RattlerGator Blog

Englishville, Georgia and Andersonville

Last weekend my oldest sister (Cyndi) and I made a quick trip into the upper reaches of South Georgia, back to the land where both of our parents were born (Jimmy Carter Country), to meet with a father and daughter -- white folks -- who may turn out to be family members.

Map of the Area:

 

We met at the Windsor Hotel in Americus:

It turned out to be a fantastic meeting, both Dean and Maxie were tremendous hosts and fun company. They drove us all around the area, all of us told stories from our past and became better acquainted with one another. I'll have more in a week or so, after I return from a week-long trip to Havana, Cuba (thank you, Cyndi!). Hopefully I'll have more then on that trip as well.

But I can tell you right now that I'm approaching this era of discovery (I've opened up an ancestry.com account) with a spirit of reconciliation and acceptance, along with a whole bunch of other feelings -- including excitement. I've known all of my life that people are people, and that most folks are good folks. We may find what we suspect; direct links between our two lines. There may be heartbreak and apparent cruelty, there may be benevolence, goodness, benign neglect -- who the heck knows? But we're going to try and find out what we can.

So, without further adieu . . .

Cyndi and Maxie on the porch of the old home that will soon become, the good Lord willing, an English Family Museum:

The Outhouse!

Barn dating back to the late 1800s:

Heartbreak in the Cemetery:

There you have it; as I indicated earlier, I hope to have more on this journey of discovery in the coming weeks. It may prove to be uniquely American, uniquely Southern, and uniquely Florida-Georgia all in one.

Later, Gators!

African-American Navel-Gazing

I first want to apologize to Victor Davis Hanson; I'm reproducing below a recent opinion piece he wrote for National Review Online / The Corner in full. He writes of Oprah Winfrey but, in actuality, it just as easily could have been written about the vast majority of Black America. It's all about the insistence (without any real examination) that President Barack Obama has somehow suffered some disproportionate level of disrespect because of his race. Here's VDH on The Moral Decline of Oprah:

Multi-billionaire Oprah Winfrey, after her surreal $38,000 handbag “racism” encounter in Switzerland, has just weighed in again on race and the presidency, as yet the nth way of hyping her new film: “There’s a level of disrespect for the office that occurs. And that occurs in some cases and maybe even many cases because he’s African American. There’s no question about that and it’s the kind of thing nobody ever says but everybody’s thinking it.”

Nobody ever says? Has she read a newspaper columnist or turned on MSNBC lately?

Aside from her historical ignorance, Oprah Winfrey has increasingly turned to the race card to explain the president’s plummeting polls. In her race-obsessed world, Syria, Benghazi, the NSA, IRS, AP, and ACA messes do not explain why a reelected president crashes from a recent 60 percent approval rating to less than 40 percent in less than a year.

Instead, in Oprah’s no-win, racialist world, to the degree that Obama is popular, Americans are considered for the time being as not racist; to the degree that he is not, the country suddenly is collectively under suspicion (e.g., “everybody’s thinking it”).

That Obama might be utterly inexperienced in the manner of Jimmy Carter, less than veracious in the manner of the impeached Bill Clinton, or suffering the same second-term blues of Ronald Reagan during Iran-Contra or popularity crash of George W. Bush after Katrina simply cannot for Oprah be true of an African-American president, who for some reason must not suffer the same fate and treatment as almost all who have held the highest office. Instead, in this raciallyobsessed world of Oprah, that Obama is faring no different from his predecessors is now the country’s fault. And as remedy, he must be given deference if the country wishes to avoid the latest therapeutic rant from Oprah.

In fact, Oprah has no record of worrying about the level of disrespect shown the office. If she did, she might have said something a few years ago when her president was routinely being compared to a Nazi, and often by her own fellow celebrities, writers, politicians, civil-rights activists, and filmmakers. That she said nothing then, but now says a lot, explains not America’s problem with race, but her own race obsessions, which have blinded her to her own prejudices and hypocrisies.

I don’t recall Oprah objecting when Bush was routinely shouted down. Did she deplore Al Gore calling the Bush team “digital brownshirts”? Or maybe John Glenn invoking the Nazis (“It’s the old Hitler business”) to talk about her president? Nor do I remember her weighing in on Linda Ronstadt’s claim that the Bush administration was “a new bunch of Hitlers.” Harry Belafonte and Julian Bond both routinely labeled their conservative opponents as little more than Nazis or KKK racists. Nor did Oprah note that “there’s a level of disrespect for the office that occurs” when Barbra Streisand compared Bush to Hermann Goering. Was she worried when Alfred A. Knopf published a novel about musing how to kill Bush? Or by a prize-winning docudrama film imagining the killing of Bush? What was her reaction a New York play, “I’m Gonna Kill the President,” was produced? Did Oprah once give a similar BBC interview about the office of the president and disrespect shown it in 2004 when a guest columnist in the Guardian, Charles Brooker, wrote: “On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod’s law dictates he’ll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. — where are you now that we need you?”

What might explain her outrage now about criticism shown Obama, but silence just recently when abject hatred and dreams of violence were voiced against her president? That answer may explain a lot about what Oprah has become. (bold added for emphasis)

Absolutely true, and it's distressing as hell. I love Oprah and all of her accomplishments. I need not agree with her on everything, and I don't, but I ordinarily defend her. She's one of the most impressive people of my lifetime. But this navel-gazing thing has to be called out, and it needs to stop. There is no possible objective review that demonstrates Barack Obama has been more disrespected than previous Presidents. None. In fact, it's quite the opposite.

The one incident that is usually cited as the highlight of unprecedented disrespect toward President Obama is the 2009 State of the Union speech where Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina interrupted the President's speech and exclaimed "You lie" twice while the President was discussing a pending bill on health insurance legislation that he supported (this preceded the 2010 ObamaCare legislation). However, the President was -- in fact -- telling a rather audacious bald-faced lie. Representative Wilson was correct.

Prior to Obama's 2009 State of the Union speech, Democrats had twice rejected amendments to the bill requiring documentation of legal status in the United States in order to receive benefits under the proposed plan, contending that a more complex application process would delay or prevent citizens from receiving health care. So their sleight-of-hand maneuver was to exclude the language that would have clearly blocked illegal immigrants from being insured on the rather phony premise of concern for quick and unfettered provision of services once the bill actually become law.

It's precisely this type of duplicity that infuriates so many Republicans. Citizenship, or legal residency, and the proof thereof, is somehow -- and bizarrely -- castigated as onerous. Such language was included, however, days after the outburst in the Senate Finance Committee's version of the bill, America's Healthy Future Act.

When the history of President Obama's tenure is written, I suspect Representative Joe Wilson's outburst will be seen as a first warning signal of what was to come from this administration. Especially the then-upcoming "Affordable Care Act" (ObamaCare) that, in what would have been an unprecedented action, they first slotted for procedural passage after having been "deemed to have passed" with no one in Congress having read the bill. Instead, they scrapped that deemed-to-have-passed idea and instead passed the bill on a straight-party vote with no Republican support. And, still without having read the bill. History will never look at these actions kindly. And historians will have to answer this question: Did President Obama first disrespect the history of the State of the Union speech with unprecedented partisanship and thereby elicit the unprecedented rebuke from a member of Congress during the speech? I say yes.

My point: disrespect cuts both ways when it comes to President Barack Obama, but it isn't race-based. Less navel-gazing would help Black America at least admit this one fact and allow the community to move on to other, more legitimate, points of contention.

Van der Leun's "Name in the Stone"

Always a worthy and memorable read, Gerard Van der Leun has re-posted a piece well worth your time on this Veterans Day:

I tried to understand what such a sacrifice meant to my grandparents and parents, but I could not. I was a child of the long peace who had avoided his war and gone on to make a life that, in many ways, was spent taking-down the things that my namesake had given his life to preserve. I was thirty then and not yet a parent. That would come a few years later and, with the birth of my daughter, I would at last begin, but only begin, to understand.

Today it makes me feel cheap and contemptible to think of the things I did in my youth to point out all the ways in which this country fails to achieve some fantasied perfection. I was a small part of promulgating a great wrong and a large lie for a long time, and I'm sure there's no making up for that. My chance to be worthy of the man in the photograph, the name on the wall, has long since passed and all I can do is to try, in some way, to make what small amends I can.

I would say you've done a fantastic job, Gerard. A truly fantastic job.

Two Great New Basketball Commercials

My wife was trying to explain to me this morning some news story she saw on one of the greatest basketball commercials ever, and wanted me to tell her who the basketball player was. Her explanation made no sense to me, and try as I might, I just couldn't figure out what commercial she had seen or who the heck she was talking about. Something about a playground scene, a black kid from the streets who thought he was all that (but wasn't) and some white NBA player who kept dunking the shots by the kid.

What?

What the hell are you talking about?

I simply couldn't figure it out. That was due, in part, to the difficulty my wife has in explaining anything related to sports. But, I'll say this: she intrigued the heck out of me with her attempted explanation. I now had to go hunt down this damn commercial.

Ummm, baby. You know that commercial you told me about? That's a Blake Griffin commercial. Ummm . . . he's not white, baby. Come on, now. But it is a great commercial -- check it out:

Yep, that's a great commercial. In the hunt to try and figure out what my wife was trying to explain to me, by happenstance I ran across another great basketball commercial -- this one, for the Chinese market: 

That's pretty damn good, too.

Some people are trying their damndest to ruin my upcoming sports season with all kinds of "nigger this, cracker that" talk. And I'm just not going to have it. The use of either word isn't unknown to me and I lament the absurdity by which we've tried to make certain words unmentionable.

I don't give a damn what Riley Cooper said at some Kenny Chesney concert and I don't give a damn that a whole host of black NFL players have likely said equally insensitive things -- or worse -- to white workers in various venues around this country. I'm watching professional sports to see superior teamwork and athletic ability on display; I don't have a hunger to watch cultured men who may think precisely the same way as Riley Cooper but are far better skilled at hiding it.

Back to sports, y'all. Let the games begin.

I'm Ashamed of Black America, and You Should be Too

I'll likely write much more in the coming weeks regarding why I'm so ashamed of Black America but suffice it to say -- for now -- that it will be quite some time before we as African Americans live down the outrageous lie perpetrated in our name by the hustlers pimping the Trayvon Martin nonsense. Bill Whittle does a good job explaining why:

He's clearly outraged, and he should be. I'm not sure I've ever seen anything like it. The level of willing ignorance is stunning. Absolutely stunning. And all across our community, good people have fallen for the lie because leaders they trust have failed them. The failures by our leadership class occurred for varying reasons. Some did so cynically, some did so unknowingly, some did so with the most evil of intentions.

Whatever the case may be, our admirable instinct to defend the defenseless -- here, a young black boy gunned down (by a white boy with a concealed weapon) for the crime of simply walking in white boys' neighborhood -- has been played for the fool. In truth, that admirable instinct has been manipulated by black and white hustlers for reasons that have nothing to do with justice. That's the cold, hard truth. And it's painful.

Enough is enough, and it has to stop. It has to. As the historic victims of unspeakable crimes at the hands of mob rule, it is especially sickening that we've now put ourselves in the position of essentially demanding mob rule when it comes to George Zimmerman.

How crazy is that? How sick is that?

Quite crazy. Quite sick.

Are black clergy honestly not troubled by this craziness? Are black Democrats completely blind to where they are leading us? Are white Democrats seriously unconcerned about throwing someone who voted for Obama (Zimmerman) under the bus, all because some personal injury trial lawyers working with and for the Democrat party told them to do so?

Really?

Heaven help us.

Happy Memorial Day 2013; Lift Every Voice!

It's a beautiful, peaceful morning in creation for me on this Memorial Day 2013 and I'm of a mind to share a few generic photos that are representative of the day but also a song that's quite famous in the black community. It's a love song to the nation, arising out of the Christian tradition, from Black America; it's a song about gratitude, perseverance, faith and dignity generated by a people who made a way out of no way. A can-do people. A song, unfortunately, that is steadily being bastardized into a song of grievance, bitching and moaning.

The song, however, is so beautiful, so magnificent, it will surely survive this unfortunate descent which is endemic to our times.

First, the photos of Memorial Day. My U.S. Army pride wants to highlight the best of the best military honor guards -- the Army's Old Guard, forever on duty at Arlington National Cemetery:

The solemn entrance

The steady approach

Representative of all who served, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Not just another holiday, it's a very special day.

Very.

Special.

Next, my Florida Boy pride wants to highlight Lift Every Voice and Sing -- not a separatist or black nationalist tune by any means. Properly understood, it's a love song to the nation. These are the words of the writer himself, James Weldon Johnson, of Jacksonville -- principal of the first black public high school in the State of Florida:

A group of young men in Jacksonville, Florida, arranged to celebrate Lincoln’s birthday in 1900. My brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, and I decided to write a song to be sung at the exercises. I wrote the words and he wrote the music. Our New York publisher, Edward B. Marks, made mimeographed copies for us, and the song was taught to and sung by a chorus of five hundred colored school children.
Shortly afterwards my brother and I moved away from Jacksonville to New York, and the song passed out of our minds. But the school children of Jacksonville kept singing it; they went off to other schools and sang it; they became teachers and taught it to other children. Within twenty years it was being sung over the South and in some other parts of the country. Today the song, popularly known as the Negro National Hymn, is quite generally used.

The lines of this song repay me in an elation, almost of exquisite anguish, whenever I hear them sung by Negro children.

Note that there wasn't an agenda beyond celebrating the birthday of the first Republican president. A president, by the way, representing a political party first organized around the political principle of eliminating slavery. Thus, the love song of affirmation to the nation. Thus, the generation of a song of perseverance, faith and dignity in the face of rigid segregation and discrimination.

But it most assuredly was not, and is not, a song of grievance, bitching and moaning. And I quite rightly revere it. Here are the words:

(song)
Lift every voice and sing,
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise,
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

(song)
Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet,
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered;
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last,
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

(prayer)
God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by Thy might,
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
(song)
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand.
True to our God,
True to our native land.

The poetry of the song, the heartfelt affirmation of it, the respect to God Almighty -- just beautiful! Our God is the Triune God and our native land is not Africa (that's our ancestral homeland), our native land is the United States of America.

Now, for a representative example of the gross bastardization of the historic tune, take a listen, and a look, at this:

Although not performed with my understanding of the old-school style (where the six lines of prayer are collectively read as a communal prayer, and not sung), it's still a beautiful rendition of the song. But quite obviously visually politicized in the extreme, correct? You couldn't miss, could you, the image of the man with whip marks all over his back just as the "harmonies of liberty" line was being sung.

Huh?

Did you see Abraham Lincoln at all? Curious, and historically ignorant. How many positive images of white people? Odd, and historically wrong. I see black troops from the Civil War but no white troops. Shameful. It has all the markings of too-clever-by-half academicians or political partisans of the left-wing.

A Balm in Gilead, indeed.

Well -- this too shall pass. I'm quite confident of that. So, in the spirit of the recently released America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity in the 21st Century-Why America's Greatest Days Are Yet to Come, I'd like to wish one and all Americans a very Happy Memorial Day. No matter how bleak, no matter how repressed -- I will never lose faith in this incredible nation.

Food for Thought; End of January 2010

[1]

Obama the Dangerous

Obama is not alone in missing (or choosing to miss) the point. As Abrams notes, nearly all media outlets roundly criticized the Court’s ruling. Abrams opines that the reason is two-fold: journalists don’t understand that they work for corporations (which were protected by the Court’s decision) and they confuse “democracy” (or more precisely, a sort of populist leveling in which elections are micro-managed to enforce a level playing field) with the proper constitutional interpretation of the First Amendment. And of course, they don’t appreciate the competition that may come from unions and corporations choosing to inject information the press hasn’t seen fit to print.

[2]

Obama the Condescending

How come House bill create 111 new boards, commissions, and programs? How come, if point is to give insurance, House bill raise big chunk of revenue by fining people without insurance? How that help anyone? This seem crazy to knuckle-dragging trailer-park people, who not know no better. And how come Medicaid and Medicare not doing the job? Isn't that what they for? And if they not do job, then why should people think even bigger program will?

Many American people too stupid to see answers to questions like these, even though they totally obvious.

Man with nice voice also need to explain why it so bad that U.S. spend more on health care than other countries. U.S. spend more on clothes and iPods, too. People in U.S. have more what called "discretionary income." Only spend small share of paycheck on food and rent, so lots left over. Old man want to get knee fixed, why stop him? Him want to buy big new tender woman parts to make hot young trophy wife even hotter, what wrong with that? Seem kind of silly, sure. But man with nice voice need to point out where in Constitution it say White House get to make that call for him.

Stupid American people have strange mad love for Constitution. Crazy right-wing Tea-Party people always making big fat deal out of it. Want to know where it say Congress can make people buy insurance. Freaky house speaker think that Constitution business nonsense. "Are you serious?" she want to know. Crazy right-wing Tea-Party people dead serious. Say government that can make you buy insurance can make you do anything, anything at all. Some even ask what crazy right-wing president and Congress with that kind of power might do. Me not like to think about that!

Whole issue make brain hurt. Good thing man with nice voice in charge. Him have right ideas. Just need to try new angle, that all. Talk slower. Talk louder. Use small words. Treat American people like kid who got held back in elementary school. That bound to work eventually.
The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right.

--Judge Learned Hand.

[3]

Mocking the Adversary

Click the link above and check out "Louder with Crowder" and his four minute post on "
Might Makes Right: From The Halls Of Montezuma To The Streets Of Port-au-Prince"

[4]

I recently completed a fantastic L.A. vacation and knew it would be a great trip when I noticed the car ahead of me on the 405 freeway. It was a Mercedes CLK and it had a Levin College of Law sticker in the rear window with a personalized California license plate that read, "G8R GRAD."

Yeah, buddy. The Gator Nation is everywhere.

While out in Cali I made contact with three fantastic bloggers who were extremely kind and generous with their time. I shared a meal with each on separate days and will definitely be making a return trip. Check out the three online when you get a chance:

-- Baldilocks

-- Cobb

-- Julie Ponzi

Many thanks to all three.

[5]

As I feared, the Big Kid from Big Duval did not have a good Senior Bowl. No matter. I believe he has a future in the NFL as a quarterback and I could not care less who thinks differently.

Later, Gators. When I'm able to process some of the emotional baggage of the Haiti situation I'll finally write about that catastrophe.

Thanksgiving 2008

From Within The Veil

W.E.B. DuBois said the problem of the 20th Century would be the problem of the color line; solidly within the color line in the culture of the United States stands African Americans, obscured from view by something similar to a veil -- those within are visible behind that veil, but precisely how clearly? Those within obviously see beyond that veil, but again . . . exactly how clearly? I believe the challenge of the 21st Century will prove to be the same as the challenge of the 20th Century (the color line) but with this distinct difference: the "special" burden presented by the challenge and that burden which must be shouldered will no longer be on those from without the veil. No, the special burden in the 21st Century will be on those of us within the veil. As it should be.

Today is a beautiful day in creation here in Tallahassee. The morning sun is shining as we approach the 9 o'clock hour, it is a seasonably cold 45 degrees, the news is blaring babble about the latest Islamo-fascist terror attack (Bombay), and the world continues to turn in fits and starts.

Same as it ever was.

So it may be proper that today I resolve to continue blogging and further resolve to repeat, in modified form, my Thanksgiving post from last year. I think it does provide a window into my soul. I hope it does.

In this new post I will lead with the modification, however. It's a hymn. The maternal patriarch of our family died a couple of months ago at the age of 95 and this song (or a similar one; my memory isn't what it used to be) was sung at his funeral service. This isn't, however, a recording of the song as sung at that service. This version appears courtesy of the good folks at the Alabama Folklife Association. The book and CD from which the song was heard is Benjamin Lloyd's Hymn Book: A Primitive Baptist Song Tradition. If you enjoy lined hymns and congregational singing -- enjoy! It begins with a prayer prelude; only a couple of verses are sung but there are seven minutes total. Here are the words (the church is identified as the Bethlehem Primitive Baptist Church of Eutaw, Alabama):

Father, I stretch my hands to thee,
    No other help I know;
If thou withdraw thyself from me,
    Ah! whither shall I go?

What did thine only Son endure
    Before I drew my breath!
What pain, what labor, to secure
    My soul from endless death!

Primitive Baptist Hymn #364: Father, I Stretch My Hands To Thee

Now, for the post from last year:

I feel the urge to post a little snippet of a Thanksgiving story that I favor. It comes directly from Booker T. Washington's famous compilation "Up From Slavery" and is pulled from Chapter X, A Harder Task Than Making Bricks Without Straw. The setting involves a student body averse to physical labor, rebellious parents who want their kids "in the books" and not "in the fields," and (incredibly) three failed attempts to construct and fire a properly burning kiln before success was attained. Obviously perseverance counts, especially when one is working against the odds:

About the time that we succeeded in burning our first kiln of bricks we began facing in an emphasized form the objection of the students to being taught to work. By this time it had gotten to be pretty well advertised throughout the state that every student who came to Tuskegee, no matter what his financial ability might be, must learn some industry. Quite a number of letters came from parents protesting against their children engaging in labour while they were in the school. Other parents came to the school to protest in person. Most of the new students brought a written or a verbal request from their parents to the effect that they wanted their children taught nothing but books. The more books, the larger they were, and the longer the titles printed upon them, the better pleased the students and their parents seemed to be.

I gave little heed to these protests, except that I lost no opportunity to go into as many parts of the state as I could, for the purpose of speaking to the parents, and showing them the value of industrial education. Besides, I talked to the students constantly on the subject. Notwithstanding the unpopularity of industrial work, the school continued to increase in numbers to such an extent that by the middle of the second year there was an attendance of about one hundred and fifty, representing almost all parts of the state of Alabama, and including a few from other states.

In the summer of 1882 Miss Davidson and I both went North and engaged in the work of raising funds for the completion of our new building. On my way North I stopped in New York to try to get a letter of recommendation from an officer of a missionary organization who had become somewhat acquainted with me a few years previous. This man not only refused to give me the letter, but advised me most earnestly to go back home at once, and not make an attempt to get money, for he was quite sure that I would never get more than enough to pay my travelling expenses. I thanked him for his advice, and proceeded on my journey.

The first place I went to in the North, was Northampton, Mass., where I spent nearly a half-day in looking for a coloured family with whom I could board, never dreaming that any hotel would admit me. I was greatly surprised when I found that I would have no trouble in being accommodated at a hotel.

We were successful in getting money enough so that on Thanksgiving Day of that year we held our first service in the chapel of Porter Hall, although the building was not completed.

In looking about for some one to preach the Thanksgiving sermon, I found one of the rarest men that it has ever been my privilege to know. This was the Rev. Robert C. Bedford, a white man from Wisconsin, who was then pastor of a little coloured Congregational church in Montgomery, Ala. Before going to Montgomery to look for some one to preach this sermon I had never heard of Mr. Bedford. He had never heard of me. He gladly consented to come to Tuskegee and hold the Thanksgiving service. It was the first service of the kind that the coloured people there had ever observed, and what a deep interest they manifested in it! The sight of the new building made it a day of Thanksgiving for them never to be forgotten.

Mr. Bedford consented to become one of the trustees of the school, and in that capacity, and as a worker for it, he has been connected with it for eighteen years. During this time he has borne the school upon his heart night and day, and is never so happy as when he is performing some service, no matter how humble, for it. He completely obliterates himself in everything, and looks only for permission to serve where service is most disagreeable, and where others would not be attracted. In all my relations with him he has seemed to me to approach as nearly to the spirit of the Master as almost any man I ever met.

Ain't that America? Here is a picture of the then-recently-constructed Porter Hall:

Fortunately, Tuskegee University thrives today thanks to Booker T. Washington and generations of others (black, white and otherwise) who kept the faith.

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all.

The Irrevocability of Every Human Act

From Within The Veil

W.E.B. DuBois said the problem of the 20th Century would be the problem of the color line; solidly within the color line in the culture of the United States stands African Americans, obscured from view by something similar to a veil -- those within are visible behind that veil, but precisely how clearly? Those within obviously see beyond that veil, but again . . . exactly how clearly? I believe the challenge of the 21st Century will prove to be the same as the challenge of the 20th Century (the color line) but with this distinct difference: the "special" burden presented by the challenge and that burden which must be shouldered will no longer be on those from without the veil. No, the special burden in the 21st Century will be on those of us within the veil. As it should be.

Humble pie? After that presidential election? Oh yes, I'm eating up. Probably not in the fashion many would want or expect, however. That's just not my style.

One of David Warren's latest offerings is a 19-paragraph persuasive sermon that I would like to repeat here in its entirety. I'm choosing to post it in part because I'm still trying to come to terms with the Obama victory and worried about what it says about American standards, in general, and African American standards, in particular. I'm searching, and reading, and contemplating -- slowly but surely. Barack Obama troubles me. Deeply. But he doesn't trouble anyone in my immediate circle of family and close personal friends. To my way of thinking, that requires me to engage in serious self-examination but it also dictates that I contemplate my family and friends.

I have no concerns about standing alone in my present circle. In my mind, I've been my own man since the age of 14 when I began working every day after school. Sweeping floors, cleaning toilets, dumping trash.  Whatever. I've continually made decisions that puzzled family and friends; that trend will certainly continue.

I sense something of a kindred spirit in David Warren and I have no doubt that he is troubled by Barack Obama as well. He writes:

[1] One of the grand mysteries of faith -- of human life -- is the irrevocable act. We do things that can never be undone. We make decisions that, in the clearer light of retrospect, should never have been made. But they were made, and acted upon, and the consequences are now out of our hands. How do we salvage the mess we have created? How could anyone salvage the mess, without the ability to go back in time? Great destruction can be wreaked in a moment; the salvage must proceed incrementally.

Because of our national history as a "can-do" society, Americans naturally have tremendous difficulty with the "proceeding incrementally" thing. In most cases, that's a very good thing to me. Charge hard! That was my Army training. That's the American way.

[2] The western, "Judeo-Christian" tradition is unique among those that have governed the minds of civilized men and women, for its realism -- for its direct confrontation with the irrevocable act. From its announcement in Genesis, the tradition has presupposed a radical view of human freedom. Humans are moral actors who, in effect, lack only the freedom to deny their freedom -- who must therefore take full responsibility for their acts, and for any foreseeable consequences of their acts, to themselves and others. This began with Adam and Eve.

It also explains the balancing act that has allowed this nation to evolve and prosper, as the temporal world and the spiritual world constantly engaged in their dance.

[3] I beg my agnostic reader not to distract himself from this point with vain speculation about whether Adam and Eve were historical people. Let us agree, for sake of argument, that the Genesis story is pure myth. Ask instead: What is this myth expounding?

[4] That we, the descendants of Adam and Eve, are likewise mortally flawed, and yet, unlike mere animals, we carry the burden of responsibility for our acts.

I always come back to this because I've observed the deficiencies in my life and in that of others all around me; whether vicariously present or actually present. My, how we love to engage the act of attempting to dodge responsibility. It is a futile endeavor, however.

[5] We have powers finally of life and death, not only over ourselves, but over our neighbors.

[6] The consequences of our mistakes are written not only into our own lives, but into the lives of others, down to the lives of children yet unborn. Forgetting, for the moment, even heaven and hell, the business of our lives is deadly serious, and every human act has meaning.

Every human act has meaning!

[7] The "game" was not reset after what we refer to as the Fall of Man. It cannot be played again to a different result. God Himself could not "reset the game" if He wanted: for in the Judeo-Christian view, even what God does is done irrevocably.

And we reach part of the mystery that cannot or will not be understood.

[8] This is an extraordinary theological position, and it is easy to understand why "post-modern" or "post-Christian" man, along with followers of every other known religious tradition, should feel quite uncomfortable with such a restriction on God's power. For with such radical freedom comes the pain of radical accountability: to God, and also to each other.

Restrictions. Limitations. Consequences. Why you tryin' to cramp my style, man?

[9] But perhaps we don't care what happens to others.

[10] As I have quoted in the past, let me quote again, the profound words of the late Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, replying to the central lie in Marxism, which remains the central post-modern or post-Christian lie: "A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death -- the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders, we are not going to be judged."

I am tempted to state at this point my great desire to have further discussion on this quotation in the black community but then I recall the uncritical alliance between Obama and his black liberation theology with that of mainstream black Christianity all across America, and the further leadership of so many atheists on the primary policies and programs that define African American politics.

[11] A great danger in democratic politics comes with just this denial. We are tempted to think that just by voting for a demagogue, a charlatan -- for any politician who tells us cynically only what we want to hear -- we can change the facts of nature.

David didn't say it, but I certainly will: or by simply voting for a black man.

[12] We think that we can "make the rich pay," or otherwise transfer our personal responsibilities to the Nanny State. By some mysterious "social contract," we transfer to politicians the responsibility for what we have ourselves decided. And in due course, we may punish them, for what we got wrong.

Preach!

[13] I invite any reader with the stomach for it to consider the incredible demonization of the outgoing U.S. president, which was used in turn to secure the election of the incoming one. George W. Bush, from the balance of evidence a decent man with an honest view of his own limitations, served his country as well as he knew how. He has been made a scapegoat as if he were personally liable for everything that went wrong on his watch. A true scapegoat: for in the end he is blamed even for what was done to him.

It is going to be a continuing theme for me with all of my black contacts, who never fail to demonize or ridicule George W. Bush or Sarah Palin or Republicans in general, to always come back to this point. White liberals play this card so shamelessly, so arrogantly, that I find myself continually amazed. And black people dutifully parrot all of the nonsense back.

[14] John McCain is perhaps lucky to escape that fate. For the same forces in contemporary North American society would turn against him as turned against Mr. Bush -- the vicious machinery of recrimination by which "progressive forces" make their advance.

Not "would," David -- did. Ann Coulter is correct on this score. John McCain was punked by these people. But McCain likely had no choice, and I don't think he ran an awful campaign. When you analyze the media obsession with dragging Obama across the finish line, just try and contemplate what a stronger Republican would have received. We are lucky, however, that such a status quo will never be repeated -- even if Obama runs for re-election.

[15] The president-elect may seem luckier, still, for he has an articulate gift for deflecting his own failures of judgment, and for finding plausible scapegoats external to himself.

Indeed. Being the HNIC means never being held accountable for anything -- in the campaign, that is. But as President? Sadly, I think this will also be the case for him in office among black people. He's not going to be responsible for anything. Them white people; they're responsible for everything.

[16] Watch for this in the trials that will soon beset him.

The most profoundly unserious conversation in American politics is between white Democrats and black Democrats -- that's what I'm going to be watching.

[17] Yet also, he professes to be Christian. So pray for him, that he will find the courage, perspicacity and prudence that come with the remembrance of our Lord.

From the beginning, I've desperately wanted to like this man. More than liking him, however, I will pray for him and desperately hope I will respect his handling of the Office of the Presidency. I'm certainly going to give him the benefit of the doubt. Not every benefit of the doubt, which I gave to Dubya, but I'm certainly going to initially try and give him the benefit of the doubt.

[18] The rebuilding effort by the Republican opposition will also need prayers.

Well, politically-speaking, I'm ready to crack some New York and D.C. heads. You can best believe that. But I'm at a very interesting crossroad. I've constantly tried to say to any African American who will listen that we've made a serious mistake aligning ourselves so totally with the Democrats. And it is hurtful to the nation and our political discourse. Witness a President-elect who spends years and years demonizing the President but now asks for reconciliation.

David Warren's conclusion:

[19] Every attempt to disown "conservative principles" -- the principles not only of the free marketplace, but of moral absolutes and human responsibility -- will be a further setback. The abandonment of the specifically Christian heritage on which America was built can only contribute to her further destruction.

Agreed. Time to get to work and do the necessary work.

Operation Shock the World: Sarah Palin Delivers Again!

From Within The Veil

W.E.B. DuBois said the problem of the 20th Century would be the problem of the color line; solidly within the color line in the culture of the United States stands African Americans, obscured from view by something similar to a veil -- those within are visible behind that veil, but precisely how clearly? Those within obviously see beyond that veil, but again . . . exactly how clearly? I believe the challenge of the 21st Century will prove to be the same as the challenge of the 20th Century (the color line) but with this distinct difference: the "special" burden presented by the challenge and that burden which must be shouldered will no longer be on those from without the veil. No, the special burden in the 21st Century will be on those of us within the veil. As it should be.

[this is the third of five parts on McCain's 2008 Campaign for President]

I’ll go ahead and predict it right now: Gwen Ifill, author of The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama and moderator of last night’s Vice Presidential Debate, is going to go down in history as a symbolic footnote of establishment cluelessness due to her “Age of Obama” book set to be released by Inauguration Day 2009. Age of Obama? Hell no. Age of Palin? Oh, yes! That said,Gwen was basically fair last night. Fair, however, is not the word to use when describing the absolute riot that broke out when Palin was announced as McCain's VP pick.The response reminded me of the Deep South's controlling power structure back during the civil rights agitations of the 1950s and '60s.

There was a very clear and present danger that appeared on the scene and upset the status quo. And it made for some very ugly situations.

Bull Connor Lives

Most of us know who Bull Connor is; we've seen the images from Birmingham, Alabama of the snarling dogs, etc. Like all human beings, however, Bull Connor was more complicated than the negative iconic figure he has become in the history books. That's what happens when you come down on the wrong side of history and that's what's going to happen with the outrageous attacks by the far left on Sarah Palin and her family. You don't need the links. She, and they, have been trashed all over the place and some of that has been documented on this blog.

She has been viciously mocked in a desperate attempt to caricature her as nothing more than a mere cartoon – yet she is unyielding.

She has been forced to see her family shat upon by people who can’t comprehend that family values isn’t so much about being perfect but far more about properly responding to challenging situations -- yet, still she rises.

She has been stalked by one gotcha-seeking journalist after another-- yet they have failed in their efforts to force her out of this race or irreparably wound her candidacy.

And now she has not only survived the national debate with a prototypical Washington politician (repeatedly rejected in primary after primary by his own party for their nomination as standard-bearer in the race for President), she clearly won the thing.

The Force of a Man and the Grace of a Woman

She, ladies and gentlemen, is one hell of a woman and I'd like to take this opportunity to liken her to a class of American women I know quite a bit about. Women who have much in common with her but who wouldn’t think to draw such a parallel: African American women.

To accomplish my task, I want to share a disturbing 50-year old photograph with you from the American South. It’s virtually impossible for me to summon up the words that might provide sufficient enough explanation for you to comprehend what I feel when I obsess on this picture but I doubt if words will really be necessary:

This is a picture of Dorothy Counts in Charlotte, North Carolina and the day is September 4, 1957. Surrounded by a pack of wolves, she's trying to make her way to the neighborhood school. She's 15 years old. I damn near lost my mind when I first saw this photograph within the last year. On first sight, I could not for the life of me understand why her father or other black people were nowhere to be found. I've since come to understand there was a certain staging at play that day. The white man in the white shirt directly behind her was her protector and probably helped think through the staging of this event for maximum political effect while not allowing a tense event to get completely out of control. Dorothy's father had dropped the two of them off up at the top of the road and entrusted his daughter's safety to this guy.

Needless to say, this is an extremely difficult picture for many people to live down and surely contributed to the integration efforts in North Carolina.

There’s so much to see in that picture but try as you might, you can’t objectively place Barack Obama within the context of the photograph. He has been cherry-picked, and favored, and promoted at every step along the way since he arrived at Columbia University as an undergraduate way back in the day. Cherry-picked and placed in Chicago. Cherry-picked and given millions of dollars to run a program that failed and funneled money to who-knows-where. Cherry-picked and placed at Harvard Law School, cherry-picked and placed on Harvard Law Review. Cherry-picked and placed into the Illinois legislature, cherry-picked and given the 2004 prime time convention speech, etc.

In fact, Mr. Obama and his supporters are taking advantage of the conscious and subconscious American memory of moments such as depicted in the above photograph to escape necessary review while trying to win the single most important political job in the world.

Sarah Palin, however, does fit within that picture and has achieved against the odds at every step of the way in her climb up the political ladder.

Instead of some Charlotte neighborhood we’re vicariously viewing official Washington, D.C. as they surround Sarah Palin; they are not pleased that a supposedly unqualified interloper from some neighborhood no one knows anything about at all (beyond rumors, that is) has entered their midst. They yell, they scream, they seek to intimidate – they heap upon her much rebuke and scorn. All because she’s a fellow American, objectively qualified to enter, who not only had the temerity in her youth of aspiring to the highest office in the land -- she's actually trying do so without going through the Ivy League!

Skanky bitch!

And did you hear: she's oversexed, loose, irresponsible, an intellectual lightweight, devious, from an inferior family, etc. By now, I do hope you're recognizing the similarities of such a litany with the historical slandering (by some) of black women in America. And Palin is something of an athlete, too, and led her high school basketball team to a state championship!?! Come on -- that's stereotypical black female, all the way. As Harvey Mansfield proclaimed in his great piece where he asked this dangerous question, "Was feminism necessary?", she has the strength of a man and the grace of a woman.

What an appropriate line.

I love women like that, women who know how to exhibit strength and grace. In fact, I'm married to one and my mother is the exact same way. I'm sure that's one reason why I was immediately attracted to the idea of Sarah Palin as Vice President. The wonder to me is why so few seem able to see this obvious similarity.

Of course, I do know why they can't see it. They are being told not to see it. Is this a black thing or a battle of the sexes thing? Probably both. Mansfield wrote:

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As sex goes up in social estimation, love goes down. The trouble with love is that it narrows your options and endangers your independence. If you loved a man, you might actually want to put up with, or even admire, his ways. You may be sure that I am not the first one to notice that feminist women are unerotic.

If none of what I am saying were true, feminists would be welcoming Sarah Palin with embraces as warm as they are capable of. They should be happy that their cause has spread to conservatives and become bipartisan. In fact, they see the Palin choice as a gross deceit, and their response is close to fury. Doesn't this suggest that feminism is not in behalf of the women's movement--but rather to promote radical adventures above and beyond its concern for women?

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Yes, it surely does. And this provides an important window into the crisis of black male - black female relationships so lamented in black communities all over this country. The same is true for the larger culture and the war between the sexes. That's why Sarah is such a phenomenon. Her mere presence, her existence, touches and concerns so many people in so many different ways that it is totally unique in American history.

The Palin Effect

What effect, you might ask? Well, we're going to be writing about this woman for decades. She is literally standing on the edge of history! Consider this: after being told by those presumed to be far more knowledgeable and worldly that she was an embarrassment and (incredibly) not even female, she remains undeterred and insistent that she will in fact enter the protected kingdom and she will not, in fact, be intimidated. That’s Sarah Palin, ladies and gentlemen, and that's why I see her when I see that photograph above of Dorothy Counts.

Noemie Emery a week or two ago detailed the effect of Sarah Palin on our body politic. The first effect:

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Call off the funeral. Three weeks ago, the wisdom was that the conservative movement was over and done with. It had burned itself out, taking the Republican party down with it, and setting the stage for the biggest explosion of liberal governance since perhaps the New Deal.

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Official Washington, D.C. can deal with or at least tolerate country club Republicans. But Sarah Freakin' Palin? She gives them the vapors with a quickness! Whatever the psychologica state-of-mind of the D.C. establishment, Emery in essence says Palin proves the point that the big tent Republican Party of multiple coalitions of the willing wasn't, contrary to conventional wisdom, going away.

The second effect:

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Angry White Women. Palin's pick was a hand grenade tossed into the old-fashioned feminist movement's aged and tottering hulk. "Can someone please tell me what the hell happened?" pled Michelle Cottle of the New Republic, as Sarah made landfall.

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I addressed part of the Michelle Cottle bewilderment in a post on September 9th. Palin undeniably connects with women across the political spectrum. To that end, Emery goes on to note some uncomfortable truths for many feminists, such as the fact that women are less in favor of unfettered abortion rights than men are and that George W. Bush won the white female vote in 2004. These uncomfortable truths largely account for the hysterical attacks by the new Bull Connor's of the far left on an obviously qualified woman.

The third effect:

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Hillary's Angle. As fate had it, the phone finally rang at three in the morning chez Hillary Clinton, and this time, it was a true crisis: It was Barack Obama, begging her to save his rear end.

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I'm one of those folks completely unconcerned by polls that presume to show a clear Barack Obama lead, nationally. It makes no sense to me that in a time of financial crisis the country will vote to hand the reigns of the Presidency over to a man like Barack Obama and his sidekick Joe Biden. No way, no how, no Obama. All of these polling outfits are off -- all of them. It's almost as if Rush Limbaugh's Operation Chaos is still in full effect and all the numbers are being thrown off. Unfortunately, they are dangerously setting the stage for world-class bitching and moaning after Obama loses this race and a dedicated cadre insist the election was stolen from The Chosen One.

I have consistently asserted that Sarah Palin is a political earthquake severely underestimated in the official media of this nation and all associated entities. History is going to prove this to be far more the "Age of Palin" rather than the "Age of Obama."For this reason, it is difficult to overestimate her effect on this political race.

Finally, as an undergraduate at the University of Florida in the 1980s, the Communist Party USA tried to recruit me as a member. I had completed a tour in the United States Army, served in a unit that guarded the East German-Czechoslovak border, and had a Top Secret military clearance. My willingness to observe things for myself and make up my own mind based on my own observations probably made me an interesting candidate to the CPUSA. That, and my one-year subscription to the Communist Party magazine, that is. In the next edition of this series, the fourth of five and titled "Operation Connect the Dots," I'm going to explain why this experience (among others) allowed me to spot Barack Obama from a mile away and why I believe America should reject his candidacy.