairness, many men in media, too, have been supportive during that period. You guys know who you are, too, and thanks!)

4) Integrity? A Precious Thing In DC

Now that I have a bit of perspective -- and breathing room -- I can more calmly assess this odd place. I can safely say that sexism infuses just about every aspect of professional life in DC -- to our collective detriment.

For example, in my case, the personal is acutely political. The ex in my life quite adeptly plays up his Political Journalist bona fides (such as they are, and such as they are enhanced by the fact of his being black) to obtain bigger and better jobs, unlimited by the scheduling and energy-draining challenges of having to daily manage two school-aged children. During the months when I was searching for work, I sometimes wondered how I would fare if I had dumped my kids and marriage, and struck out anew. It could have gone either way....perhaps.

There I would be in a job interview. (I envision a meeting with a Big Shot Media Type in a glass-encased aerie at 400 North Capitol Street in DC, a view of the Capitol Dome over his shoulder as he interviews me.) When Prospective Employer asks, "Do you have family here?", I'd reply, "No, my Mom and siblings are on the West Coast. I am divorced. The kids live here, though, with my former husband. I see them frequently. It was tough at first but we make it work."

In my flip-the-script version, were I the Divorced Parent who did NOT have the kids fulltime, how would the male Media Exec react to the news that I had dumped my marriage and walked out on my children?

Would it glance off his shoulder, a Titleist of job candidate info, rolling down the fairway? Or would he give me the side-eye and, however politely, in the way of DC, thank me for visiting and send me along? Would he think, What kind of woman bails out on her kids?

Of course, I do not know if that is what the ex said to his current media employer -- a flashy upstart news company based in Arlington -- during their courtship last year. But I suspect that had I been a Divorced Mom Journalist seeking to re-enter the media workforce in DC, and shared with my prospective employer the news that I am NOT by my own choice the primary caretaker of my children, it would have been received quite differently than the what the ex experienced when his Old Media job ended early last year, and he set out in DC searching for another news media perch.

Meanwhile, the Schott Foundation (pdf), the Council of Great City Schools, and umpteen other big nonprofits, universities and research groups regularly publish studies and reports showing the stubborn link between black children, absentee fathers, broken homes, and the education and employment gap that bedevils the African-American population in the U.S. My ex is aware of such data, and yet continues to reject all entreaties by me to become more involved in his children's development, in school and in the daily process of their social orientation. Apparently, protecting his children on a daily basis, inoculating them against the stings and uncertainties of growing up, as well as being on hand for the little triumphs and accomplishments that also mark their daily experiences, is less important than being a DC Media maven. That does take a lot of energy -- and a good amount of rationalization.

So I am left to wonder -- What defines "credibility" in DC media circles?

5) The Media and Political Classes Here Are Different From Most Americans -- For Better and Worse

I do not subscribe to the sweeping condemnation (usually leveled by Republican candidates or operatives) that "Washington is the problem." I have been fortunate to meet plenty of wonderfully generous, fun, interesting people during the six years I've lived and worked in and around DC -- along with plenty of jerks, climbers, fakers and assholes. I try to focus on those who believe in democracy and who truly are working hard to make our nation a more equitable, compassionate place.

But it also is true that in these environs you will find a high degree of ambition, power-mongering and back-stabbing, particularly in media, political consulting and in lobbying circles. I am confident that this kind of behavior—some of which I have personally witnessed or otherwise been privy to—may be confined to a small slice of those who work in those circles. As ever, I try to give folks the benefit of the doubt and to meet them where they live (or work). Yet the Bad Actors in these spaces tend to suck up all the oxygen, distracting everyone else from the important ground-work that needs to be done.

I have been back- and front-stabbed a time or two, yes. But I am a big girl. And I sleep very well at night, thank you very much, largely because I refuse to become a Stabber. This too is a lesson I've learned here: DC seems to draw a certain type of personality that is easily seduced (and deluded) by a perceived proximity to power and by the supposed affirmation that comes from dealing with national politicians or media "stars" on a regular basis—this I know first-hand, and sadly, so do my children.

6) Another Very Good Lesson: Being on Hand When Barack Hussein Obama Became President

I am mostly happy to have had a "DC experience" during the period in which Barack Obama became president. I do not care if you think it sounds corny: I stop and wave when the POTUS' motorcade steams down Connecticut Avenue. I pore over the White House website -- bypassing the filter of the news orgs, sorry, my colleagues! -- to observe what goes on at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (or what gets released, anyway.) The POTUS and The FLOTUS are exceptional leaders, and as recent events in the international arena have demonstrated, President Obama is a masterful diplomat and commander in chief. I do want his Administration to turn the same kind of laser-focus that it showed in taking out Osama bin Laden toward taking down the income inequality, racial injustice and such that drags on American progress. I do not think that the Administration's relative slowness in this, however, is as harmful as the previous Administration's duplicity and uncanny ability to nurture high-level hypocrites.

I've also finally stopped fighting and learned to accept and decipher (if not appreciate!) DC euphemisms like "...[Fill in the Blank] was thrown under the bus," and, "...at the end of the day," and "thought leaders." Oh yes, these phrases are annoying and pretentious yet I recognize them for what they also are—tools of the trade in these parts. Boston and San Francisco, too, have their own lingua franca, and God knows Minnesota does!

It is just that, to those who live outside the Beltway, DC-speak tends to be condemned as linguistic evidence of all that is "wrong with Washington." Perhaps with good reason.

7) In Conclusion: You Know That "Washington is the Problem" Message-point That Politicians Toss Around?

I can assure you that Republican political operatives are not alone in singing that tune. The Georgetown and K Street communications and political strategists who cater to corporate entities, left and right political groups or parties; to foreign governments, and really, to anyone with a checkbook fat enough to pay them, are quite adept at pulling, twisting and turning that idea to fit the client's need. It is, perversely, a magnificent thing to behold, the gamesmanship and reality-bending that occurs in the name of "controlling the narrative."

Poor old professional DC. Its wealth of idealists, corporate climbers, policy wonks, moneychangers, overachieving Do-gooders, strivers and of course world class hypocrites makes it a lovely scapegoat for whatever ails you.

Yet and still....

I have learned that egalitarian spirit and great ideas do exist here, and that they can flourish, at times, and send good things far and wide. All one has to do is look beyond the flashy jockeying, the posing and whatnot. It requires determination and solid values that likely formed before you arrived in the nation's capitol.

But do it.

Ignore the "Gotcha" impulse, squint and you can pick it out, there beyond the filigree that obscures the beauty of our Constitution. It does exist in DC -- substance over style, reality over showbiz.

Opting Out of the Noise Machine

2010-10-31T14:40:00.000-07:00

Oh, we had a grand time Restoring Sanity yesterday in Washington, D.C.!

Even if we couldn't see the main stage or hear very well from our perch on the sun-drenched steps of the National Gallery of Art....

It was swell simply to be in the crowd of so many people who apparently agree with Jon Stewart's concern that our political discourse has gotten way out of hand. Actually, what Stewart said at the end of the Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear is that Americans might want to turn off the Noise Machines (that would be your cable TV political programs, and by extension, the blogs and talk radio programming too), as the invective and whatnot in these venues tends to poison your soul.

Or, as Stewart put it, the Conflictinator is not our friend.

Well, that is not exactly a revolutionary idea (although I do relish Stewart's new word, "Conflictinator:" it perfectly encapsulates the endless stream of hot air and manufactured conflict that swirls around us at a stronger and faster pace by the second.) Yet, frankly, I detected skosh of hypocropiety in Stewart's closing speech, if I may say so.

I mean, think of it: Stewart, Colbert and the rest of the merry band of Comedy Central Political Satirists create as much heat as any political pundit currently befouling our TV machines nationwide. Same time, though, Stewart and Colbert deserve props for at least attempting to bring a measure of LIGHT along with the heat. And that is valuable indeed during these tense, dark times.

All in all, it was a good day; I am glad that I was there.

Now, how long will this warm glow last?

Photos: Amy Alexander

On Ginni-Gate: How Did The Call Happen?

2010-10-20T10:26:00.000-07:00

My, my, my, so many questions around this Virginia Thomas Calls Anita Hill situation.

First, the most obvious -- How did Virginia Lamp Thomas decide to call Anita Hill and ask for an apology? Why was October 9, 2010 -- a Saturday morning, at approximately one hour past sunrise -- the right moment to place the call?

More disturbingly, What did Clarence (the Wronged Husband, in Ginni's mind) know, and when did he know it?

Ah, the mind reels.

Over at The Black Snob, Danielle Belton asks questions in a context that is even more pertinent -- the daily give and take between Clarence and Ginni, and what peculiar aspects of their.....relationship might have led up to the moment when Ginny grabbed that phone in her daintly "little" hand, and dialed Professor Anita Hill's line at Brandeis.

The Snob asked:

What brought this up? Do [Clarence and Ginni] just re-enact the hearings once a week to get...all riled up all over again? Does he give the high tech lynching speech before blessing dinner?

This line of questioning creates Domestic Scenarios that are too terrible to contemplate.

But contemplate them we must.

I surmise that it went a little something like this:

The night before The Call, Clarence and Ginni return from their usual Friday night Spot, the "VIP" dining room at Bennigan's in McLean, Virginia. As usual, a rip-roaring time was had by all -- they'd dined with Dick and Lynne
Cheney. They enjoy these Friday get-togethers at this Spot because that is Cattleman's Buffet Night.

So the Menfolk polished off a rack o' Southern Smoked Ribs, four pitchers of Miller (Lite), a half-dozen baked potatoes. (Dick passed on the butter and sour cream owing to that heart situation -- Danged arteries just won't stay unclogged!) The Wimminfolk had enjoyed their Endless Shrimp Special and broccoli, washed down with the best of AmRhein Wineries new Chardonneys -- none of that sissified California wines for Ginni and Lynne, oh no oh-oh! They drank only labels from Virginia wineries, the more Teutonic-sounding the better.

Lynne had cut herself off after that second bottle but Ginni -- ah Ginni was on a roll! Regaling them with stories from her recent whiste-stop tour on the Tea Party trail, and before anyone knew it, there were FOUR empty bottles of AmRhein on the table!

They parted company just after the Witching Hour: the Bennigan's manager usually let them stay as long as they wanted, but Dick was lookin' a bit peaked, and Ginni had wobbled a bit when she made her last trip to the Ladies' room. As Dick and Lynne ducked into the backseat of their stealth-sedan (driven by Twin Towering SS men in dark shades and ear-pieces. Yes, the shades stayed on, even at night) Ginni hugged Lynne and whispered sloshily, "Next time I visit the Tea Parties up in New England, you should come with me! They really do it up over there in Massa-SHOOT-ches.... though you'd never guess from how the Lamestream media fawns all over that prissy little Governor Patrick."

The two women cackled, and bid each other adieu.

In their Ford Expedition on the way home, Clarence asked what she and Lynne had been giggling about there at the Cheney's invisible car.

Ginni: "Oh, I was just trying to entice her to come with me next time I visit the Tea Partiers in New England. I swan, everytime I go up there, I feel like I have to watch my back....all those Eggheads and over-entitled bloggers running around, it can be exhausting....."

Clarence: "Nyuck, nyuck, nyuck, now there there Sugarfoot. No one in their right mind would try to roll on you....not anyone with any sense, I should say. I mean, I can think of ONE person in New England who probably would give you face full of buckshot, if she got the chance....."

Ginni, slumping against the passenger-side door: "Oh crap, not again with this....!"

Clarence: "Hey, you know what I'm saying, and you know its true! Bitch set me up! And you always act like it was 'OK," her lying like that on me. Gettin up in front of the Confirmation Committee and LYING ON ME."

Ginni: "Whoa, keep your eyes on the road, you nearly took out the Ridge's mailbox again!"

Clarence: "Well, all I'm saying is -- if you really, really, truly and one hundred thousand percent LOVED ME, you would not stand for it. You would not let her continue to exist in comfort and security, minding her own business as if she had not nearly torpedoed my DREAM JOB....the job I WORKED MY WHOLE LIFE FOR! The job I EARNED, the best job EVER IN THE WHOLE WORLD, WHICH NOBODY BETTA NOT EVER TRY TO TAKE FROM ME, EVER AGAIN!"

The Expedition veered dangerously toward the center line on the dark, back-road leading up to their sequestered estate, and Ginni grabbed the wheel just in the nick of time.

Together, they steered the lumbering vehicle into their own mile-long "driveway." Clarence's hands gripped the wheel tightly, but his breathing was returning to normal.

Ginni: "Clarence...I'm so sorry. Its okay, I got it. Baby, it is OK. Don't you worry, my Big Man. You are right. I get it I get it I get it....."

Clarence: "Not the first time I've heard that, Ginni......"

Ginni: "Well then hear this -- I GET IT, Clarence. And you best believe me when I say this right now: Mama's GOT THIS."

The next morning, Ginni tip-toed out of their bedroom at sunrise.

She had cotton mouth -- effing Chardonnay did it every time! -- but it was nothing a big tumbler of water and even bigger cup of bitter black coffee couldn't fix.

She padded downstairs, paSSED the portraits of John Birch and Strom Thurman hanging in the foyer.

She went to her office next to the kitchen, fired up the Carly Fiorina Type-and-Search-Machine, and got busy.........

New Populations, New Challenges = A Call for New Language

2010-10-07T17:56:00.000-07:00

Did I mention that I admire The Nation?

Not just because I am affiliated with it, but also because Cooler Heads tend to prevail at the Nation, a venerable publication. Yes, Cooler Heads, even within the context of partisan political coverage. And when I say "venerable," I mean an American mass-market journal of political news and information that has published continually since 1864...all the while on the side of the angels.

I have never met Isabel Macdonald, the Nation Institute-funded writer who delivered the story that unmasks our most recent high profile Hypocrite -- oh, there have been so many in recent years, on the left and right of the political spectrum -- but she has captured an important thread that has been floating around in the zeitgeist lately, just beyond reach: The human failings that can exist in anyone, and which too many alleged "leaders" try to hide, even as they condemn in public anyone else who shows the same failings.

And so, given Isabel's trenchant story in the current issue of the weekly Nation, and considering other related developments during the past few weeks in the realm of American cultural politics, I have been inspired to come up with a new word:

Hypocropiety.

Noun, describes one who vociferously invokes religion or national affiliation to criticize in public a movement, idea, or development while privately engaging in the behavior being criticized.

Pronunciation: Hy-poc-ro-pah-i-ety.

Origin: Me, October 7, 2010.

Related Forms:

Hyp·o·crit·i·cal, (adj.), from Greek, hypocrisis, "one who acts on the stage, pretense."

hyp·o·crit·i·cal·ly, (adv.)

su·per·hyp·o·crite, (n.)

un·hyp·o·crit·i·cal, (adj.)

un·hyp·o·crit·i·cal·ly,(adv.)

Pious: from Latin, pietas, one who respected his responsibilities to other people, gods and entities (such as the state), and understood his place in society with respect to others. In the Roman, "the love a son should have for the father."

Hypocropiety, related definitions:

1) Reverence for God or nation, devout fulfillment of religious or nativastic obligations: a prayer, admonishment or pledge full of piety, masking deceit.

2) The quality or state of being pious: saintly or patriotic piety as facade.

3) Dutiful respect or regard for parents, homeland, etc., stated: filial, terrestrial, religious piety as facade.

4) A pious act, remark, belief, action, or the like, furthering the external perception of the devotion and sacrifices of an austere life.

Use:

"Former CNN news anchor Lou Dobbs hired undocumented immigrant workers at his multi-million dollar estates, even as he regularly appeared on a national television program denouncing as 'unpatriotic" undocumented illegal workers and those who employed them."

Synonym, n., Bishop Eddie Long.

BrownTwitterBird Speaks....Er,.... Tweets!

2010-08-16T02:36:00.000-07:00

Oh, it was tempting to nest all weekend, snuggled in, enjoying the blessedly cool and tornado free weather. Hasn't this summer been some kinda hot mess? I will tweet you what: BrownTwitterBird and my two BabyBrownTwitterBirds are about through with PEEPCO. I mean seriously. How is a body supposed to keep it together when the lights and A/C are crapping out every five seconds? The Biblical rainstorms and gale force winds we can handle -- BTB has personally clocked mad miles over the years, migrating from the West Coast to the Southeast to the Northeast to the Midwest....Chile, my little wings go all a'trembly at the thought of all that flying....

So we do enjoy a quiet, drama-free weekend now and again. But the sanctity of our humble Silver Spring branch was nearly shattered yesterday morning, after one the BabyBrownTwitters plopped the Sunday New York Times into the nest. Usually I do enjoy the Sunday Times, oh how we greedily pore over the wedding listings and twitter delightedly at all the rich folks from Harvard, and Yale, and Brandeis getting hitched by their Uncle Jasper who went and got ordained by the Universalists through the mail just so he could be the one to sanctify little Madison Brockton's and Kim Yoon's holy matrimony!

We love, abso-tweetly-LUV young love, especially when it is made legal at the Penobscot Bay-side retreat that was bought by the great-great-great-great-great-great GrandPa of little Miss Establishment!

Anytweet, after I made the rounds of the A-section, the Style section, and Book Review -- BTB cannot live without a good poring over the Letters section of Book Review, where tout le monde effete NY literary types meet to scratch and claw at each other like peregrine falcolns perched atop the Dakota -- I moved on to the shredding phase of my Sunday Times ritual. (BTB is all about the recycling, and, lucky me, those thoughtful, forward-thinking Timesfolk really do provide the best acid-free, no-ink-on-your-feathers paper evah, most excellent for reinforcing our humble nest.

But as I tore through the Week in Review section, carefully shredding each page into the quarter-inch wide strips that BTB prefers, what do these pinprick black eyes catch sight of?

Maureen Dowd, telling that cute, pudgy Robert Gibbs that he needs to resign. I mean, really? Hold the feed -- Seriously, Maureen?

BTB would like to know when newspaper Columnists got so thin-skinned? Or, for that matter, while we are at it, why Maureen and her ilk in the blogosphere and on the TV machine are so vigorously pooping in the punchbowl of the POTUS over his supposed lack of "progressive" policies?

Around here, we keep a clean nest, Honey.

And let me tweet you what: Unless you are hatching some kind of brilliantly diabolical plan to clip the wings of the POTUS so cleanly and mercilessly that he cannot possibly win another term, so that Sarah Palin can take over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue....so that you and your ilk can again return to the High Dudgeon of complaining about the bird-brain Republicans who next time around will most assuredly succeed in their evil mission to ruin this country, well, I respectfully suggest you chill out. We know from bird-brains and the POTUS is not among them.

As is? At this point? The finger- and tongue-wagging is most unbecoming, and tiresome. BTB doesn't have fingers to wag and puffed-up feathers don't actually wag with emphasis, so alright you've got me, there was a tiny bit of Green-eyed Monster in that comment, I have to admit.

But I say this with affection, Maureen. Most times, I do enjoy your scratchings. Why, I even agreed with you a few weeks ago, when you said the POTUS might want to dump some of those smug white guy advisers and those La-Di-Dah Brattle Street blacks who fill up his aide ranks, and go hire some salt-of-the-earth Regular Folk (black or white, truth be told), who know their way around a Crow's Nest, and I do mean that gamey dive up in Gloucester, Mass., where all those hearty Lobsta-People used to hang out. Really, it would be so tweet indeed for the POTUS to get some hard-headed advice from a smart, grounded adviser who hasn't yet been puffed up by The Importance of Being a Political Insider. BTB found it amusing, then, that you caught so much hell for writing that, but personally? I think it was gutsy and spot on -- even if you did cadge the idea from the sage of the Lower House, Jimmy "Wise Owl" Clyburn.

That cute little Robert Gibbs called out the "Professional Left" -- to which I tweet, And, what? He was as right as rain, and honestly, Maureen, it might help if you flapped over to the real world once in while, to see how most folks are faring these days. Not just to Northern California, where BTB has noticed you spend a suspiciously large amount of time and seem to take particular glee in flitting around with the likes of Phil Bronstein and Gavin Newsom, aka, the Oily Twins of San Francisco. Really, there are so many more interesting birds to flock with in that corner of our fair land, and in many other cities and towns, too. I mean, your outfit, bless its shrinking heart, does still have a travel budget, right?

And you do know that folks are as varied, mysterious and surprising as a Peacock's jacket under a microscope, yes?

Put on your tough bird panties, and take a spin out of the Beltway perch, why don't you. The "Progressive Left" really needs to get out more, and I mean out where job losses and gun violence and food pantries are not just tweeting-points, they are where folks live....or are trying to, anyway. (Speaking of weddings and gun violence -- BTB pert near dropped her seed when she read about the shoot-out at that wedding in Buffalo, NY, over the weekend. Sure did. And you know -- now THAT is something to fight about, the Gun Lovers who keep insisting it is OK for everyone to be able to go out and buy a gun. Everyone should not be allowed to have a gun, for Tweet's sake, haven't we all seen the former Mrs. Don Draper waving that bb-shotgun around with a cigarette dangling form her lips while she draws down on my cousins? And know what else Maureen and the Progressive Left? If you want to carp at the POTUS over a boutique issue, that is my pick, thank you very much, not your gay marriage or your climate change.)

Off you go now. Time to rustle breakfast for the BBTBs. I'll be looking for an update soon, in my Times, so don't make a BrownTwitterBird have to take off her earrings......

And Don't Call Me Shirley....Though I Do Sport a Nice Set of NAACP-Ben Jealous Tire Marks on My Back

2010-07-23T18:31:00.000-07:00

Surely you don't think that Mrs. Shirley Sherrod is the first black woman to be thrown under the Escalade by NAACP President and CEO Ben Todd Jealous?

As Princeton professor Melissa Harris Lacewell quite succinctly put it, "the villification of black women for sport and political gain" is as old as our republic. But the most upsetting aspect of L'Affair Sherrod, Harris-Lacewell said during an interview on MSNBC last week, is that it exposed the NAACP as being a part of this historic mistreatment of black women. Moreover, "To say [Sherrod's] last name alone should have prompted, for the head of the NAACP, an immediate moment of pausing," Harris-Lacewell said, referring to Jealous' quick decision to "denounce" Sherrod for a fake-ass "reverse racism" speech that a right-wing blogger put out.

Yes, well.

If this were a motion picture, right here the soundtrack would swell with cascading string instruments, that universal sound of an approaching Flashback.......

I first met Benjamin T. Jealous in early May 2009.

We sat down in a back booth at Chipotle on Ellsworth Drive, in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland.

A mutual friend had connected us, though in Washington D.C. lingo, "friend" can mean a Pro contact, a Source, or an Associate. Got it?

Anyway:

I needed a job. Ideally one that didn't involve writing for dubious Websites or PR firms that flak for guns, booze, or the GOP.

Ben needed a Real Journalist...or so he said.

As he laid it out between the big bites of tortilla something or other and soda pop that he consumed, the NAACP was planning an Investigative Unit. In his description, this was to be a collection of staffers and volunteers throughout the association's 1,200 or so branches and chapters nationwide. The plan was to set up "investigative units" -- folks trained in the fundamentals of good old-fashioned journalism, and armed with cameras, and Internet-access -- to report on developments in their jurisdictions.

The units would be directed by a Communications manager in D.C. or Baltimore, and the "content" delivered by the units would be produced at the NAACP's soon to be redesigned main website. The Communications manager of the unit would report to the association's communications chief, based in D.C. Because I had done award-winning work in "legacy" and digital media -- at big newspapers, magazines; in broadcast journalism, including at NPR, and on the Web -- in addition to having written nonfiction books about Serious Black Stuff, whew, right? -- I was the right person for the Manager of Web Content and Special Investigations job, Jealous said.

I sipped water, and watched him from across the table. (I was too broke to buy a meal; he had offered, but I declined.) We seemed to be simpatico: He grew up in Northern California, in Monterey, a hop skip down the coast from where I grew up, in San Francisco. He had worked in newspapers, the African-American press, as a journeyman reporter and then as head of an association of black newspapers. A decade younger than I am, Ben Jealous seemed familiar to me -- passionate about improving the conditions of black Americans, and about social justice in general. "Light-skinned bourgeoise," is how one friend of mine, a black British journalist who knew Jealous socially, would later refer to Jealous and other members of his inner-circle.

But at our first meeting, I mostly saw a youngish brother who apparently wanted to bring the nation's oldest civil rights organization into the 21st Century. Sure, he seemed a bit green -- he stumbled over words from time to time, with the odd hard consonant getting stuck in his throat -- but I heard a sharp intellect there, too.

"With all this new digital technology, and given our networks across the nation, we have a great opportunity to take civil rights work to a new level," Jealous said, referring to the prospect of activating NAACP members to serve as "eyewitness reporters" in their own communities. I said I believed I could help. (And I meant it.) We also talked about mutual acquaintances in the shrinking world of major media, and our respective families. Jealous has a lovely wife and an adorable toddler daughter; I have two elementary school aged children, a great family in San Francisco....and a problematic former husband in D.C.

Jealous said he would connect me to the Vice President of Communications at the NAACP's office in D.C. (which I learned is called the "Washington Bureau.)

I-Teams? What I-Teams?

That is how I came to be the Voice of Ben Jealous for much of the summer of 2009. Not the head of the "I-unit" -- which, I soon learned, was being "temporarily" tabled -- but the writer of Jealous' op-eds, and of the Official Statements, and Press Releases for the association. But mostly, between June and August of last summer, I masqueraded as Jealous in the pages of The Nation, U.S. News and World Report, CNN.com, and on several other high-traffic websites. (Check out these enclosed links -- they take you to columns by "Ben Jealous," all reported and written by yours' truly.)

That NAACP Communications chief that Jealous hooked me up with? Oy gevalt. A truly Vampiric black woman in her late 50s. You know the type -- utterly in denial about the fading of their formerly femme fatale physique yet still committed to thigh-high skirts and Tx3s -- Too Tight Tops. In Vampira's case, sometimes on special occasions, she augmented this look with 5-inch high heels.....Lucite, see-through heels. That's right, just like those that some hookers and sex-workers delight in.

On my first day at the "Washington Bureau" of the association, Vampira essentially turned me into Ben's mouthpiece, saying she needed "help" writing. Was Ben aware that I was not, in fact, working on building the I-team that he had described at our first meeting? Good question. Wish I had the answer. Vampira said that my writing skills were needed to "help out, just for now," on a couple of campaigns that the NAACP was ramping up: Save Troy Davis (a black man on Death Row in Georgia), and advancing the big 100th Anniversary Convention of the NAACP, scheduled for the second week of July 2009.

Why not?, was my initial response, not only because I am a Team Player but also because my spider senses told me that Vampira and Jealous had a co-dependent relationship, i.e., she served his insatiable need to be in the national spotlight, and he saw to it that the association pays Vampira a tidy six figure salary. Oh, I almost forgot to mention: In short order, after I arrived to work in the association's D.C. office on NW 15th Street in early June 2009, I realized that Ben Jealous has this....thing about being in the Limelight. Yes, sadly, that is (or at least it WAS at that time) the association's entire Communications Strategy -- Get Ben in the National Press. I was new to this kind of Communications work -- which Vampira referred to as "the Dark Side" -- but the intense focus on getting Ben into the press struck me as.....extreme.

For example, not long after I started work, Ben Jealous appeared as a panelist on HBO's "Real Time, with Bill Maher." He turned up in Maher's Southern Cal studio on June 12, 2009, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan for the NAACP's "Save Troy Davis" campaign, it read "IAMTROYDAVIS.com." (Yeah, you want snappy messaging? ColorOfChange.org this ain't.) Troy Davis is a black man convicted several years ago of the shooting death of a white policeman in Georgia, and the NAACP had joined forces with Amnesty International and a few other human rights organizations to try to get a new trial for Davis. I won't go into the complicated and, frankly, ambiguous details of the Davis case here. But I will say that I dug in on writing op-ed after op-ed in support of this effort largely because I do believe America's criminal justice system often unfairly locks up black men.

Is Troy Davis truly innocent? You got me. And, as I sat in on phone calls with Vampira, the association's legal partners, and activists in Georgia, it eventually became clear to me that the NAACP couldn't be entirely positive, either, that Davis was innocent.

But that is the thing about the New Generation NAACP as I witnessed it last summer under Ben Jealous' leadership: Details are for Old Schoolers! Gray-beards who just don't get it! Deep thinking, homework, rigorous study and research takes time, is unglamorous, and usually is not captured by cable and network news cameras. And here is another problem, given the wacked-out Communications Strategy I describe above: Jealous rejected -- according to Vampira -- every opportunity to improve his on-camera performance skills. Yeah, I know -- paradoxically crazy, right?

"What're You Gonna Do?"

Because what I saw during Jealous' turn at Maher's desk in June 2009 was a handsome, passionate, articulate black man.....who has a speech impediment.

Yes, there it is, I said it.

And while it is inherently a minor thing, which millions of people world-wide experience, for Ben Jealous, it is emblematic of a larger issue, i.e., his out-sized ego and the high degree to which he is coddled by Vampira and a retinue of flunkies, sychopants, and hangers-on within and without the association.

More to the point, Jealous' unwillingness to accept expert help to overcome his stuttering is also symbolically resonant of the current state of the NAACP -- so close to the edge of greatness, yet so unable to pull back from the Olde Time Patriarchy that self-destructs on its best intentions every single time. (Remember Ben Chavis as NAACP president during the early '90s? I do, since I covered his downfall for The Miami Herald. Then there was Kweisi Mfume, who..... oh Mercy. Ben Jealous, to my knowledge, has not used association funds to pay off Women Not His Wife to keep them quiet about sexual liaisons. But the cult of President-and-CEO Hero Worship is, sadly, alive and well at the NAACP.

The association's late-breaking forays into social media and "coalition-building" with human rights organizations is mostly window-dressing. The installation several months ago of Roslyn Brock as Chairman of the NAACP may be a glimmer of hope for true progress. Still, that is not a lock. I mean, Ros is relatively young, and yes, she says she is New Jack and wants to bring the association squarely into the 21st Century.

But she is also quite Establishment, which is to say an NAACP Baby, which, in turn, is to say that Brock might be ill-equipped to kick the ass of Ben Jealous -- or at least push him away from the cameras, and pull forward the faithful Worker Bees who toil in the depths of the association. During my time there, I met some of the hardest-working, dedicated and Righteous folks I have ever known. There are a whole bunch of Shirley Sherrods working at the En-Double-A who are probably royally ticked off right about now. Because, you know? They believe in the mission....and they want (and deserve) Brave,Visionary Leadership that doesn't behave as if black women are expendable.

But, returning to how I got some Shirley Sherrod-style tire marks on my back thanks to Ben Jealous: Okay, when I walked into Vampira's office the Monday after Jealous' embarrassing turn on Maher and asked if Jealous had ever had intensive media training, this is what Vampira said:

"You're right, he doesn't do well on live television AT ALL, and I've suggested we get someone in here to help him with it. But he doesn't want to. So what're you gonna do?"

Hand to God, people. "What're you gonna do?" was Vampira's reply.

Also, during my FIRST WEEK ON THE JOB, Vampira told me she believed that Jealous had a certain mental health diagnosis. I won't repeat it here, as I have no way of knowing that what Vampira said is accurate. We were walking back from lunch at Georgia Brown's on 15th Street, when she let it fly. Honestly, I can't remember what precipitated that comment. But when she said it, I stopped walking and looked at her. She began to ramble on about how Jealous' mental health challenges should be considered in the larger context of blacks and mental health care; I assumed she Went There, at least in part, because I am a subject-matter expert on that topic. I didn't ask for details or saying anything except, "Oh. OH."

Over the next several weeks, as the Davis campaign heated up, and the Convention approached, I watched, fascinated, as Vampira and other Communications staffers wrangled Ben Jealous onto national news programs at CNN, PBS, ABC, MSNBC, CBS, and other outlets....where he stumbled and gesticulated his way through interviews about the association's "relevancy," and why this NAACP is not your Grand Pappy's NAACP.

Did the talking points that I wrote for Ben and gave to Vampira ever make it into Jealous' interviews? No. Listen, a key aspect of the enabling/co-dependent relationship between Jealous and Vampira was this: She isolated Jealous from the rest of the Comms team.(Of course, this indicates that he allowed himself to be isolated.) I saw Ben a grand total of three times between when I started work in the DC office and when I left in late summer. (Of course, you saw this coming, right? Vampira pushing me out of the association? T'yeah, sure did, and I still do not get why I didn't see it coming, especially after she inexplicably dropped that "Ben has [mental health diagnosis]" on me in early June....)

Things seriously escalated when I told Vampira that, with the Troy Davis campaign ended -- in July 2009, the US Supreme Court had agreed to consider hearing the case -- and following the close of the 100th Anniversary Convention -- where President Barack Obama had delivered a most excellent speech, and yes, I was glad to have been there -- I fully expected to turn my attention at long last to building the I-units throughout the association's branches and chapters.

You know, silly me -- the job I was hired to do?

But even before that, I knew she was gunning for me -- I'm one of those people who has a hard time making with the Happy Face when I'm in the midst of unethical goings-on and ego-driven, craptastic shenanigans. Later, I learned from other NAACP staff members that Vampira had never intended for me to set up any I-units.

Real Housewives of Atlanta -- NAACP-style

Moreover, with a distinctly COINTELPRO flair, since my first day on the job, Vampira had been methodically bad-mouthing me to other leaders in the NAACP, the Vice Presidents in Baltimore who were closest to Ben Jealous (and likely, she'd bad-mouthed me to Jealous too) even as she assigned me one op-ed after another -- all of which were published. (Did I mention that Vampira cannot write? Well, I should say, she cannot write or think about issues in a way that will truly move the association forward positively. That's where I came in. She was expert, however, at working Ben Jealous.)

And so here it is -- a Real Housewives of Atlanta style set-to that sped my departure from the Nation's Oldest Civil Rights organization. (That is how one of my colleagues, a smart Digital Media guru in California, characterized it when I shared this crazy-assed story with her during a phone talk later that summer: "Girl, that is some 'Real Housewives of Atlanta' bullshit," this colleague said. Which cracked me up, since at the time we were discussing this, I had just watched that program for the first time, agog at its stage-managed depictions of trifling women scrapping over trivial nonsense. Had my scrapes with Vampira looked like that to those who'd been on the scene?

Back to the denouement: On the day before I was scheduled to take the Acela to New York to work at the Convention in mid-July, Vampira phoned me- she was already in NYC -- and said, "Amy, I need you to take a look at the draft of Ben's speech he will give at the Convention -- it really needs work, and this is the sort of thing you're really good at. So please, you know, do your thing....but keep it quiet: Ben will be embarrassed if he finds out that anyone other than ME is helping him with this."

Sure enough, in short order I received Ben's Convention speech as an email attachment from Vampira....followed a couple of hours later by another email from Vampira in which she asked me to bring her business cards to NYC. (She had forgotten to bring them, and they were in her office in D.C.)

I phoned her cell immediately, following her second email asking me to bring her biz cards, to let her know that I had already left the NAACP office in D.C. and that I wouldn't be returning there before I headed up to New York. Therefore, I politely said to her outgoing vmail message, I will not have your biz cards when I arrive at the New York Hilton, but I will do my best to contact the Office Manager, and ask her to send them express.

Okay, apologies for getting into the weeds here, but this is instructive:

Two days into the convention, Vampira rolled up on me in the Press Room at the New York Hilton and actually began loud-talking me .....because I hadn't brought her business cards. Calmly, I reminded her that I had contacted the Office Manager back in DC, and that the cards were on their way. To which she replied, "After this convention, you are DONE. You won't be working for us anymore."

She said this at a near-shout, in a room filled with journalists who had come to the Hilton to cover the 100th Anniversary Convention and President Obama's speech. I told her I was in the midst of helping find press passes for the newcomers, and that I would follow up on finding her business cards as soon as I'd cleared the line of waiting media pros. But I was furious and humiliated -- I am in my mid-40s. I have written books, articles, and produced high-quality journalism for more than two decades, at some of the nation's best outlets, in Old and New Media.

Yet Vampira actually believed that I had taken a job at the NAACP to serve as her op-ed writing minion and business-card carrier. How about that?

When I left the press room at the Hilton following Vampira's freak-out, I immediately found Ben Jealous' personal assistant -- a highly-efficient young black woman, one of two association staffers who mind Jealous' schedule -- and told her that Vampira had, for all intents and purposes, loudly fired me in the middle of the press room. The young assistant sighed, and said, "Why don't you go get lunch, Amy. I will take care of this." Oh, and while I was at it, I also let this assistant know that I had, at Vampira's request, rewritten Jealous' convention speech....and that despite my having turned that assignment around in 24 hours, and returned it to Vampira via email, it had not come up.

Later that afternoon, Vampira phoned my cell and left a message: "I don't know why people are saying that I 'fired you' today in the press room, Amy. But, you know, there is so much going on here now, things are kind of chaotic, I just think everyone needs to do their best to keep things going smoothly, and that we should have a meeting to talk about duties, when we return to D.C. next week." I didn't return that call, and I avoided Vampira for the remainder of the confab.

But on the day, a couple of weeks after the convention closed, when Vampira phoned my cell as I headed home to Montgomery County from the association office on 15th Street in D.C., I had pretty much had enough.

She said, "Come in tomorrow at 9am, we need to have a meeting to talk about your work. "

"Fine," I said, "because, you know, it is time for me to turn my attention to the job I was hired to do...."

Vampira cut me off. "Actually, everyone doesn't always get to DO the same job that maybe they expected to at the time they're hired....given our resources, you should understand that you will do whatever work I feel we need, at any given time. And I AM [your supervisor] here."

Yes, an Al Haig moment. And it pushed me right over the top. "Look, I've been doing ALL of the writing since I came here. I know it, you know it, and everyone else in Comms knows it. Now, I agreed to it initially, because of the Davis campaign and the Convention. But those things are DONE now, and I need to get these reporting units set up....."

The President and CEO Regrets

Well, you can write the rest of this part of the story. Now, of course, at any point during my dealings with Vampira, I could easily have contacted Ben Jealous, in confidence, and shared my concerns about her erratic behavior.

But I did not. I lacked confidence that Jealous would have my back.

So did I have any direct dealings with Ben Jealous after Vampira pushed me out?

He emailed me later in August 2009, after I'd left the association, and said, in essence, Gee Amy, I sure am sorry that things didn't work out. It will be helpful to hear what your experience was like, if you care to share. I'm traveling for the next couple of weeks, but after I return, maybe we can sit down together...

I waited a few days after reading THAT passive-aggressive claptrap, and then wrote back saying, Sure, I'm happy to sit down with you. In the meantime, I will be needing another job really soon, since, you know, I am a divorced mother of two elementary school-aged children. So I will really could use a good reference from you.

And you know what?

I bet you DO know what. Ben Jealous didn't reply to that email.

The Investigative Units were not developed, though the main website did receive a makeover, with a spiffy Ben Jealous blog, and YouTube video snippets from Ben's speeches, and photos of Ben at various events, and links to "Ben's" op-eds......But no real-time content from NAACP "reporters" on the ground.

Fade out. The End.

Except it wasn't, was it?

It is Easy to Casually Fire Black People and Even Easier Not to Hire Them

2010-04-11T16:31:00.000-07:00

This is the truth here in post-racial America.

Glen Ford at Black Agenda Report recently delivered a devastating analysis of an urgent topic that pitiably few reporters at big news organizations have bothered to unpack. (Michael Luo at The New York Times is a rare and thankfully well-placed exception.)

In his April 7 piece, Ford looks at the skyrocketing unemployment stats among African-Americans, and lays out a likely trajectory of increasing unemployment. Along the way, he also deftly uncovers some of the soft, difficult to quantify aspects underneath the high black unemployment rate, namely, the probability of whites who are reluctant to hire blacks during this massive contraction of the American workplace. He stops short of saying white gatekeepers and hiring managers are racist....but what else explains it?

At the same time, I don't agree with Ford's rather inelegant Karate chop near the end of the piece -- he accuses President Obama of not caring to address the escalating jobless crisis for blacks.I do worry that President Obama, fresh off the long, grueling battle to pass health care reform, may be a bit reluctant to pivot hard and stride directly into another wrenching economics-related minefield...especially one marked with big ruts of cultural crap. Sure, POTUS could roll out and say, "Black folks are being hit hardest by the economic downturn, so I am going to focus on creating jobs in their communities first."

But not only would such a statement from the President send the Tea Partiers to marching up Pennsylvania Avenue with lit pitchforks and swinging truncheons, it would also push more than a few Democratic elected officials right out of their seats. No, I suspect there is a sub rosa plan taking shape to address the unacceptably high unemployment numbers among blacks....but no one should hold their breath for any Announcement about it any time soon. I do not think that means the President does not care,I think it means he is as pragmatic as he is determined to honor his campaign promises and to serve his own personal values.

Still, I wholeheartedly agree with Ford's call to arms: "We need a movement."

This topic is particularly urgent for me: During the past month, I have had several conversations with black colleagues and friends who are being devastated by the on-going "recession;" they are out of work and stunned by how hard it is to find a new job that is comparable to the job they left. Yes, as the saying has it, White America may have a bad cold (recession) but for us, it is an insidious, lethal case of pneumonia (Depression).

My out-of-work colleagues are doing their best to stay optimistic but it is a tough row to hoe: they are middle-aged, and have worked more than twenty years in their fields; one colleague -- well, you might call him My Former Husband -- is currently seeking work,after being employed continuously for almost 25 years in print media. As much as I am tempted to indulge in a bit of Schadenfreude as he experiences the same shock that I encountered three years ago when I was unexpectedly thrust into the hellishness of seeking work in DC's morphing, shrinking media landscape, I am not going there...at least not whole hog, anyway. It is a scary time for black professionals who have worked hard to become experts at their line of work, only to suddenly face the prospect that all that time in service and knowledge-accumulation is no longer Good Enough. Well, that is some kind of cruel fate. (As it is for anyone in that position, no matter their gender or skin color; I'm simply suggesting that black Americans only began occupying white-collar professions in significant numbers relatively recently, so the losses are more acutely felt.)

For each of my colleagues currently out work in greater DC, the hardest part of the seemingly-endless job searching is this: Once they've cleared all the hurdles to get an interview, including writing tests, phone interviews, questionnaires, should they actually land an interview, they invariably face the amorphous "comfort zone" test. This is a make or break moment, calm on the surface, yet fraught with tension beneath the stiff smiles.

Until recently, I wore those shoes, and I know what it feels like to walk out of the interview knowing that my work experience, my sensibility, my skills at problem-solving, critical thinking, and all that good stuff will not, necessarily, trump any perception that White hiring manager may hold (however incorrectly) of my ability to "fit into the workplace culture." But this "fit in" canard is a big reason why many qualified blacks don't get hired today, especially here in D.C.'s hot-house, white collar workplaces.

So, time after time, qualified black candidates walk away from that interview, only to later receive an email or brief phone message (why are these gatekeepers so cowardly?) indicating that the hiring manager didn't feel they would make "a good fit," or that the hiring manager has decided to "go in another direction." Vague reasons.....but just specific enough to make you hang your head.

It can be soul-crushing. Like Ford at Black Agenda Report observes, the ease with which blacks -- qualified blacks -- are passed over or fired from much-needed jobs is tragic, and maddening.

Until President Obama and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and their respective Jobs Creation czars come up with an effective way to neutralize (if not eliminate) that aspect of the changing economic landscape, I'm afraid the gains that blacks have made during the past three decades will be diminished greatly, perhaps even irrevocably.

***********************************************

David Mills: Now that was a Giant Negro for you.

Today is the home-going for David Mills, the former Washington Post writer who went on to deliver some of the best television scripts of the past decade. I could not make the service, in College Park, Maryland, but I was there in spirit, and will make a donation to David's family's preferred charity. Last night, I watched the premiere of "Treme" on HBO, the series David was working on when he passed away last month. Yep, great writing, as usual. I will eagerly watch the entire series.... even though I dread the inevitable time ahead, when we will come to deeply miss his singular voice and uncanny insight......

Nancy Pelosi and Shirley Chisholm: My Very Own BFFs

2010-03-20T08:53:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, I developed a Girl Crush on Shirley Chisholm.

Something about her eyeglasses, and the overbite, not to mention Chisholm's way with words.

The other day, I dipped again into Say it Plain: A Century of Great African-American Speeches, to revisit the Awesomeness that was Chisholm. (If you don't have this 2005 collection, edited by Catherine Ellis and Stephen Drury Smith, you might consider it: not only does it have all the Greatest Hits you might expect, including from MLK, but it also has more obscure speeches from the likes of John Hope Franklin, Johnetta B. Cole, and Mary McCloud Bethune. Oh, and it comes with a CD of the original audio captures of the speeches! Run, don't walk...)

On June 17, 1974, at The University of Kansas, Chisholm gave a speech titled, "The Black Woman in Contemporary America." Along with many observational gems on the status of black women, it included this:

I hope the day will come in America when this business of male versus female does not become such an overriding issue, that the talents and abilities that the almighty God has given to people can be utilized for the benefit of humanity. ... I would never have been able to make it in America if I had paid attention to all of the doomsday-criers about me. ... Forget traditions! Forget conventionalisms! Forget what the world will say whether you're in your place or out of your place. Stand up and be counted. Do your thing, looking only to God -- whoever your God is -- and to your consciences for approval.

Yeah, she brung it. And apart from the groovey and now dated '70s-speak -- "do your thing" -- Chisholm's toughness and smarts resonates with me.

This is what occurred to me too, recently, about Nancy Pelosi.

Not saying I have a Girl Crush on Pelosi. But honestly? It could come to that.

Lately I have been paying closer attention to her, specifically, to how she manages the wrangling of votes for the health-care reform bill. Seriously: Before now, I have been preoccupied, and not really tuned in to Pelosi's doings, or to all the Nancy Haters on the right. After Pelosi took the Speaker's gavel several years back, I tuned her detractors out: How boring to consider that they are unduly undone by Pelosi's San Francisco affiliation, as much as they are by any particular legislation she is championing.

But now it occurs to me that Chisholm's observations about sexism are really what is driving the Nancy Haters: How dare this gal wield so much power on Capitol Hill?, they seem to be thinking. Why is a woman in a position of power at such a crucial time in the history of our Republic? How come she isn't more deferential to us?

Right: Senator John Boehner and his crew probably use language that is a tad saltier when they talk about Pelosi in private.

But their Hateration is not only antediluvian, it is poisoning their ability to clearly assess a fundamental change that is taking place in the U.S. -- populations coast to coast are becoming younger, browner, and more female. The willful denial and ignorance of the Nancy Haters will be, ultimately, their own undoing. The increasingly frantic and absurd tactics they use to push-back against passage of the health-care bill are the final gasps of a dying empire, like Nero cranking up the violin as the flames of defeat expand around him.

Okay, not really the best metaphor, but I hope you get my meaning: Nancy Pelosi is a San Francisco Liberal (just like me...only with a larger clothing budget). And everything that is implied by that term, as it is typically hurled by Boehner and his crew, is fast becoming the "norm" in America: tolerance for "non-traditional" lifestyles, compassion for those less fortunate, government that provides for the most vulnerable of its citizens, and which smooths a path to stability for those who just need a fair shot.

Yeah, so don't waste too much energy on the Haters. Time is not on their side. I take solace in the best lessons from history, and from what I know about strong, smart American women. Shirley Chisholm's 1970 autobiography was titled Unbought and Unbossed.

That is how I think of Nancy Pelosi, too.

By the way, the best of the literary canon on Pelosi is Madame Speaker, written by Marc Sandalow, former DC bureau chief of The San Francisco Chronicle.

And, what?

Five Questions The Big O Should Have Asked Sarah Palin

2009-11-17T07:41:00.000-08:00

Talk about missed opportunities.

Since no real journalists are likely to get a sit-down with Sarah Palin during her book promotions blitz, it sure would've been nice for Oprah to have made a stab at a serious questioning of the former Governor of Alaska.

Remember in '06, when Oprah took apart that fabricating novelist James Frey and his enabling editor, Nan Talese? At that time, I gave The Big O big props for wielding a fine stiletto of truth in the name of defending the precious line between Fact and Fiction in print. Now, though, I wonder if maybe Oprah had rolled so hard on Frey at that time because his deception had put her reputation at risk, and the degree of personal humiliation she felt at having been duped by the dodgy writer created a volcano of Oprahnic anger, one that would only be sated by a Public Sacrifice.

Sure, she apparently apologized to Frey several weeks ago, in a weirdly-timed, but ultimately understandable gesture. (Oprah is big on forgiveness, so her apology to Frey for having flayed him in front of a billion viewers tracks as consistent.) Yet I anticipated a stronger roll on Palin from Oprah, not just because of what she'd laid down on Frey but also because Oprah kinda-sorta used to be a broadcast Journalist, and she has over the years expressed clear-eyed simpatico with the increasingly besieged practitioners of the Fourth Estate.

But no.

Instead, in her interview yesterday with Palin, we witnessed a spectacle of polite nudging and Girlfriend-ey winks and nods. How tellingly Show Biz was it, for example, when at the end of the 40+ minute talk, Oprah asked Palin if a national television talk show is in Palin's future. "Should I be worried?," Oprah asked playfully. To which Palin replied, with characteristic faux modesty, 'Oprah, you are the Queen."

Ack.

Their interview has been parsed, dissected, and chewed over ad infinitum ad naseum elsewhere -- including on my Facebook page, where I live blogged it -- so I won't rehash it here now.

Instead, I present five questions that The Big O should have asked Sarah Palin....if only The Big O had decided to put her Journalists’ Hat, rather than her Show Biz Lid, squarely atop her well-coiffed head during her talk with the ex-Gov.

1) While campaigning with John McCain last fall, you repeatedly accused then-Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists." Many more of your stump speeches contained references to Obama as promoting a "socialist" agenda. Do you still believe these things about President Obama? (Thanks to Donald Collins, who suggested this question.)

2) In your book, you describe the moment when you learned that the child you were carrying, your son Trig, would likely be born with Down Syndrome, and that for a fleeting moment, you 'understood' how some women might consider abortion. So isn't it hypocritical of you to support anti-choice legislation?

3) Did you order or arrange the firing of your brother-in-law from his job supervising a unit of the Alaska State Troopers?

4) Did Nicolle Wallace advise you that Katie Couric had "low self-esteem?"

5) You studied journalism in college, and worked for a local news program for a time. How do you describe the role of journalism and journalists in a free, democratic society?

Now, that would have made for some Must-See TV.

A final point on the current Palin-palooza that is sweeping across the fruited plain: You may have heard that quite a few folks have mounted "rejoinder" publications to coincide with the appearance of the former Governor's "autobiography" this week. (Yeah, I put quotation marks around "autobiography" since it is not likely that Palin actually WROTE her own book.)

One of the rejoinders dropping today is called (quite cleverly) Going Rouge: Sarah Palin, An American Nightmare. It is put out by a new publishing concern, OR Books, and edited by my colleagues at The Nation, the estimable Betsy Reed, Executive Editor of The Nation, and the dashingly brilliant Senior Editor, Richard Kim. I am a Contributor, one of several writers who published essays and articles in the Nation and elsewhere last year during the frenzied weeks after Palin popped up on the GOP presidential ticket.

My essay, titled, "Sarah's Steel Ones," makes the point that Sarah Palin is worthy of respect for a couple of reasons: A) she is a human being and B) she appears to possess a high degree of ambition, moxie and self-confidence, traits that, in and of themselves, are valuable inclusions in a woman’s personal arsenal.

A year later, even in light of the...unfortunate nature of many of her recent choices, I do not rescind my original argument. I will however take this opportunity to amend it: Self-confidence, moxie, and ambition are great, but they are most effective and self-sustaining when combined with equal measures of self-awareness, intellectual curiosity, honesty, and compassion.

I believe that women who successfully achieve this balance are often called "difficult" by men....while other women will choose the word “together.”

Is it Just Me, or Is the Movement to Save Journalism Too Damned White?

2009-10-25T15:04:00.000-07:00

Autumn is the time of year when journalists and media educators fire up their Vision Machines and apply for grants and fellowships. Since the media eco-system is in massive flux, the past few years has seen a growing number of hyper-local and citizen-journalism projects receiving funding from organizations like the Knight Foundation. Too few, however, are designed by journalists of color, and aimed at addressing the news and information needs of black and brown people in the US and around the globe.

Here's the story of one person who is seeking to change that.

I recently had a great conversation with Ron Nixon. He is a reporter at The New York Times, and a friend. Like me, Ron is concerned about the future of the news business, and more pointedly, about opportunities within the evolving media eco-system for journalists of color.

Can I tell you how refreshing it is to know someone who is not just thinking about how journalists of color are faring in this new landscape but who is actually doing something to improve conditions for journalists here and abroad?

Take a look at Ujima Project, an investigative reporting and research initiative for African journalists and others who cover the continent. It is the brainchild of Ron and colleagues at the non-profit Great Lakes Media Institute, in Kigali, Rwanda.

Based on a newly-minted principle that Ron calls "reverse transparency," Ujima is an online database of information on the spending and workings of African governments, non-governmental agencies and businesses operating on the continent.

Ron coined the phrase "reverse transparency" after he'd spent years covering development and emerging technology in Africa -- and kept running into major hurdles whenever he sought to obtain relevant data and statistics from officials in the countries where he was reporting, including Nigeria and Rwanda.

"There's no such thing as 'open records' laws, or open access to government data in many African nations, not even in Botswana, which is a darling of US development efforts," Ron told me recently. But what can be obtained is information from the US and the European Union, and many other nations that do business with African countries.

"The problem has been that the information that is available is all over the place, and takes a lot of work and time to figure out where it is and how to get it. But with this [Ujima Project] database, it will now be available in one place," Ron said. For example, there are lots of NGOs spending billions of dollars across the continent to fight HIV/AIDS, and to provide education programs designed to influence public opinion about the causes of the disease. But for journalists in Africa seeking to track the progress and efficacy of these initiatives, knowing where and how the money is spent can be hard to ascertain, Ron said.

"While these NGOs are there doing good work, you still would like to be able to see where their money goes. But there is no transparency, since many of the NGOs avoid dealing with the governments, for many reasons," Ron said.

"So, for example, when you learn that there's a company in Boston that has a contract worth eighty million dollars to do AIDS work in Kenya.....you look at that and think,'So where is all that money going?'" Without disclosure from the Kenyan government, journalists there can't be sure if that Boston company is directing the money to appropriate efforts.

At the same time, Ron says, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the US State Department, and a handful of other American agencies must approve and vet such arrangements.

These agencies have open records policies for key relevant information on international aid groups and the African nations which do business with them. Thus, by using Freedom of Information Act requests, open records rules, and available online data from American and participating EU nations, the Ujima Project is building a comprehensive, one-stop-shopping resource to help journalists on the Continent "follow the money."

You may be interested to know, for instance, which African nations are buying military weapons and "toxological agents" from U.S. companies. You can find that out at Ujima.

Funded in part with small grants from the Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Open Society Institute; the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's College of Media, the project in beta was unveiled last month in South Africa.

On hand for the unveiling, along with Ron Nixon, dozens of African journalists and academics, was Adam Clayton Powell, III, of USC's Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism. In his role as Vice Provost of Globalization at Annenberg, Powell had attended the Highway Africa Conference, an annual development, media and democracy gathering sponsored by Rhodes University in Eastern Cape, South Africa.

Powell said he was impressed by the demo of Ujima, and told me he believes the Project can emerge as a "go-to" resource for journalists and investors working on the continent.

"Transparency is an issue everywhere, no more so than in Africa, where lack of transparency is a barrier to development," Powell said in an email interview over the weekend. "Assistance and investment just won't take place unless grantmakers and investors can follow management and administration -- and see where their money is really going."

The database's main target group of users, though, is journalists, in which case Powell added, "...as with everything online, the [information at Ujima] is the start not the ending of reporting on a subject. Given the leads in the Ujima database, reporting can become that much more efficient and effective."

The project went up in beta form early in September, and was developed by Ron and by programmers and designers at AppFrica, Appfrica Labs, a softwear and development firm in Kampala, Uganda. Ron built most of the programming himself, and entered the information in portions of the site's databases painstakingly, line by line.

"There were a few times when I felt the RSI happening, but it had to be done," Ron said, laughing.

Going forward, though, as the estimated ninety-plus investigative journalists currently working for news organizations on the African continent begin to use the site, Ron estimates that Ujima's collections of data-sets will broaden, following an increase in demand.

The "reverse transparency" operating principle of the the site can be replicated, too, in the Middle East and in Asia, with journalists taking advantage of the open-records laws of Western nations that fund projects in those parts of the world, Ron said.

He and his colleagues have applied for a grant from the Knight Foundation's Knight News Challenge contest.

The members of the Selection Committee for that august organization may be interested to know that "Ujima" is the Swahili word for "collective work and responsibility."

Up From Slavery, Indeed

2009-10-09T06:09:00.000-07:00

POTUS' and FLOTUS' Most Excellent Week Ever

I set out early this morning to post the top three reasons why the Oct. 8 front-page New York Times story on Michelle Obama's slave ancestors is a signal achievement in American journalism.

I get to it, below. First, a word about President Obama's receiving the Nobel Peace Prize:

Don't waste your brain power on the Inside-the-Beltway chatter that will ensue.

Here in Washington, D.C., the President's receiving a Nobel will be cast in the usual horse-race framework, i.e., the Peace Prize represents a redeeming "win" for the President, after his "humiliating loss" of the Chicago 2016 Olympics bid. The Republicans and their increasingly-unhinged constituents will ignore it, or attempt to use this honor in some twisted way to de-legitimize the President, and their enablers in cable talk-land will give them oxygen to feed that incendiary narrative.

But that story-line is not merely false, lazy, and destructive, it is also petty and mean-spirited.

President Obama was awarded the Peace Prize, according to the release from the Norwegian Nobel Committee, for his extraordinary efforts to make the world a safer, more equitable place for all.

As the Committee put it:

Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population.

To which we all should say, Amen. Don't give the anti-Obama lunatics any light. Don't fall into the game of "win" or "lose." Don't sleep on the historic significance of the President's Nobel Peace Prize: It means, among other important things, that the American Renaissance is nigh.

*********************************

Speaking of historic significance, here are the top three reasons why yesterday's front page New York Times story on First Lady Michelle Obama's family history is a watershed in American journalism:

1) It demonstrates in clear, unadorned language and images how present the “peculiar institution”—slavery – remains within our body politic.

2) It belies the widespread if unspoken belief among top news editors and publishers (and the awards and fellowship committees that laud them) that white journalists are better equipped than black journos to deliver “serious” reports about race, and the history of racism in America. No, I am not hating on the authors of "The Race Beat," which received a Pulitzer Prize in 2007, or on Jerry Mitchell of the Clarion-Ledger in Mississippi, who recently received a MacArthur "genius" grant for his reporting on Civil Rights era racial crimes. I simply point out that black journalists at legacy media organizations rarely enjoy the same latitude -- and frankly the trust -- of white editors and publishers that would allow them to focus on such coverage.

3) It throws a big bucket of water over the prevailing, shockingly dumb idea that inexperienced, under-paid bloggers and “citizen journalists” can match well-paid, experienced, ethical journalists at producing accurate, well- written, exquisitely contextualized work that resonates beyond the 24 hour news cycle.

In my next post, I will unpack each of these. For now, big, big props to the Washington, D.C. Bureau of the Times: Yesterday's edition featured a trio of high-performing (if little known) Times reporters who happen to be African-American -- Rachel L.Swarns, co-author of the FLOTUS's slave ancestors story, and Ron Nixon and Ginger Thompson, who teamed up on a stunning (if somewhat less sexy) Page One story about the influence of lobbyists in the unfolding drama of the ousted Honduran president.

If you haven't heard of these three Timespeople before now, it may be because they tend to avoid the crap-tastic circus of political talk shows that insanely has come to define the worth of journalists in Washington, D.C. Yes, in the past 24 hours, Swarns has made select television appearances to talk about the First Lady's Roots story, including a hilarious turn on MSNBC's "Hardball, with Chris Matthews" last night. (I don't recall ever seeing Matthews so well-behaved: it was as if Swarns' understated, dignified style had miraculously dampened his mania for the duration of their talk.)

Still, habits die hard in these parts. And I suspect that bookers at these cable programs will get a rude awakening if they now think they can count on Swarns to be the go-to "black NYTimes DC Reporter Who Will Talk About Race." Ladies and gentlemen of the Inside-the-Beltway glitz-media classes, it is time to re-think more than just your Rolodexes.

Really, Really Big Green For All: Why I'll Be Watching Ken Burns Series on National Parks

2009-09-25T11:20:00.000-07:00

How cute was Ken Burns the other night on "The Rachel Maddow Show?"

Okay, maybe "cute" isn't the best adjective. I mean, Burns is kind of creepily perpetually youthful, what with that John Denver-circa-1975 haircut and those twinkly eyes. I'm not quite saying he's the Dorian Gray of the highbrow filmmaker crowd but it is impossible not to notice that he has been making these lovely docs and giving promotional interviews for thirty-some years....and yet, mysteriously, he can pass for a grad student at USC's School of Cinematic Arts.

But watching him on Maddow Thursday night, I was quite taken with his impassioned comments describing "The National Parks: America's Best Idea," his 12 hour-long series that debuts this Sunday night on PBS television stations nationwide.

There were many highlights during Burns' nearly nine minute-long interview, including these, which commence at 3:36, following Maddow's intro and a short clip:

-- "Building human happiness, that's what government's supposed to do."

-- "There was a time when government stepped in and made things better in every single way....that we could bring jobs, and money, and a sense of cohesion and that's what the parks are about, that's why they thrived during the Depression, and not just because they got the first shovel-ready stimulus dollars from Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal but because they brought Americans together."

-- "We started out by saving natural scenery but now we save alot more....Shanksville, Manzanar, all these places that reflect our complicated past."

That last reference alludes to portions of the series dubbed, 'Untold stories." Clearly Burns learned an important lesson after the minor racial kerfluffle he experienced as his last mega-series, "The War" prepared to air in 2007. Back then, a handful of ethnic historians raised a ruckus because Burns had ignored stories from the heroic contributions of Asian American, black, and Latino enlisted men and women who had fought in World War II. He eventually admitted to having dropped that ball, and it seems from this National Parks series, that he has avoided making the same mistake.

In "National Parks: America's Best Idea" there are apparently several segments that focus on histories of the more recent inclusions into the nation's Federal parks system, including slave cabins in the South and Mid-Atlantic, and the infamous former Japanese internment camp, Manazanar, in Northern California. (I say "apparently" because I have not viewed the entire series, only trailers available online.)

The "complicated past" Burns was getting at in his comments to Maddow may already be known to many ethnic minorities in the U.S., though, truth be told, its presentation in the series will likely be illuminating to all viewers, including some people of color. The sad fact is that few Americans are aware of how deeply our identities -- personal and tribal -- are tied to our landscape, and to the social and political historic narratives that are bound up in our physical surroundings.

For instance, I lived in California's Central Valley for three years during the early 1990s, and only learned in my final few months there that a dusty, barren section of Tulare County had been designated the Col. Allen Allensworth Historic State Park. Named after a black Civil War veteran who had been born a slave in Louisiana, Allensworth State Park is anchored by a small village that was once the center of a nascent blacks-only township. It is located near what is now the tiny city of Earlimart. Allensworth had fled the racist terrorism of the Deep South in the 1880s, and settled on the west side of the great San Joaquin Valley; back then, fed in part by an immense fresh-water lake called Tulare, that section of the Central Valley was verdant and prime for farming.

Allensworth and a consortium of other black veterans and businessmen first bought 20 acres of land beginning in 1908, soon expanded to 80 acres of land, and by 1914, drew some 200 black residents to the area. The town was self-sufficient, with its own stores, a post office and a school. But -- insert sigh, head-shake, and You-Guessed-It here -- state officials and the surrounding (white) ag-barons colluded to divert a crucial railroad line and water systems away from Allensworth. By the 1930s, the little town with big ambitions literally died on the vine.

Granted, Allensworth is not a national park, and you don't learn his story from Burns' PBS series, but you get the idea. What "National Parks" endeavors to accomplish -- along with the surface message that our Great Outdoors are sacred spaces that require our eternal vigilance and respect -- is that brown and black people in America have terra firma ownership rights that are quite as valuable (if not more, in the case of native Indians) than those of whites. Our investment in our National Parks should not be merely symbolic or distant but genuine, spiritual, and worthy of our constant attention.

I am a native Northern Californian, so maybe I'm too inclined to rhapsodize about the Wide Open Spaces. But the "green movement" is really quite old, and I wish our current political discourse reflected its historic ethnic diversity. Long before Van Jones and Majora Carter hipped white progressives to the idea that black and brown people care about the environment, too, my City Girl's mind was blown (in the best possible way!) by my early exposure to the grand vistas of my home state.

If you have never felt the chilly mist from Bridal Veil Falls in Yosemite, or stood at the amber-colored rim of the Grand Canyon, or craned your neck trying to see the tip-top of a towering Redwood, you are missing out a chance to see yourself as a different kind of American. I'm going to watch at least some of "The National Parks" with my two children, so they will be prepared for the grand treasures I will introduce them to the next time we go West.

Skip, POTUS, Cops, and the Press: Why the "Teachable Moment" Should Be a Decade

2009-07-26T08:36:00.000-07:00

On the evening of the day that Henry Louis Gates, Jr., was arrested at his Cambridge, Massachusetts home, I was at the Hilton New York, on Avenue of the Americas, watching President Barack Obama's address to the 100th Anniversary Convention of the NAACP.

At that time, we had no clue about what had transpired in Cambridge a few hours earlier.

We floated on a cloud of happy anticipation, there at the Hilton: How extraordinary to be at the Centennial anniversary of the nation's oldest civil and human rights organization, the very group that played a significant part of paving the way for Barack Obama's historic election to the US presidency. (I joined the Communications staff of the NAACP on June 10, 2009. The commentary here at Community Forum reflects my own views, not necessarily those of the NAACP.)

President Obama spoke for 33 minutes at the Hilton New York, during a dinner known as the Spingarn Awards. As we'd expected, his address was focused closely on the subject of black progress in America, more than in any previous speech he'd given. And yes, even surpassing his landmark March 2008 "Philadelphia speech." That Jeremiah Wright-inspired address was certainly a model of nuance and historic sweep, on the general topic of race relations. But by design, it was primarily conciliatory in tone, and he diluted the Black Thang by folding in (legitimate) themes of the disenfranchisement and social disconnection of not just blacks but also poor whites and other marginalized Americans.

I covered the March 2008 Philadelphia speech for The Nation, and noted that the only genuine "news" to emerge was that so many of my colleagues in the press seemed surprised by Candidate Obama's views on the complexity of race and class in America.

**********

The day after the President's July 16 speech at the NAACP, then, I wasn't entirely surprised to see that many of the mainstream journalists who covered it had emphasized one part of his speech over another -- the Black Personal Responsibility note he had sounded in the second half of the address. It was just that, a note, not the entire piece, though you couldn't really get that from much of the next-day coverage.

The first part of President Obama's NAACP speech had been a swift, sharp tutorial on the trajectory of racism and discrimination in America, from the brutalities of lynchings and racial domestic terrorism, through the legalization of discrimination that arrived with Plessy v. Ferguson and Jim Crow segregation; to the subtler, more elusive forms of racism that are currently embedded in our major public and private insitutions. President Obama made it clear at The Hilton that he believes that most African-Americans begin the game at a disadvantage -- and that the nation's history of slavery and racial discrimination is the cause.

He brought it on home with a solutions-oriented disquisition on the need for increased responsibility and accountability, and not just from blacks but also from American government and corporate insitutions. Basically, said the President, everyone needs to sharpen their Values and Responsibility Chops in order to shrink the gaps in black achievement, and to lift up all Americans who struggle. If we do not, "America cannot compete" in the global future, he observed quite appropriately.

And yet...... USA Today, The New York Times, and a few other big print outlets in their live and next-day coverage focused almost exclusively on the portions of his speech in which President Obama urged black Americans to, "...accept our own responsibilities. That means putting away the Xbox, and putting our kids to bed at a reasonable hour." Nearly every mainstream outlet carried that quote, and wrapped their stories around that thread. (By contrast, Krissah Thompson's and Cheryl W. Thompson's July 17 story in The Washington Post got it right.)

To many of us present at that July 16 speech, the most important line came earlier, as President Obama transitioned between the historic injustices of lynchings and Jim Crow segregation, to the solutions portion (boldface added by me):

Government programs alone won’t get our children to the Promised Land. We need a new mindset, a new set of attitudes – because one of the most durable and destructive legacies of discrimination is the way that we have internalized a sense of limitation; how so many in our community have come to expect so little of ourselves.

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I wanted to hear more from President Obama on that last idea, how the long history of racism, brutality and discrimination created a damning image that has been internalized by generation after generation of black Americans. The inability of many blacks to vanquish that internalized racism -- which leads to fatalistic thinking, which in turn opens the door to a variety of high-risk and self-destructive behaviors -- is truly our biggest challenge as we close the first decade of the new century. But it was not to be, not in that talk to the 100th Anniversary gathering of the NAACP.

A small buzz around the mainstream media's lame coverage of the President's speech began in the first day after the Convention. Apparently anticipating some media drama, President Obama had given a handful of journalists from black press outlets a lift to New York and the NAACP Convention aboard Air Force One. (Do I agree with an elected official attempting to run the access to power game, in the run up to a major public event? Hell no. But I am learning alot from the Adminstration's craftiness on this front....)And yet, much of the next day's coverage was dominated by a one-dimensional narrative.

Make that one and a half dimensional, since the other false-note narrative that initially dominanted coverage of President Obama's July 16 speech at the Hilton New York centered on the question, Is the NAACP still relevant?

A lazy approach, considering that two days before the Centennial convention kick off, a few dozen black kids got kicked out of a predominantly white private "swim club" in suburban Montgomery County, Pennsylvania for "changing the atmosphere" of the joint....and considering that more people of color were sold risky mortgage loans than whites, no matter their income level and credit histories....and considering that in mid-spring, a black off-duty New York City policeman was shot dead by a white cop co-worker who didn't realize the Brotha was a Brother in Blue.

Barely a day after his NAACP speech, even the President made note of the shortcomings of that prevailing media narrative, the Black Responsibility tip being emphasized above all else that he'd covered. This is a sure sign that the jig is up for big news outfits that continue to ignore the importance of comprehensive, nuanced race and class coverage. But within two news cycles, that buzz, faint to begin with, was fading.

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I returned home to Montgomery County Maryland, in suburban DC, on Friday, July 18. I thought I'd have to wait who knew how long for another POTUS-related "race moment" that would expose the media's historic blindspots of race and class coverage. Or maybe until the "birthers" just come straight out and publicly accuse the President of being a race-relations Manchurian Candidate, lying in stealthy wait for the clandestine signal to allow him to activate a Secret Black Agenda.

Mostly, I wondered what it would take to finally smarten Americans up about the full history and implications of the Black Experience in this country.

*******

On July 20, four days after President Obama spoke at the Hilton New York, The Boston Globe posted a story of how Henry L. Gates, Jr., had been arrested right on his front porch in Cambridge, Massachusetts, apparently by a white cop who mistook him for a black burgular.......on the same day that President Obama had addressed the100th Anniversary gathering of the supposedly no longer relevant NAACP.

I won't rehash the ins and outs of the Gates Situation, or should I say, Confrontation. By now we know the details, and are well and truly queasy at the sight of any more lurid cable news network headlines belching, "The Professor, the Police, and the President."

But I encourage you to read Glenn C. Loury's brilliant analysis published in the Sunday, July 26 edition of The New York Times. He astutely argues that the "teachable moment" that everyone seems to be hoping will come out of the Skip-Gets-Jacked-Up-and-POTUS-Rides-to-the Rescue flap, must last longer than a hot minute.

The crucial topic of how racism, power, and entitelment has done a mind-fuck on uncounted blacks (and whites) in this country can't be answered with a flashy show'n'go...or with a beer'n'go at the White House. A successful search for genuine, stick-to-your-rib solutions requires a major adjustment to our thinking, and to the sputtering engines of our democracy

I agree with Loury's premise, even though he could have sold it equally forcefully without taking the swipes at Skip that he does in the piece.

Having collaborated with Skip on a book about black leadership, and socialized with Skip, and written for his first web venture, Africana.com, and at TheRoot.com, I know that he can be, shall we say, impish. But he is a genius, and quite determined to improve race relations in America. He is also marveously strategic about doing the intellectual shovel-work required to bury lingering white perceptions of black inferiority.

If Charles Ogletree and Alvin F. Poussaint are the Wise Men of Harvard -- towering, casually elegant figures who've spent decades at the methodical, unglamorous work of educating young achievers of every skin color while also shoring up black self-love -- Skip is the precocious gadfly who flits from project to project, spinning out the gold of black achievement... while sometimes knocking over the heirloom vases.

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Loury says what President Obama, perhaps doesn't quite feel he can say, just yet. Loury calls for significant policy and funding changes to directly address the underlying causes of high rates of black incarceration, school drop outs, and unemployment. He observes that the disparities in these categories have always existed, that they have been climbing steadily for decades, and that the rate of increase has accelerated exponentially since the current Recession (Depression for black folks) began, roundabout mid-2007.

In other words, as the President's NAACP speech telegraphed, there needs to be a monumental shift in our national psyche in order to sincerely begin to address the root causes of the symptoms, rather than just the symptoms. And a shift in funding and policy priorities to provide the kind of comprehensive therapy to our criminal justice, education, and social services systems -- as well as to the poor and ethnic minority populations that are historically resistant to The Couch -- that is urgently needed.

Maybe now, thanks in part to what took place on July 16, in New York, and in Cambridge, Mass., President Obama will have the necessary opening to start leading us toward that shift. He will need the help of all Americans, and the strength of a hundred ancestors, stretching back further than a Centennial.

Michael Jackson: A Postmodern American Tragedy

2009-06-25T19:46:00.000-07:00

It is challenging these days to get folks to slow down, connect the dots, and step back until the Big Picture emerges. But here goes:

Michael Jackson's life and death is a quintessential American Tragedy, as epic, cinematic and paradoxical as that of the main character, Clyde Griffiths, in Theodore Dreiser's 1925 classic. The postmodern twist, of course, is that Michael was black, and that the desperate materialism and longed-for upward mobility that was Griffiths' undoing came not from Michael himself but from his father, Joseph. Overlay that with the peculiar black male fear of being viewed as "sensitive" or "weak," and an archaic belief in corporal punishment as an effective child-raising technique -- both of which are vestiges of our history of slavery in America -- and no one should be surprised that Michael eventually fell apart. Lots of regular black men fall apart from this stuff every day, we just don't see their drama splashed across the networks and cable news shows wall to wall....unless they do something spectacular like murdering family members of Jennifer Hudson.

A thick weight of self-hatred, internalized racism, and sexual identity crises are as much a part of the story of Michael Jackson as are his soaring artistic achievements, criminal troubles, and global cross-cultural appeal. Black people could sense the first part of that equation within Michael, even if we didn't share it with the world. But maybe now we will. The same kind of self-hatred and other internalized emotional toxicity that combined to take Michael Jackson down has largely proved too messy and complex for discussion in public, especially by the media. And in this, I will cut my colleagues a small amount of slack: How do you sound-bite the story of the continuing negative fallout of slavery and racial discrimination in America? And how can you do it in the context of the death of one of the biggest modern pop stars in the world, a black man born in the height of the post World War II boom, a millionaire many times over who "transcended race?"

Really, it is almost too much: a classic, layered narrative that doesn't fit this era of quicksilver, mile-wide-inch-deep InstaNews. But Michael isn't the first, and won't be the last to succumb to our history. May as well put it on the table right now.

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I am in my mid-40s, and have learned the hard away that black men in America, even Michael Jackson, do have it rough. My late 20th Century Methodist upbringing conditioned me to forgive, always to forgive. But in this mean first decade of the new century, I struggle against losing patience with black men who cannot shake the worst aspects of the history of slavery that have unfairly defined them for so long in this country. I know it is not easy to just "snap out of it," when your father, grandfather and great-great grandfather failed you by abandonment, or withholding, or physically or emotionally abusing you.

Yet there are opportunities now -- real, tangible, call them on the phone and get an appointment opportunities -- for a brother to inch his way back from the brink of self-destruction, including the self-destruction of repeating the same unhealthy behavior with his own children. Courage is required, and that is in short supply.

By many accounts, including interviews with Michael over the years, Joe Jackson believed he could beat his children to teach them discipline. He was not alone in that belief, during that time, and clearly his boys did come away with an amazing amount of poise and professionalism. But the lasting, debilitating imprint on Michael, at least, is evident.

Even before Barack Obama appeared as a lanky example of how it is possible for black men to Overcome the insidious legacy of racist discrimination, lifelines for inching back from the precipice have been there. I know, because I found many of them, sussed them out, and published them nine years ago, in a book that unpacks the direct connection between America's second-biggest sin -- slavery, with the decimation of Indians being the first -- and the urgent contemporary matter of black folks' mental health. There are other resources now too, as some of the stigma around this subject begins to recede. But a surfeit of the pathological misbehavior persists.

And while the Intellectual me knows that it may take several more generations for masses of black men to find the courage to seek and embrace a profound, positve psychological breakthrough, the Emotional me is about done in. I don't know if Michael Jackson was a child molestor. But I know there is a big pile of research showing that children who are abused are at high risk of becoming abusers.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The soundtrack of Michael Jackson's story should contain as many blues standards as the pop, R&B, and rock'n'roll that earned him fame and fortune.

Look at this black and white video of Michael and his brothers, the footage apparently shot in 1968 or so, around the time Berry Gordy first met the young dynamos from Gary, Indiana. They are performing a cover of James Brown's barn burner, "I Got the Feelin.'" Notice that young Michael in motion is fundamentally a minature version of James Brown, with the same fly footwork and diamond-sharp spins as those perfected by the Godfather. Ten year old Michael is tearing it up at a lightening pace, and to watch him is breathtaking.

He was emulating, mimicing Soul Brother Number One, probably unaware that Brown's famous work ethic and discipline emerged from one of the most violent and repressive regions in America, Augusta, Georgia and nearby Edgefield County, South Carolina. Brown was born and raised there, and before his death, he wrote and talked extensively about how desperate he'd been, while growing up, to get the hell out of that poor and violent place. Also, if you read All God's Children, former New York Times reporter Fox Butterfield's account of one African-American family from that region, the Boskets, you get more heartbreaking, voluminous details of the lasting negative fallout of slavery, racism, and decades of Jim Crow segregation on generations of black men. The Bosket men are like uncounted others of black men in America, the great-great-great grandsons of blacks who endured cruelty beyond imagination. They continue to walk among us.

Michael learned important artistic lessons from Brown, and from the other black soul brothers he idolized, including Jackie Wilson and Sam Cooke. Those men were of Joe Jacksons' vintage -- and Joe Jackson came from a small town in Arkansas, another pocket of racist terrorism. You can't believe that, along with their artistry, the same desperation and blues that had infused those men's lives did not also get absorbed by Michael Jackson. As Stanley Crouch has observed, the blues is the purest expression of both the tragedy of America, and its eternally promising ability to improvise.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Finally, Michael Jackson most certainly understood the blues. I think he rather embodied the blues, under all the grotesque, Norma Desmond-style drama. Listen again to the Jackson 5's version of William "Smokey" Robinson's early hit, "Who's Lovin' You?"

On Friday night, I dug it out of a box of cassette tapes that had been gathering dust in the storage crawl space next to my laundry room. It is a reissue, from the crappy 1992 telemovie, "The Jacksons," that Susan de Passe produced. I had fallen upon the two track cassette in a music store in Boston, and bought it because it contains the original 1969 studio recording of the Jackson 5 version of "Who's Loving You?", and a re-mixed, re-mastered "Live" recording of it, too. (I don't know why the word "Live" is in quotation marks on the sleeve of the cassette but I suspect it means that the original recording, captured in front of an actual audience during a concert in the late 1960s, received some cosmetic work for this re-issue.)

Listen to 11 year-old Michael sing that song, and tell me he didn't know, at that young age, that life can be a motherfucker. That life can be rich, sorrowful, exhilarating, and cruel. The song was written by Smokey Robinson, who was, of course, Motown's greatest author. Back then, he was especially masterful at combining Tin Pan Alley ardor with roadhouse gut-bucket and then wrapping it in the sheen of Gordy's hit-squad of studio musicians, the Funk Brothers.

In this recording, Michael is as pure an entertainer as he would ever be, his delivery so precise, full, and plaintive that it raises goosebumps on my arms every time I hear it.

I found a cassette tape of the "Thriller" album in that box, too. But I'll be listening to "Who's Loving You?" this weekend. For now, anyway, it is my favorite blues record.

Why "Assalaamu alaykum" is The "Ich bin ein Berliner" of Our Time

2009-06-04T08:09:00.000-07:00

It seems like only yesterday that Minister Louis Farrakhan was the scariest Muslim in the world (at least to some uninformed Americans.)

Yesterday, President Barack Hussein Obama used a respectful term of greeting -- assalaamu alaykum -- in his speech at Cairo. It is Arabic, and it means, "peace of Allah be unto you." It is a term that may have stumped (or troubled) some of the same uninformed white Americans who once quaked at the rhetoric of Minister Farrakhan. But black Americans, and most followers of Islam around the globe, have no problem decoding the term, and the spirit in which it was delivered yesterday. For one thing, most of us probably heard the term for the first time in our own neighborhoods, from members of the Nation of Islam, or other African-Americans who have converted to orthodox Islam.

Its invocation yesterday by President Obama was a big deal, as significant as John F. Kennedy's busting out in German to demonstrate solidarity with citizens of that nation, as they struggled to rebuild their cities and reputation two decades after World War II: Ich bin ein Berliner. POTUS use of assalaamu alaykum in Egypt yesterday is also important in this respect: It is another key signal that Reality Rules, in this administration.

No more wasted energy chasing imaginary Bogeymen, at home or abroad. The Scariest Muslim in the world -- Osama Bin Laden -- finally has a worthy opponent, one who not only speaks the same language but who is likely to cite the Koran as he hunts him down.

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Is it time to revive the "Black personal responsibility" debate?

I'm thinking, Yes, but this time with an important change: How about we recast it as an "Adult Responsibility" debate, de-emphasizing ethnicity, and replacing it with a generational focus?

Here is why:

Several key developments in the past few days have reinforced a sad universal truth -- Plenty of adults behave irresponsibly, quite dangerously, in fact, notwithstanding their economic status, education level or skin color:

-- Scott P. Roeder, the Kansan charged in the murder of a doctor who performed late-term abortions, is a 51 year-old white man.

-- Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the United States House of Representatives, sends a Tweet calling Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor a "Latina woman racist." (He later issued a half-assed apology but by then, the poison was unleashed, sparking an orgy of racist speech in the blogpshere.) He turns 66 years-old later this month.

-- Abdulhakim Muhammad, aka Carlos Bledsoe, is a 23 year-old African-American from Little Rock who was arrested early this week and charged with the murder and attempted murder of two U.S. soldiers. According to authorities, Muhammad shot the two young men from inside his pick-up truck as they stood in front of an Army recruiting office near Little Rock.

Three wildly different episodes, but each connected by a single unmistakeable thread: The perpetrators were all adults, and yet they exercised the judgement of an angry three-year-old, i.e., impulsive, vengeful, and horribly destructive to others. It is not a dynamic unique to blacks, Latinos, whites, or East Asians. The reasons why so many "adults," (meaning those who have crossed the threshold to the legal definition of adulthood, age 18) fail to clearly and rationally perform the act-for-consequence calculus before they do a dumb thing are not important here: We are a nation of laws, and our Constitution obviously attempted to account for such human failings.

What is becoming urgently clear is that we must find effective ways to reshape our culture and institutions -- families, schools, workplaces -- to more directly account for, and as best as possible, to prevent, the tragic outcomes that are inevitable when individual "rights" collide with the safety and progress of others. (The Second Amendment, for example, is most certainly due for revision -- can the Democrats on the Hill please find their spines and stop horse-trading on crazy things like allowing "campers" to bring assault weapons into National Parks?)

I am not interested in getting into a "preventive detentions" - style fight with the ACLU. Nor do I want to revive the "blacks only" issues beneath the rather amusingly one-sided dust-up between Michael Eric Dyson and Bill Cosby a couple years back. God no --been there, done that, bought the refrigerator magnet....although it is delicious to see my boy Dyson dialing back on the Cosby-Hates-Poor-Black-Folks rhetoric now that President Obama has pretty much endorsed Cos' position. Remember then-candidate Obama's Father's Day talk at Apostolic Church of God in Chicago last June? The one where he urged African-American males of all incomes and education levels to "make responsible choices," and to teach their children that, "there's nothing weak about being kind...nothing weak about being considerate and thoughtful." I watched it again just now, and will probably do so again soon.)

No, I'm concerned about our apathy in the face of Adults Behaving Badly, and the terrible message such acquiescence sends to our children. Surely there are innovative front-end measures we can take to make sure children, teens and young adults develop the critical thinking skills -- not to mention the empathy and compassion -- to prevent them from behaving like murderous caricatures?

What solutions have you encountered, I'd like to know?

Meanwhile, here is another clip of a conversation with an individual who cares deeply about finding realistic answers to this profound and confounding question -- How do you create a society and government where individuals can have the "right" to act up, but not at the expense of the safety and progress of us all? His name is Colbert King, and he writes at The Washington Post.

The Obama-Holder-Sotomayor Conspiracy Exposed! (Or, how to make American Institutions Resemble America)

2009-05-28T16:44:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Amy Alexander Community Forum, an online meeting place for smart, fun and respectfully free-wheeling conversations about our 21st Century American experience.

If "our 21st Century American experience" sounds broad, it is -- by design: Community Forum takes a Socratic approach to ideas, events and movements. I want to know what you are thinking and feeling because I value your opinion. I'm also curious to know how others are envisioning the future, and what (if any) steps they are taking to nurture themselves and the burgeoning American Renaissance.

Here, we will raise many questions, probably many more than are answerable. Politics, especially of the cultural variety, are the topical meat and potatoes in this space. But appetizers and drinks flavored by stories of faith, history, and family are most welcomed, with the goal of encouraging a healthy flow of solutions-oriented ideas.

This column is Vox Americana, with a weather eye on Pax Americana: a location where discussions will bridge the generational, class and race divides that have nearly undone our republic. Community Forum is inclusive, but distinctly American in its origin, since it springs from the brain of an American woman, living in suburban Washington, D.C. I am a content producer by trade, a black San Franciscan by birth , and an American who feels fortunate to have the White House in her backyard at this time.

With that, let's begin in the nation's capitol, where parallel universes are increasingly evident -- dreamy mountaintops of big policy changes that loom larger than ever on the horizon....and deep valleys of human despair that also stretch far and wide.

These days, here in D.C., there is so much going on that keeping your eyes on your own plate can be a challenge. It helps to believe that the psychic pendulum cannot possibly continue its wild swings between shining optimism and pitch dark, but that is what living in Washington, D.C. requires right now, strong beliefs and values, if not necessarily blind faith. Nearly six months after Inauguration Day, many residents in this region are still in a swoony honeymoon with President Barack Obama and his family. Like many others here, I too have had an up close and personal Sighting -- at a kiddie theatrical performance in Montgomery County, Maryland earlier this month. I am happy to report that POTUS and FLOTUS indeed appear to want to bridge the vast gap between "the two Washingtons." You know, the one occupied primarily by poor, under-employed mostly black and brown-skinned residents, and the one occupied by the Establishment people.

On one front in particular -- the extraordinarily high rate of HIV diagnoses in the District, which is tied to poverty and race -- the void seems so wide that closing it sometimes appears to be impossible. And yet.........

On June 9, the Whitman-Walker Clinic is scheduled to host a big fundraiser. The clinic is a leading provider of educational, preventive and outpatient services on HIV/AIDS in the District. Its honoree will be U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. If you are wondering why the nation's chief law enforcement officer is the right person for such an award, listen to what Donald Blanchon, director of the Whitman-Walker, said earlier this month in announcing the choice:

"For three decades, Eric Holder has been a leading advocate for civil rights and justice for minority communities. He has been a tireless defender of the most basic American values of individual dignity, access to justice and safeguards against unchecked government power. While serving as an inspiring national leader, he has remained deeply involved in the needs of his own city, the District of Columbia, which continues to stagger under the burden of the HIV epidemic.”
In a city where at least 3 percent of residents have the virus, according to a report by the District's own HIV/AIDS office March 16, Holder's appearance at the Whitman-Walker fundraiser has the potential to keep the spotlight on a topic that is adept at staying in the shadows.

Such symbolic efforts from top officials, I believe, can have a positive accumulative impact on individual behaviors on the ground, over time. (And so, clearly, can more substantive efforts -- President Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, being the best recent example.) Holder, like President Obama, is a "brother" in the eyes of many of us. The images and sound-bites from his appearance at that June 9 dinner may encourage otherwise apathetic folks to pay attention, maybe even put on a Jimmy hat once in a while, or even get an HIV test. At least, that is what I hope happens, should Holder make the event and get some decent publicity.

Your thoughts?