the Change I Wish to See

So you know those new State Farm commercials?  The ones where someone says something clever to describe where her/his life is headed, like...

every moment is a once in a lifetime
not because tomorrow's not promised
but because even if it was
right now is exactly what tomorrow could never be:
this very moment.

but instead of living life like we own it
we've lived life like we've been loaned it -
like we're seat-fillers at the Oscars
only to shine after commercial breaks,
or anxious temporary cardholders
awaiting an expiration date -
we trudged through the motions
as if soon it would all be over
and we'd see the other side.

we've lived in the tiniest corners of our minds
unable to share close encounters of the human kind
figuring any extra terrestrial
must be an extra-terrestrial
and that no body on Earth
could be as heavenly as the celestials...
but we're all stars in the dopest show in the universe,
so why do we act like understudies?

we're all headliners
and though the only act we know
is in these costumes,
the only stage we're on is this one
and though we can't guarantee an encore performance next week
when the only future we can grab belongs to yesterday,
why do we hold on for dear life
like living's worth not wanting more?

and when we do get a glimpse of tomorrow,
why do we assume it's beyond our control?
like on the right hand of God sits Jesus
and on the left sits a deistic puppet master
whose strings hide from sight
as imitation silver linings in clouds,
strings that guide us
to waltz through years like ballrooms,
light on our feet
mid-dance, anxious of our judge's scores;
we get caught up
assuming destinies
awaiting hand-me-down fates...

but when we assume that we're only,
that we're second, that we're barely
we assert selfish superstition upon malleable experience;
like when the politics of hope are broken into fantasy
and the pieces show their cracks
jagged and unseemly;
or when the power of our faith,
one a god could never have,
is traded in for short-term gains
and our souls sugar-crash.

yet with our power to assume
comes power to engage -
to move from cleaning off the table
to eating off the plates,
from being victims of the law
to deciding how it's made,
from meaning "dark," "feared" and "unknown"
to shining on the brightest stage.

we won't be kings like kings once were
we won't be queens, or even dukes;
we won't get rich off reparations
it's 2008, we don't need mules;
our homes will still be measured in feet
not in acres, not draped in jewels;
we won't strike back with vengeful hearts
'cause we know what it's like to lose.

what we will be is the promise
that our parents made to us:
finally embraced
with more than arms-length transactional hugs.

Scene: both sides of a brain enter their owner's bedroom at 10am on a Saturday.


left brain: those are not his panties

right brain: you always jump to conclusions

lefty: he doesn't wear panties

righty: there's a lot about him you don't know

lefty: you only think you know that

righty: you only think you know that

[insert impasse]

lefty: and that's not how he left the bed.  are those pine needles?

righty: you're so shackled by your fair-weather OCD, you can't even appreciate the haphazard beauty; it's almost postmodern

lefty: those are definitely pine needles

righty: it feels like fall in here

lefty: where do you even get pine needles in DC?

righty: Pottery Barn?

lefty: your unwillingness to cooperate astounds me. it also doesn't explain that spot on the floor

righty: i think that might be glue

lefty: you think that might be glue?

righty: i'm capable of defending my position on this

lefty: by all means. i'm all neurons

righty: strewn fluids and clothes you claim he doesn't own - clearly it's a recollection piece...

lefty: well i must be an artless bastard

righty: ... recreating his shared dorm room sophomore year in college

lefty: you're done

righty: i smell bacon

[insert a second impasse]

lefty: what's the protocol for the "did you have sex in my bed which is completely separate from your room" talk with your roommate?

righty: just wing it

lefty: right. but seriously, glue?

I've been silent for a long time. From the beginning, actually. I didn't vote in my primary. There were a lot of concerns to balance: my ego over a thoroughly deluded ex-dream of being the first black president; a hearty distrust of a vote approving "the use of force..."

The sum of those parts: I am mortified that I might not vote for the first black president.

But if I'm buying disingenuousness, maybe I want it to at least be predictable? Doesn't that smooth the edge of misleading rhetoric -- the "comfort" in knowing what the speaker really means? And isn't that especially true if the meaning between the lines, or behind the scenes, is really the best option anyway?

All Barack has to do is just be impenetrably straight forward. He's more charming, has a wider base, is more responsive and welcomely less salty. But, via his advisers, he has made it quite clear that he may mean little of what he says. His online "Plan for Ending the War in Iraq" never mentions the realism a recently-former senior adviser offered this week. And his current senior foreign policy adviser doesn't think he's ready to answer that infamous 3am call. Not to mention, there's that non-vote Barack never made. He constantly reminds us that he didn't vote for the use of force when he couldn't have even if he had a constituency asking him to. I guess that means that if, in the future, there's an issue he's constitutionally-prohibited from voting on, trust that his judgment won't let him vote the wrong way. I have no idea what solace that's supposed to offer. So if that's the case, why shouldn't I choose the candidate with the b-side I know? Our country's future should not be left to the element of surprise better reserved for albums with hidden tracks. Not all secrets are bonuses.

Though, of course, not all Old Faithfuls live up to their namesake. And so I don't buy nearly enough of what Hillary spews to fall head over heels for her either. She escaped way too readily from her husband's overhanded indiscretions in South Carolina. She's been given a flat-out pass for her adviser's Obama-Ken Starr comparison. And why would I ever walk into a relationship with someone who I knew couldn't admit she was wrong? Since when was it flirtatious to say you cling to mistakes like static to a fleece?

And so here I am. I'm in the place I said I hoped I wouldn't be: sandwiched between options that feel scarily incomplete. I'm tired of canvassing singles' bars. Wasn't this supposed to be the election where I found Mr. or Ms. Right? I want to be on the right side of history, but I want history to meet me in the middle. And I want you to stop telling me I'm asking for too much.

When do I get to love America? It's almost like I've been molested. I don't claim to understand or be able to relate to the lived severity of being raped or touched by your mom's boyfriend. But there's something at least remotely similar here figuratively. During my most vulnerable political years (the dating years) -- 18-25 -- George W. Bush is the only president I've seen. I've watched him "win" despite Florida and repeat despite Ohio. I've watched us let him. During my critically formative stage, I have lived and witnessed perhaps the most mismanaged and morally bankrupt administration in this nation's history. So yeah, I hope. But in a land where it takes "more than coupons to get us saved / like it takes a lot more than du-rags to get you waves," it's gonna take a lot more than promise to make me praise.

I don't want to do the best thing "given the circumstances." I want to do the right thing. At all times when it comes to politics. Because it defines struggle, achievement, life and death. And I want someone to explain to me why there is seemingly no right thing to be found and only compromise. I don't want to settle. Our system of politics is one where a nation of imperfect persons are told to make the best with what they've got because, after all, even the best of us are little more than the rest of us. But if I told you today that the law says you have to marry someone you knew but didn't love, even though you knew you'd have the option of divorce, hopefully at least some of you would tell me no one should dictate your private choices; that you're not making a serious commitment to an acquaintance, or that who you bring children into the world with matters. So why do you take handouts at their face value when in this relationship your partner is a leading decider in whether you can decide to have children, whether those kids go to war, what taxes you pay, and whether or not your job supports the very family you insist must be preserved? Is it really just because you hate being single? That the other fish in the sea are rotten?

There's no coming back from this. Am I really the only citizen who wants a soulmate?

Blogged with Flock

Commit even if it means you're alone.

At the Archives' free screenings of the complete documentary and short categories... Submerged myself as wholeheartedly as possible this weekend. In the last four days, I've seen 18 out of the 20 screened. I've worn the same hoodie/coat combo three times in a row because I've been here too often to do laundry.

But I've gone to 16 out of 18 by myself. And maybe that's not a complaint. It's at least an observation. I saw the opportunity for free movies and dropped the world in front of me to create a better one. Because I had to. Because if I didn't, I would've been miserable about it for a while. That I'm the only person I know here who felt that or wasn't otherwise legitimately occupied might bother me more than it should. But I'm not apologizing. It's disappointing that this weekend has been as close to perfect as it could be: what I did aligned with who I am. The fact that I'm not sharing that, though, means either I'm the only one here or everyone like me had more important things to do. The resulting question seems obvious.

Wishing this weekend has some permanence.

Sent via iPhone.

It's as simple, and as loaded, and as rich, and as full, and as
imagined as hearing your dream out loud.

There are a lot of people who malign the Grammys. They come in all
colors, professions, and ages. They'll tell you the awards aren't
punk enough and that they're too young; that they're rigged for
established artists and that they only go to those whose faces are
plastered on supermarket aisle magazines. Some will even tell you
they'd mimic Fiona Apple if they were ever offered one.

I just wished they had seen Amy Winehouse's face. I don't cry often,
but it made me. And I'm not happy often, but it made me.

And I wish I had more ways to describe it. But I don't. Because it
was a look I'm still dreaming about. I'm mad at me for still being in
the dreaming stage. But I'll fix that. Because if it means I get to
have the same look of due surprise and exhilaration, then I'd be
wasting my time here not to.

A picture's worth a thousand words when it's more than just an image.

but when she laughs
you see what she hides
even chameleons let their guards down once or twice
she thinks these urban shadows are where she's meant to be
but there's no disguise that's fooling me

... and I'm not moving to California until it stops bursting into flames.

Here we go again;
it's not the first time
the "news" left us
with wounds to mend.

It's really as simple as Pulitzer wrote in 1904:
"Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself."

Today is, apparently, that time. We are, apparently, those people. And Joe Scarborough is, it seems, one of those mercenaries.

On Friday, Scarborough, broadcast on the newly-designated mecca of misogyny, joined by Craig Crawford, made sexist inferences about the nature of former Senator Fred Thompson's marriage. The two asked and then mutually "confirmed" that Jeri Thompson "works the pole."

I've watched the clip several times now. I've read MSNBC's knee-jerk reaction: put it in context. I tried to do so. I shouldn't have; but I did. I failed of course, because at best the remark was crass and I don't consider the pursuit of crudity an achievement of any real aspiration.

The basic gist: two shrivelled phalli walk onto a cable news set. The first one spots a woman he deems out of his reach. So he's bitter; naturally, he feels shafted. The second one is much less advanced in his shrivelling, but if there's one thing a diminishing phallus hates, it's standing alone. So the second one pokes his head in, feigning an interest. Wrinkled and past their primes, they begin flopping around, lashing out at the man this unattainable woman does care about: how could he "get" her? She's so attractive, they long for the days when they weren't mere wrinkles in time; when they were each something with some longevity, some sense of purpose, and had the tools with which to achieve it. Those days are gone. But these two don't cut and... excuse me, that word is in bad taste here. These two don't tuck and run. Instead, they prematurely spit assertions. They don't really know what they're talking about; they're inexperienced. So what happens next comes fast: "You think she works the pole?"

The breakdown:

Aside from the clearly offensive nature of the remark, more pressing for at least Scarborough (since I know neither Crawford's attraction nor relationship status) is that he has to explain to his wife his drooling envy.

But both men suffer from exactly what so many shrivelling phalli do: a lack of fore... sight. They have a complete inability to get the big picture and drown in their moment. They also can't see behind them since their dumb asses get in the way; hence, they have no hindsight. So neither could remember what the word "Imus" means this summer nor anticipate what fallout would follow.

I don't think, from the clip I've seen (my opinion may change if I see more), that they were calling Jeri Thompson a stripper per se. I don't. I realize that the use of the word "works" allows other conclusions. I don't think such conclusions are wrong, but I think these two were actually referring to the exercise technique, albeit offensively. But by no means should that be read as an excuse. What they still did is objectify Jeri Thompson. They still reduced her to an exclusively sexual being. I don't know why she, at 39, chooses to be with Thompson, at 64. But perhaps she was so sophisticated -- be it emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, some combination... -- that her maturity could only be matched by someone who had lived enough to develop similarly. The truth is, it doesn't really matter why she chose him. She chose him. And Scarborough and Crawford blatantly dishonored her choice by implying that her partner's decision to be with her was less than credible.

Reducing Jeri Thompson was not an anomaly. This morning on ESPN2, Mike Golic "joked" to Mike Greenberg that he "might as well be a woman" for not being able to bench 185 lbs. He quickly noted that he meant the inability to lift, not the remark, was the real insult to women. Huh, what? Exactly. I have no idea how he thought that put the dirt back in the hole he was digging. I'd be insane to suggest any woman reading this right now can't think of ten times she's already been "indirectly" insulted today. These insults are not indirect; they're assaults; they're micro-aggressions. Beauvoir was right: women are not born, they become. In so far as gender, as distinct from sex, is about otherization, these assaults and their underlying normative assumptions operate to subordinate females (as well as males since implying males display attributes we've assigned to females is understood as demeaning). If we don't stop them now, then when?

Again, our civic duty includes not just exercising our right to speak, but managing said exercise. Here, these two have to be held responsible for, at the very least, not realizing that suggesting a woman "works the pole" was going to be inflammatory, certainly if done so without clear, contextual qualification. I grant that structuring such a proviso would be a formidable challenge, if not impossible. Nonetheless, I'm tired of excusing the obliviousness of the ignorant. We should be informing the ignorant, not ignoring them. "Ignorant" and "ignoring" have the same root word. Take that theory a step further: how could we possibly fix the problem with more of the same?

And to come full circle, I don't know why Jeri Thompson was even dragged into this. In what newsworthy context is she relevant, let alone her exercise routine and how said routine may or may not affect her sex life? She is the spouse of a man who is bumbling through the initial steps of a campaign. I get it. But what does her attractiveness have to do with his ability to run/serve or her ability to lead his support from his side if he does so?

There's only one real "attractiveness" element of this story: you can find some of the ugliest things under the nails of pointed fingers.

I use to think that if this country was just us
that we could build an overdue conception of justice,
but just us could never really combat injustice
'cause when power's in just us, it's just nuts.



For instance, Gary Sheffield sounds like a bigot:

"...You're going to see more black faces, but there ain't no English going to be coming out. … [It's about] being able to tell [Latin players] what to do -- being able to control them.

"Where I'm from, you can't control us. You might get a guy to do it that way for a while because he wants to benefit, but in the end, he is going to go back to being who he is. And that's a person that you're going to talk to with respect, you're going to talk to like a man."

Can I pull something reasonable out of that? Sure. I could tell you that what he really meant to say, is that profit-hungry MLB owners and officials capitalize on the struggles of Latino youth; that they dehumanize them, seeing Latinos as potentially cheaper labor to further a product rather than young men hungry for a chance. I could tell you that baseball's athlete-sourcing has taken a huge hit stateside due to the skyrocketing popularity of football and basketball. I might tell you it's been obvious for years that baseball has little interest in scouting young black men domestically. I could tell you that young black American men are more often misled by marketing featuring Carmelo Anthony, Michael Vick and Clinton Portis than they are influenced by ads featuring Ryan Howard and -- and actually it's hard to think of a commercial featuring a black American baseball player. I could tell you that these facts are all part of a larger, ongoing social wave towards more instantaneous gratification and away from the national "pastime."

I could, but I'm not going to do Sheffield's work for him. Gary Sheffield is a grown damn man. At what point do we stop being apologists and calling these people inarticulate? Our civic duty includes not just exercising our right to speak, but managing said exercise. Why isn't Sheffield expected to be able to deliver his message, if it indeed has been publicly misconstrued, accurately? Is it because he's an athlete? Is it because he's black? If he means something different than what he says, why are the listeners burdened with decoding? He said two things very clearly: Latino men are relatively easy to control and black American men are relatively rambunctious. Neither is flattering. More importantly, neither is even true.

The larger point here is that there is more than enough intrinsically devisive about our social fabric. The last thing we need is to turn black-brown relations on themselves by excusing a man who tries to hide behind the conditioning of his skin color to be as racist as those he claims to actually be critiquing.

The message, if so intended, that MLB's power structure is an illustration of a deeply-seeded socio-eco-political dilemma that operates to divide us, is critically engaging. It is a message that is too important to get lost between the lines. It has to be said, but it has to be said well.

Gary Sheffield sounds like a bigot. The fact that he's black makes it worse, not better.

i'm confused
because now is both always and never:
always trying to go places i've never been,
always struggling to do what i've never been able,
always waiting for a realization that never comes.

sometimes i wonder
if life is at a standstill
or if i'm running at rest
in stationary motion:
always moving
never going anywhere.

but at least time passes.
or does it?
you'd think one so obsessed
with time could find it,
especially when all of time feels
like the same time.

i wish i could tell time;
tell it i hate it,
tell it i breathe it,
tell it i made it,
tell it i need it.
but all of my clocks are faceless.

they say "time
waits
for no one"
but just once
could it (could it)
pause
for me
i'm not here
here to beg
for always
just a moment
just a moment's
all i need

i promise
no, no
i guarantee
that i'll take real good advantage
of any time i receive
i won't blink, regret
desire more
'cause a moment's
all that time can afford

they say "time
waits
for no one"
but just once
could it (could it)
pause for me
i'm not here (to beg)
here to beg (here to beg)
for always
a moment
a moment's
all i need

They asked for it so here it is.

"Don Imus is only doing what rap has done for decades."
There's your gauntlet; its suggestion synonymous with absurd. But if America really wants to have this debate, let's have it.

The claim:
Rappers use the same language Imus used and no one holds them accountable or vociferously demands change - certainly not with the ferocity that the cries against Imus display.

(Sigh.) Where do I begin?
I don't want to make the mistake of being trite, so let's first clarify the nature of the comments Imus made.

He, and notably his whole staff, referred to black female athletes as "nappy-headed." Ok. We live in a society, and as black Americans have ALWAYS lived in a society, that doesn't merely undervalue our beauty, but aggressively seeks to legally desecrate it. Black women have uniquely felt this sting. So to call our women "nappy-headed" in a derogatory fashion is to reify that division and to restate the hateful categorization of "black" as deplorable, disgusting... Maybe you haven't checked lately, but go open your dictionary. Any dictionary; the editor doesn't matter. Note how "black" is defined as dirty, dark, bad, etc. while "white" is quite the opposite. In short, Imus poured salt in a wound that we, quite frankly, are tired of having to mend. And we are tired of having to do the mending ourselves while the majority and its empathizers tell us "the cut isn't that bad." It's ours. We bite our lips and bear it. And so only we will determine its pain.

Then he called them "hos." Along the same lines as above, the hypersexualization of black women and their reduction to sexual chattel is precisely why his "joke" crossed the line. These Rutgers women, and black women across the globe, are human beings. They are doctors, lawyers, presidents, nation-leaders, mothers, daughters and sisters... No definition of "ho" allows for those identities. In fact, the word strips them, leaving them as exposed and vulnerable as the days we were dragged here.

But remember: more was said. An assistant said watching the Rutgers/Tennessee game was like watching the jigaboos play the wannabees. He and Imus laughed about how the women from Rutgers looked rough, especially as compared to the more attractive Tennessee players. The jigaboo/wannabee reference is directly tied to "School Daze," a Spike Lee joint, but more indirectly tied to the ever-present issue of the attractiveness of black skin. To suggest that the Rutgers women, on average with darker complexions, were rough and unattractive jigaboos, while remarking that the Tennessee women, on average with lighter complexions, were more attractive wannabees is indicative of a battle our women and men have been fighting for a time too long to count. And we seemed to all have missed that being a wannabee is nothing to be proud of. It suggests that the lighter-skinned Tennessee players preferred their complexion because it allowed them to pass or at least distance themselves from the darker Rutgers women. When is someone going to remember that Tennesee's women were insulted as well?

Nonetheless, my focus here is on the counter-argument that hip hop brought this all about... That the very word "ho" is rap construction... That no one is up in arms over the misogyny in rap...

"Ho" as rap construction: really? David Gregory et al.: really? The word is undeniably linked to "whore." So your argument is what, that black artists invented misogyny? Well here's some earth-shattering, breaking news: white men were beating, raping, killing, and verbally abusing women long before they ever encountered us. This isn't to say white men are singularly responsible for sex-based stratification. Men as a whole are responsible. Yet you ignore not just modern realities but the evidence of history in its entirety insofar as it is contrary to your own assertion. But, to be fair, I suppose that is what they call responsible journalism these days (while Pulitzer rolls in his grave).

No one is up in arms: Let me be so much later than the first to disagree. I want misogyny out of our culture. That includes a specific desire to see its end and remedy in hip hop. Has no one seen "Hip Hop: Beyond the Beats and Rhymes" by Byron Hurt? Has no one heard of the Take Back the Music campaign led by Essence? Has no one seen Def Poetry? Has no one heard the COUNTLESS underground and commercial artists whose songs cry for change? Was Jay-Z right: do you listen to music, or do you just skim through it? Oh no wait: you have been listening. When Nas released "Hip Hop is Dead" the nation was up in arms. But you saw that as black artists turning on themselves, not as black artists pushing for difference. So you don't remember. Let me remind you: people are CLAMORING for change. Real change, substantive difference. If you haven't been listening whose fault is that? If you've believed the distant critiques from outside the genre, don't displace your failure on us.

The truth is, this "argument" ignores the lesson our 4 year olds are able to learn: two wrongs don't make a right. Even if you don't buy that rap's change is inevitable because of internal criticism, your argument can't really be: "but everybody else does it." Can it? Is that your idea of intellectualism? The issue is not whether derogatory use by one group can be punished or otherwise treated differently than that by another. That approach has nothing to do with independent evaluations of wrongdoing. You don't get moral points for, you don't get to create an appropriate balance by, saying non-blacks should be able to degrade blacks in the same ways many of us already do to ourselves. Even if I was to concede, and this would be a large concession, that you're then treating people "equally", you're forgetting the point: YOU'RE NOT ACTUALLY SOLVING THE PROBLEM. The problem is not the imbalance in degradation; it's that the degradation exists at all. And so perpetuating such aggression could never be a band-aid, let alone a cure. In other words, black people realize that acquiring the respect we deserve is significantly tied to the dignity we portray. But even if we drop the ball... Even if we create derisions among ourselves with hateful rhetoric, what makes you think that's a legitimate reason for the majority to do the same?

I just find it SO interesting that when the issue is SO clear.. When it's so clear that the real issue is whether Imus, a rich white man with broadcast power, should be able to use such derogatory language, within days the topic has shifted. Now the national dialogue is a referendum on black music. Funny. Of course we all need to change. But once, just once: could we please, PLEASE maintain focus? Rap needs to change. Rap WILL change. But the necessity of creative speech to alter its message is not parallel to the necessity of political speech to alter its own. At least not today.

I pick up the pace.

I'm curious, because it sounds like he's having a conversation he shouldn't be having.

He's in his early 30s, at the most. He's got a familiar swagger (I match it with my own). Rocking timbs and dark jeans that sag on purpose, he's a young black man strutting down a DC street. He's dressed like the very kind of man Bill Cosby says is debilitating black growth. So in that sense, he's a one man civil war. He's been known to say "nigga" like it's a term of endearment, recited rhymes reducing women to chattel, and he's often adopted the militia-view of the 2nd Amendment.

But tonight, tonight he's a dad. Not a father. A dad.

He's walking with his son, who's maybe 9; maybe. The kid is his dad's miniature: boots, jeans, igloo coat (though the shortness of his stride hampers his swag). And they're talking. The kid had some sort of conflict with another kid at school. His dad is asking him if it's wrapped up now, how it got fixed... The boy tells his dad his friends were pushing him to fight, to fix it with his fists.

"You don't have to fight to be right," the dad says. "You don't have to use your hands to be strong."

They get to the end of the block and go their separate ways. It's then I realize: they're probably not related. What I'm watching is, if possible, even better. I'm not watching a father be a dad. I'm watching a man who isn't a father be a dad. And it's really, really great. And it's really, really sad. Because this is how we'll overcome, from the ground up. But Leon Harris and Eyewitness News are nowhere to be seen.

This is the kind of thousand words I want on my TV screen.

So my focus has been on the promise of equality as one meant to guarantee chance or results. Current legal structure, with its concerns - both rational and absurd, accurate and incomplete - of reverse discrimination lends itself to this allegory:

A king hears of a land he recognizes as unacquired. He sends a ship, instructing its captain to stop miles shy of its shore. The captain's orders: throw a naked white man and a naked black man into the ocean. The goal? The first to make it to shore gets to lead a new nation. If there's a tie, they both lead. But there's a catch. The white man is dropped into a boat with an oar. The black man is dropped with a boulder chained to his ankles.

The winner should be obvious. The white man, though stranded in the middle of the ocean without fresh water or food, paddles his way to shore. There he finds all the resources he needs for survival. But overwhelmed with his new power, he claims all he sees as his own, confusing leadership with ownership, and stamps his mark upon the landscape with ash and mortar. As leader, the white man decides the new regime is to begin immediately. He doesn't wait for the black man to surface.

The black man is in a paradox. He can choose to quit and drown, realizing his escape would most likely require superhuman strength or transcendent mental ability; his success nothing short of a miracle. If he is blessed enough to be armed with either, his arrival at shore will be met with hierarchy; he will not be the ruling class.

Somehow, the black man makes it to shore. The miraculousness of his perseverance is ignored, and so he soon forgets it himself. He is late, so he's slow. He couldn't figure out how to win the race, so he's stupid. And he is still naked, dripping wet, so he's a raw, sexual being. He is treated accordingly. Who wants a slow, stupid, sex fiend to have power over anything or anyone?

Eventually, the nation is confronted with the notion that its past of oppressing the black man and his descendants was erroneous. Some say it's because benevolent whites sympathized. Some say the blacks demanded it. Some say both possibilities are true and incomplete. Nevertheless, the nation promises "from now on, things will be done differently."

But the black man still carries his boulder.

---

An ever-present problem with current legal structure is its literalism. It forgets that even if the black man survives and makes it to shore, the boulder is his existence. It is the evidence that he arrived late; that his power is determined by the white man's, whose arrival was timely; it is his mark of ineffectual intelligence, if any; it is the reason why he should be grateful to have been included at all. Perhaps most telling, it is suggestion that some great power intended him to have lost. And he wears these ideas on his skin (an indicator as much for those who see him as a personal reminder). If he keeps this facade, he is Stokely Carmichael. If he sheds it, he is Michael Jackson.

What is the promise of only looking forward if that gaze is affixed with old eyes? Eyes that remember the black man's arrival as late, invasive, at best functionally necessary... One could perhaps argue we could return to that original beach. But when we draw a line in that sand, and say, "The race for opportunity starts here," whether there is at that point a false start is not the sole issue. We must also note that one is still latched, dragging a weight the other does not.

How can we run beside you if our legs are tied?

inside
i'm just a battlefield
my chest conceals the trenches
i just wish that i could heal
they say home
is where the heart lives
but here it feels so useless
how much more can i give?

so much for standing
i'm throwing in the towel
my knees have given out

So I'm on my way to the forum...
Actually I guess I'm just on my way home, but "forum" adds a grandiose touch to my life that spring break was totally missing. Anyway, on my way home and I catch this band that I've now seen a few times (I've got video from before, if I can find it, you'll see it). They just set up between Starbucks and the circle and go at it. It's all about the music.

On a cold, wintry night in the District...
One man had the courage to make Jersey proud.

they say hip hop's in crisis...
truth is, that hip hop, was always on the brink of lifeless,
'cause that's what life is...:
a small boat on a rocky sea
no paddles, just a hope to be free

but you can't just live it, gotta skin it
wear it on your arm like ink's embedded in it
showcase your faith as a model for those fakes
who've grown to see street rock as only 'bout their own fate

street rock's a group mentality
say whatever you say
but use your talents to challenge we:
if your ride's fly, don't just tell me that it drives,
tell me it's a chariot that blazes the sky

be creative, words are artillery
get caught in the crossfire, learn, go watch a spelling bee
your life's a page, make the future wanna quote it
be a poet, let history know you wrote it

A bunch of us flocked to Busboys to see Byron Hurt's "Hip Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes."

At the tables were mini-questionnaires about the film, the experience, etc. One of the questions was about what we wanted the film to do, or what it didn't do, something like that. I took that as an invitation to tell whoever the reader would be what I really thought.

In Beats & Rhymes, Hurt presents a state of the union for hip-hop, questioning the misogyny and commodification, but also looks back at the roots and forward with an eye somewhat on the goals. I think he closed the comprehension gap well. So often, there's a generational schism and he did a great job of using language a span of ages can understand.

But I couldn't help but notice that the film is missing the "what do we do" component. It reminded me of "Traffic." I guess it was near the end of high school when it was released. It presented what was thought to be a revealing portrayal of the various strands of a web of drug-trafficking. The problem with Traffic, as here, is that for those of us at the core of the depiction - this generation, these kids - so many of us already get it. We were as unsurprised seven years ago that the daughter of the nation's drug czar could be holed up in a crack house as we are that today 17 year olds are killing each other to effectuate battle rhymes.

If you didn't know, then I suppose you'd have rated B&R the five out of five the questionnaire allowed. But I felt incomplete; I gave it a 4. I felt like Hurt led the ones of us who just aren't sure how to drink, to a bowl of water we'd already found. I've kept telling myself, "You can't assign Hurt the responsibility of single-handedly lifting us from the predicament he notes." Maybe his only job is to illustrate.

But what if it isn't? What if it's more? What if what holds us - and by that I mean all of us - back is that we keep limiting our duty? It's so easy to say, "My role stretches but so far." Maybe it's too easy. We've all heard that story about Everybody, Somebody, and Nobody. The gist is that when Everybody thought Somebody was going to do something, Nobody ever did anything. I guess I think of awareness as an ocean. If there's a kid who's never seen it, then I've done something great by taking her to the beach, walking her down the coastline... But if I just push her off the boardwalk, if I totally immerse her in the water, what does she do when she realizes she can't swim? When she drowns, does the fact that I at least opened her eyes serve as any consolation? And how many kids like her do I strand before I realize I have to start giving swimming lessons and that maybe I need to be the lifeguard too?

m.e:

while discussing South Carolina's Black Code: a set of 'laws' purporting to give blacks a list of rights post 'emancipation' as servants. At the point in the picture, I am again struck by the fundamental flaw in the 'benevolence' of South Carolina's offer: blacks in 1865 couldn't read by rule and virtually without exception. Less than three years before its enactment, it was a crime to teach blacks to do so. This law promised to treat blacks fairly by putting the right to contract in their hands. It occurs to me that I spent a year learning contract law without actually learning it. The idea that South Carolina could somehow remedy what Tocqueville suggested was a perfect legal atrocity with its own version of a perfect legal remedy is so logically suspect it would be laughable if it didn't cost people their lives.