Bigger Than Cigarettes

Just finished a great article on the British drug adviser who lost his job for touting the results of a long independent study that roughly indexed the "harm coefficient" [my term] of the most widely abused drugs. Well, that's not why he lost his job, he lost his job because alcohol was number five on the list.

I happen to be thoroughly unsurprised.

Before I expound, a disclaimer: there is ample room, despite the (what I consider to be) considerable efforts of the researchers involved to achieve results as free as possible from bias, for disputing these results. (I don't even agree entirely - based alone on what I know about it I'd consider ecstasy quite a bit more harmful than marijuana.) After all, one of the categories they asked participants to rate was "harm to society". I can tell you from experience, that a cop in Singapore is going to think the harm to society marijuana causes outstrips that of alcohol by a great and terrible margin. I can also tell you that a cop in Singapore has a very, very different image in mind when you ask him to consider "society" than does a cop in Chicago. But even accounting for that, and the odd fallacy in reasoning (or perhaps it's a fallacy of blind faith in governmental wisdom) the article highlights - that many are given to consider an illegal substance more dangerous because it's illegal - alcohol, the most widely legal psychoactive substance, trumps many other drugs with nearly as long a history of abuse.

I'm up on the history of drugs and drug policy in America; the two have never fully reconciled in my mind, and that was before Big Pharm became a major political power and promptly set about confusing any part of the issue accidentally left clear by the tobacco and alcohol lobbies. When I'm working with kids, I make sure I always share certain tidbits: heroin was invented to "cure" morphine addiction. Cocaine use was a fad in the 1880's too, it was just legal then. The Sears-Roebuck catalog offered free vials of cocaine and heroin with your purchase of a brand-new hypodermic needle. All the while, the Temperance Movement was gaining momentum, power and influence.

See, health has never been a government's top priority when considering the problems of drug abuse and its prevention. Morality, crime prevention, harm reduction, profit, power: these are the rubrics by which Old White Men have defined and ruled the issue for centuries. There's light on the horizon: the Obama administration has been encouraging the same shift in perspective I try to bring to my kids. Well, not the same: while governments need to shift from ignorance and intolerance, kids need to shift from ignorance and overindulgence. But the means by which the shift must occur are the same: health education. Yes, the facts are available, and yes, it is as always primarily incumbent upon the seeker to find the knowledge; but this is also the twenty-first century, and when we want something widely known, we take measures to promote the knowledge. In America, the fact that operating a motor vehicle with a blood alcohol content over .08% is illegal has been widely publicized as a public service. In the same vein, why not publish - and support - these findings?

It's going to be decades, maybe even centuries, before governmental policy on psychoactive substances results solely from the synthesis of available health information and the will of a well-informed populace; modern politics, especially in America, do not allow for it. All policies in America are shaped, in part or in full, by reelection; it's a concern whose weight in decision-making increases in direct proportion to the financial wherewithal of any concerned lobbies. In this case, as I said above, the interests of Anheuser-Busch, Phillip Morris, and Pfizer all coincide. They none of them want to see any of us making rational choices based upon concern for our health; they damn sure don't want any Senators or Congressmen doing the same. I shudder to think (no, I don't) of the world such reason would produce: people might realize the wisdom of waiting until twenty-one to drink. Smoking, already not particularly cool to today's teens (and many adults), might become the essence of social leprosy. Prescriptions might only, ever, be taken as prescribed, in spite of any extant pleasurable side-effects. Heaven forfend people seek their pleasure, their alterations of mind and mood, in healthier fashions - think of all the lost profit!

But we live in a world where a man can lose his job for pointing out the simple reality that objectively-obtained health statistics and governmental policy fail to reconcile in his country. It's like getting fired for realizing that the Emperor is naked as a jaybird, and saying aloud only that he might consider a jacket, it's rather nippy out.

Schrodinger's Racist

A friend linked to this article in her blog. I'm having a hard time fully comprehending my reaction.

I certainly think this is sage advice to men everywhere: pay attention to the body language of the woman you're approaching and the setting in which you're approaching her, because she is more deeply concerned with her safety on any given day than you are with yours. However, I don't think it the responsibility of a moral male to intuit any female's boundaries. It is certainly a character asset, a positive attribute of a good person, that they go the extra mile to respect the boundaries of others. But it's not my job to intuit your boundaries; nor is it your job to intuit mine. Rather, if I wish to be a fully interactive social being, it's my responsibility to set and to state my boundaries firmly and respectfully; the decision whether or not to respect them then lies fully within your hands. And the same goes: if you state your boundaries, then it's my decision as a moral person and all-around good guy to respect those boundaries. Your stating them makes it all the easier.

Debate that as you will, but my larger problem with this blog is the racial encoding in the following statement:

We are going to be paying close attention to your appearance and behavior and matching those signs to our idea of a threat. This means that some men should never approach strange women in public. ...if you have tattoos of gang symbols or Technicolor cockroaches all over your face and neck, you are just never going to get a good response approaching a woman cold.

Let's establish this: the dynamic of American society that attaches the warning label "Threat to Your Physical Safety" to a guy with a bunch of tattoos is a corollary of the one that applies the same label to Black American Men. Agreed? I've only got anecdotal evidence of this theory, but we've all seen Birth of a Nation, right? The Black Man will steal your woman, drag her off to his cave and molest her. It's the Emmett Till Phenomenon.

So, to put it personally, I may "fit the description of" and therefore I need to be extra-mindful of my surroundings and the boundaries of any woman I might consider approaching? Yeah, I got a problem with that. Whether or not you feel threatened by my race, or my friend Danny's tattoos, or consider them risk factors, is totally your business. Go ahead and clutch your purse, cross the street, hurry on up to get away from me. Cover your daughter's eyes (yes I've seen it, and tried hard not to laugh). But don't expect me to apologize for being attracted to or interested in you - or maybe just being polite and conversational - while Black. And by "to apologize," I mean "to worry in any way that I may be presenting a physical threat despite my best intentions; to alter or adapt my behavior in any way as a direct or indirect result of said worry". But don't you worry: the most likely outcome once I've realized that you view me in such a manner is that I'll move on, mildly disgusted, certainly angry, but no longer interested in striking up a conversation.

Yeah, there's my problem with this blog. It begins making a very good point: men, be aware that women have to be concerned with their safety in ways that may seem above and beyond to you; respect women's boundaries; pay attention to social cues like body language and adapt your behavior accordingly. But the idea that I shouldn't approach you (or anyone else) because my appearance and/or behavior matches your idea of a threat? Ludicrous, and vaguely insulting. A perfectly valid reason for you not to approach me, and let's face it, neither of us wants you stepping over that particular boundary - in fact, I myself make it a habit not to engage in conversation anyone intent upon profiling me in any manner, no matter how attractive she may be; it messes with my serenity - but I base my decisions to approach or not on things that are concrete to me. If her body language is screaming "no touchy no talky," I'm not touching or talking. But if I mistakenly believe it's cool to approach, and I don't receive a clear "back off" signal (and by "clear," I mean "Hey, back off, okay?")...well, all I can do is base my behavior on my perceptions of reality and my best moral judgment.

If I'm Schrodinger's Rapist, then she's Schrodinger's Racist - and never the twain shall meet. Unless I'm not a rapist and she's not a racist, in which case, cool.

I'm glad we could talk this out. (Your thoughts?)

Adjective Inflation

When I say, "Life is good" - something I say at least once a day, if only to remind myself - I want you to understand, I mean that my life is excellent. It's as "good" as the Creation.

I've been thinking about this the last few nights. I saw a poster for "The Good Wife" and it got me thinking about one of those arcane bits of knowledge I happen to possess, retained from high school: Goodwife was once basically the way of saying Mrs. (Thank you, XJ Kennedy Reader and Nathaniel Hawthorne.) The vernacular was "Goody" or "Goodie" - spelling wasn't so particular back in ye olde days. It was the kind of surface courtesy endemic to the early days of the Colonies, when communities were small and frequently beset with challenges. Unity, kindness, courtesy, fellowship: all were less virtues than they were survival mechanisms.

Now, follow me, 'cause I'm going back and then I'm going to come forward; we'll see if I've made my point. The New King James Version of the Bible, the one from which my childhood church services and bible studies flowed, was commissioned in 1604 and completed in 1611. I always wondered, as a child, why God would look upon his first creations and proclaim them "good." I mean, He's God, right - if they're just good, shouldn't he go back to the drawing board and shoot for great? Or was it that God, possessor of the ultimate power and the ultimate perspective, had no need of superlatives, so it didn't need to be any more than "good" for Him in order to be "wondrous" and "awesome" to us? (I'll be coming back to "awesome.")

You be the judge: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness."

As I now understand it, this is as close to a literal Aramaic-to-English translation you're going to get, unless you're intimately familiar with ancient Hebraic sentence structure - which, despite my high school demographics and the studies of many close friends past and present, I am not.

So, each of God's creations, as set down in this ancient and sacred text - which, divinely inspired or not, was carted around by the wandering tribes and paid homage to and held as sacrosanct for many (well-counted) generations and held them to common spiritual purpose in the face of many (well-counted) trials and tribulations - were good. How 'bout them apples?

(Sorry, sorry, the urge to pun overtakes me sometimes. I'd blame the comedic sins of my father, but that sort of meta-humor is uncouth and digressive.) (He said, digressing.) (How many meta-s is that?)

Well, here's my point: what "good" was in the days of the Old Testament, what "good" was in Early Colonial times, and what "good" is now seem to me to be three fairly evenly-spaced points on a scale depicting one thing: adjective inflation.

Here's another example ripped from my early religious indoctrination: Awesome. The etymology of this word brings it to us from the Greek for pain; the word angst has the same root. A certain orange-masked Ninja Turtle might be seriously surprised to learn that his word for moments of pleasure has such an origin, or that Webster defines awe as "an emotion variously combining dread, veneration, and wonder that is inspired by authority or by the sacred or sublime." (Not that Mikey wouldn't still apply the term to a New York Style pepperoni pie.)

Or, how about excellent? A term that has seen slightly less abuse than "awesome" and far less than "good," excellent has - in my estimation - only devalued from "first-class, eminently good" to "good". Only devalued, in other words, from top-of-the-line to middle-of-the-road; as opposed to good, which has dropped so mightily in its use that in most cases, to speak the word is actually to imply "less than good".

(These observations only apply to American English; I can only evaluate what I can see and hear on a regular basis.)

Here's the sort of dynamic I think causes this phenomenon: while Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Ted "Theodore" Logan used the word in its originally intended sense, those of us who were exposed to their first-class, eminently good adventure at young ages - especially, I'm sure, those of you who didn't grow up close enough to San Dimas to know that not everyone talks that way - adopted the word into our daily speech. As the adolescent vernacular subsumed the word excellent, its overuse devalued its original superlative purpose; most excellent, a term that should be unnecessarily redundant (heh), takes over the superlative spot.

The devaluing of once-superlative adjectives creates a vacuum at the top that must be filled by ever-increasingly grandiose, bombastic terminology. In my childhood, the use of the phrase "long bomb" to describe a forward pass in football was restricted to passing plays that were just short of Hail Mary status*; now, it's used to describe any pass longer than ten yards, under any situation. So, into the vacuum steps "aerial assault," then "ballistic launch" - I'm fairly certain that "weapon of mass destruction" has actually been used, at this point.

And the very nature of human communication requires us all to follow the trend; otherwise, we run the risk of being misunderstood. Well, given the scarcity of understanding in the world today, perhaps I should say we run an even greater risk of being much much more easily misunderstood. I see this much the same way I see the stock market - a near-tangible manifestation of the collective consciousness, that both rises and falls according to our whim and directs without room for negotiation our responses to its whims. Just another item on the list of Paradoxes of Human Nature.

Fortunately, there is another phenomenon I notice, that tends to prevent the fairly horrifying implications of this trend (unabated, we'd need whole lungfuls of air to describe quotidian experiences): complete swaps in vernacular. You've seen this trend too, if you're of my generation or one more recent, and have watched West Side Story or The Outsiders or Stand by Me - the slang just changes, enough so that we're not forced to find increasingly grandiose ways of saying "boss". I think of it as something akin to the sudden genetic mutation that speeds up speciation in the Darwinian process; after years and years of using the same terms to describe the same things, some seminal cultural shift happens (I've already named two in our time, if you've been paying attention) and a term is born into common speech, or dropped forever. (Example of the latter: for whatever reason, today's kids have no visible response to "Who You Gonna Call?" or "Knowing Is Half the Battle")

We have a word for it, now, a word that describes its own existence: meme. Linguistic memes that don't fade are the pressure-release valve that keeps us from having to say "Man, that was absolute zero!" or "Dude, that was frosty like the icy tundra of the Antarctic!"

Perhaps that's both a bad and a good example, as no slang word in a hundred years has had the longevity and versatility of "cool." We really might need to say those things someday, in order to convey some of the same meanings we do now.

I fear that the age of constant interconnectedness heralded by Twitter and Facebook Mobile - crimes of which I am guilty - may accelerate this phenomenon. Today's tweens, as they grow into 20-somethings - for which there'll be some new cutesy term - won't know what the hell their younger siblings are talking about. But that's another blog for another time.

This phenomenon has been explored in books like "Ender's Shadow," in which the kids' short-hand speech to one another devolves until "neh" and "eh" take the place of complete phrases; and Nora Roberts's Eve Dallas series of books, set in the 2060s and in which the main character's sidekick uses phrases like "mag," "iced," and "frosty".**

I don't really think anything can be - or should be - done about these phenomena; it's just something weird about human behavior I've been thinking about. And if you've managed to get this far, you're thinking about it too. Mission Accomplished.

Admittedly, this has all been mad conjecture, wild speculation; but, as always, I calls 'em like I sees 'em - and the title of this blog is not a rhetorical question. I would love if someone would post a comment taking my observations apart. What Do You Think? Am I on to something, or am I getting, by proxy of your computer screen, a "WTF are you talking about, Four-Eyes" look right now?

*for those of you not in the know, a Hail Mary play: when the team in possession of the ball is in a desperate situation, the field is flooded with eligible pass receivers and the quarterback "throws up the ball and prays".

**For those who would slight my taste in 'literature' due to my familiarity with the oeuvre of Nora Roberts, I have this to say: I'll be damned if I try to read A Widow for One Year on morphine, but I tend to need distractions from the plight of hospitalization at times in my life. Nora's been there for me, courtesy of my mother, and - hey, at least I stopped watching General Hospital.

Ooh Eeh Ooh Ah-Ah, Ching, Chang, Walla-Walla Bing-Bang...

MMkayy, what's not racist about this? Where is the statement on policy, in the image to my left? Is it the hammer-and-sickle cuteness?

I am no longer as sickened by this as I was in the months following inauguration. I'm getting used to it. And, in the words of Krishnamurti, "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." I find the statement particularly useful in this instance, for the wonderful irony - this...image...was propagated about the Internet by a doctor and representative of the American Medical Association.

I want to degenerate, here, into a curse-fest that would put a blush on Dice Clay's face. But I won't. Let me, instead, let Dr. David McKalip speak for himself:

"I am not a racist. I am simply a person speaking up to make sure patients don't get hurt by the government and by insurance companies.''

"Because I've been so effective in pointing out how the government plans are going to hurt patients in very serious ways ... the only way they can neutralize my message is to discredit me personally."

Read on: he's not a racist, he's helped Black kids! Of course, they were Boy Scouts, so they'd been previously vetted on the most important subject (whether or not they were future Sodomites), but let's not steal the good doctor's thunder. His point is well taken: he isn't racist because he did one good thing for some Black people.

Observe: Birth of a Nation warned Southern Blacks about the Klan and gave the fledgling NAACP something to raise a platform against. Bull Connor gave out free showers at summer protest marches. Gerrymandering and de facto segregation were responsible for the Harlem Renaissance. That is how you take "racist" and turn it into "beneficial to Blacks."

I have said to many of my friends that we need a close, careful definition of racism. This is exactly why: this man is defending himself against an allegation of character by calling upon a single action, taken years in the past. Racism is a doctrine, a system of values and beliefs that fits into the mental schema according to which one lives one's life. It doesn't require conscious thought to be formed. Nobody's accusing this guy - well, I'm not accusing him - of proselytizing young Floridian youth, or advocating the assassination of the President and the re-subjugation of Black America. But I do believe that to find it appropriate to circulate these images of the President of the United States, the office so often said to belong to "The Most Powerful Man in the World," requires a certain defect of character that I can only describe as racism. Do you really see this picture going around with a picture of a White American president? I don't. The joke, as with the previous Watermelons-in-the-Rose-Garden image, is predicated upon a stereotype of Black People. "So what? Comedians use stereotypes as jokes all the time," you might contend, and you'd be right; but I have never seen stereotyping used to campaign against a public official.

It was recently suggested to me that I not give Orly Taitz any airtime on my Facebook profile. As far as the political discourse in America is concerned - if we're talking about the President's agenda, the current problematic health care reform process - I completely agree. But I'm not the one giving these people airtime on (ahem) cable news networks. I don't intend to legitimize the challenge to Barack Obama's United States citizenship by engaging in debate over these people's claims. What I want is for everyone to see the kind of ugliness that is still paraded about in the public eye without a thought. Orly Taitz, in other words, is not newsworthy because her claims have any purchase in reality; she is newsworthy because she is a racist woman who, along with many others in the conservative media establishment, has been given a podium and is using it to spread her unique brand of venom.

The dialogue on race in America is never going to get any further than it's come, unless we root out each individual case - each David McKalip, each Orly Taitz - and hold them up to the light and say, "This is an example of racism today." There is no racial slur in evidence. There is no specific expression of racist doctrine, no advocating the discrimination against or subjugation of Blacks in America; there are none of the hallmarks of what constituted racism in the public eye for the last hundred years. What there is, is a very clear notion that by his very nature, Obama has opened the door to this sort of attack; that it's okay to spread these images and videos, and these ludicrous challenges, specifically because the President is Black.

Racism has become insidious. The evil has become Arendtian in nature, the danger more covert. While I absolutely believe that other kind of racism exists, and remains problematic, I find this the much more dangerous incarnation. This idea that being Black is a point in the "minus" column of the character debate, an appropriate target for critics of the President, is a symptom of a viral ideology that can and will spread throughout the general population without their awareness or permission - and that is how the other kind of racism can thrive.

Californication

I'll be brief, because this is simple. California is nothing like what anyone thinks it is. I'm not sure it's anything like I think it is, politically. One interesting point this article begins to make, but misses the many-faceted nature of, is that Californians are typically wont to vote against their own interests in state matters. On the whole, this is because of the large immigrant and Black American populations being swayed to vote their religious hearts and not their political minds. So you have untold numbers of registered Republicans running amok, then complaining when that for which they vote passes, those for whom they vote get elected; Ohmigod that's SO not what we had in mind! Someone has to do something!

Uh huh. Let's have another recall, another ballot initiative, another budget crisis. Ladies and gentlemen, California is indicative of what's happening to the American Dream all over the country: it's getting real. See, dreams (in the sense to which we refer when calling upon the American Dream) differ from reality in one simple way: there are consequences in reality. That means we cannot all have opportunities to better ourselves without someone paying for it. Otherwise, those opportunities are being selectively extended by those with the means to offer them. If everyone is to have a fair shake, in this real world where discrimination continues to exist and people continue to express preference towards those who are "the same," then either some magnanimous bajillionaire is going to have to take up the slack for all of those self-absorbed jillionaires, or the government has to step in.

Now follow me: if the government is going to step in (and I'm being deliberately vague here), the government needs funding. Otherwise, f'rinstance, children will always get left behind. But from whence this funding? Now we have a parade of ideas that pass the consequences on - literally passing the buck - to someone else, some other class, some other group, those who hold some other ideology.

Many Californians believe that, in order for everyone to have a shot at living the Dream, those who have succeeded in doing so need to absorb some or most of the cost for providing that shot to those who haven't. Many of these Californians conveniently forget that they're in the former class, not the latter, when it comes time to pony up.

So yes, we're a state full of people who think globally, and act contrarily locally. I got news for ya: look at America's international policies versus her domestic policies, and tell me I'm not describing the exact same phenomenon. So while I did find the article insightful, I also find it disingenuous for singling out California. We're just a prime example. It's happening in your backyard, too.

Unless you've got a different idea. I'm here to listen.

Born in the U.S.A. ...Really, We Swear

I miss wis.dm, my friends. I'd find it much easier to carry on our little portion of the debate on race in America, if we were wis.dming instead of Facebooking. When a man can tell me that the above nonsense "has nothing to do with race," and sincerely believe this, I know we're still, as AG Holder has said, "a nation of cowards" in this respect.

Listen up. Many people are racist. Many of these people have a podium and the will to use their voice at that podium to spread their ideology. In this specific instance, the debate is supposed to be about health care. And I hate to break it to those who didn't know, but even if that's the debate we were having, there would still be a racial component - encoded in terms of class. But these men (and Malkin) who've been termed "wingnut" over and over again, insist on flat-out ignoring the national debate we're supposed to be having - when the bill we're supposed to be talking about is already way overdue - and bringing us all around to the fact that, yes, the President of the United States is Black American. Or is he? Even if some of these giving voice to the concept don't embrace it, they're still legitimizing the lunatics.

Essentially, the lunatic fringe has spread way off of the fringe and is actually nearly monopolizing the opposition's agenda. And in such a manner that they cannot be ignored. No, the President is not engaging these people, nor is his staff; but neither are they able to press their agenda. Given the supposedly filibuster-proof majority the Senate Democrats have, and the Democrat advantage in the House, that's absolutely ridiculous.

Don't tell me this isn't about race. Yes, if this was Hilary's presidency, it would be about sex - but they'd have a whole lot less room to call her eligibility to serve into question. (Truth be told, I can't imagine what they'd dredge up for her that hasn't already been covered in the last eighteen years or so, but there'd be some corruption of some kind to fish out.) But our President happens to be a man of color, whose father was indeed not born in the United States. Git a rope.

And they're just afraid. They're afraid that Obama's presidency means the death of White Privilege. I could reassure them: White Privilege in America has many generations left in it. Hell, many of those who bestow this privilege (store owners, tax men, census takers, local politicians, voter-registration volunteers) have little-to-no idea that they're showing preference to White Americans. Maybe it's not as obvious as following the Black Man around the store, or clutching their purse in an elevator. Maybe it's not as clear-cut as denying business to one man, or giving preferential treatment to another. Perhaps it's the simple discomfort with a person of color that leads you to look at one man askance and not another.

I believe it's this quiet discomfort with the other that's being exposed on the national stage. Even by those with clearer vision, but who have not experienced the symptoms of this discomfort, the effects can go unnoticed, unnumbered. Let me try to share a few.

1. Not being comfortable anywhere the larger balance of people in the room aren't comfortable with you.
2. Feeling as though you must defend your right to be present in a given space or situation.
3. Wondering, often automatically, if being not White has something to do with "it".

It'll be a while before we're all of us able to look beyond the color of a man's skin into the content of his character. But the least we can do is acknowledge that for some, there is no desire whatsoever to do so. There are those who are currently capitalizing on the discomfort many Americans feel when race is raised as a topic of discussion, manipulating it so that it's taken as discomfort with the Presdient's performance or his eligibility to hold office.

And I have to applaud one tactic: the labeling of President Obama, Justice Sotomayor, and anyone else who acknowledges a racial reality, as "racist." Brilliant! This is how it goes: Judge Sotomayor acknowledges, before the media, that she is in fact Latina. Racist! How dare she admit to being Latina! President Obama acknowledges the reality that racial profiling exists and is stupid. Racist! Racial profiling in America is a "reverse racist" myth! (Whoever said that obviously didn't know that many officers of the LAPD freely admit to racial profiling, claiming it as a valid and useful policing tactic.)

Even Obama's health care policy (hey, way to work it in there somehow) isn't safe: it's all about reparations.

Don't tell me this isn't about race. If anyone but Obama was president, we'd be talking about health care right now, like we should. Instead, we get nonsense about Mombasa, reparations, a sitting President of the United States of America with a "deep-seated hatred for White people or the White culture," and on and on ad nauseam - and all of this from people who, it is important to note, are not racist.

Cowboy up, White America. It's time to admit that some of y'all are just dyed-in-the-slave-picked-Confederate-wool racists. It's okay. I won't judge you for that - but for claiming otherwise; for being tricksy and false; for laying some of the most racist of trips I have ever heard upon the man who holds the highest office in the nation, then claiming not just that you aren't racist, but that he is, I have nothing but contempt. And for those of you who don't have a podium, for those of you who watch all of this nonsense and can still tell me that "it" isn't about race?

Well, if by "it" you're referring to Obama's presidency, I agree. If by "it" you're referring to the conservatives' actual problem, I might agree on a case-by-case basis. If by "it" you're referring to what they're saying on the air, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree. If by "it" you're referring to this "birther conspiracy" or whatever, sorry. That's nothing but racist. If the man's father was from Dublin, I find it nearly impossible to believe that we'd be having this 'debate'.

And I have gone weeks without hearing a conservative pundit discuss the President's political agenda without making either an encoded, or a completely overt, racist statement (or two). But I'm open to being shown otherwise.

I remain ever yours, Angry Black Militant Guy or not,
Dash

What If #1:

• What if you told the Republican Congressmen and radio show hosts that the only way to hold on to their power base was to nationalize health care - or any other program?
• If Barack Obama actually hated White people, why on Earth would he run for President of these United States?
• What if everyone on the Democrat side of the isle were White? What would the isolated minority be complaining about?

By the Way, Really: What Do You Think?

My friend, this is a thermal exhaust port for me: I vent my shit here, and it helps me stay laser-focused elsewhere (my recovery and my spiritual life, building interpersonal connections, staying on point professionally). But this thing isn't gonna blow my mind any unless someone drops the occasional pair of intellectual proton torpedoes, dig? I need y'all to help out. You come across something, send it to me, with or without your opinions and thoughts. (Tell me if it's okay to post those thoughts, if you do send them.)

I need fresh perspectives to remind me of the limited scope and fallibility of my own. I don't take myself too seriously, but sometimes I value my brain higher than I should. Oddly enough, hearing where you come from, adding information to the mix, deflates me some. I need you right now.

I have been and always shall be, your friend.
Dash

ps. Yes, that is a Star Wars metaphor. I just compared my brain and this blog to the Death Star. See what I mean about needing deflation?

I Believe in...

You and Me, A Thing Called Love, life after love...that not everything is gonna be the way you think it oughtta be...take your pick.

Before my termination of employment, I spent quite a bit of time loitering around Pasadena, loath to go home between school, therapy, work, or any combination of the three. So I took to hanging around Vroman's, which quickly became my favorite bookstore. On one occasion, I happened upon this book, This I Believe, a collection of essays culled from the vast number submitted to NPR. In it, various people - from all possible walks of life, all levels of fame/recognition - set out in very brief, straightforward, concrete essays just what it is they believe in most strongly. They share that which is most central to their self-determined raison d'etre. I wondered if I could do it; then, just those few months ago, I couldn't have done it. After all, one of the guidelines is brevity. 350-500 words. I can't order lunch in 350-500 words. Expressing a core belief? Couldn't do it.

Now I can. This, I believe:


I believe in mere destiny, that every sentient being walking the Earth has a small but indispensable purpose.

The God-Consciousness lies within us all, waiting to be accessed: that special spark of life in each of us that's more than the sum of its parts. The stuff of old stars that was in the Earth before the Earth solidified, and is now in us all. The quantum mechanics that bind us all at the tiniest levels, where physics as we know it don't work properly. We are all connected, if nothing else, by the very matter which constitutes us.

Think about it: basically, either everything happens for some reason, or nothing happens for any particular reason. If it’s the former, as in my philosophy, how can any of us not have a destiny? In the course of a human life, you never know what you've said that had profound influence on someone. Many are the times I've been talking with an old friend, or a colleague, and heard, "Man, I always think about what you said..." and proceed to rattle off something that sounds like me, that I cannot remember saying.

It’s a revelation; I lived for so long under the belief that my life was pointless, that the end of my value to the world had been during my squandered college years – and that it’d been entertainment value. I was a dropout, a do-nothing, the guy on the couch.

Then I discovered a truth: chemical addiction had a terrible power over me, and was largely responsible for this horribly skewed perspective of a life that was, after all, nowhere near finished. I achieved sobriety a little over three years ago, and life has been a spiritual journey ever since.

With newly cleared eyes, a cleansed mind and an open heart, I have been able to see so many strange confluences, “coincidences” too serendipitous to be random. I was afraid to try and reconnect with an old flame far away, in order to make amends – only to have her email me for the first time in three years to let me know she was in town, and could we get some coffee? Just today, I began wondering about two dear friends I hadn’t seen in a while. The first turned up in front of me two hours later, pestering me to join her for dinner – and the second turned up at the same restaurant we’d chosen. It’s these little things that convince me, hands-down, that there is a latticework design to human existence, and each individual life is a thread with its own place and pattern.

I do not know what my mere destiny is, but I can feel inside, in that god-conscious place, when I’m on the path toward it. I am now, and have been richly rewarded for the steps I’ve taken.


Okay, brevity makes my writing suck more. Back to verbosity.

Detritus

Hello Friends,

So I just finished my This I Believe post/essay. As I state in the post, one of the guidelines is brevity. If you know me by now, you've gathered that a) brevity is not my strong suit, b) I am aware of that fact, and c) don't care. I say what I think needs saying. You skim, and cull from it what you think needs reading. Deal? Okay.

Because of that, editing this essay down meant cutting out a whole lot of stuff that got me around to my point. I'm posting it here, because I still want to say it. So, This I Also Believe:

This I believe: I believe in mere destiny. I believe that every sentient being walking the Earth has a purpose. But see, too often those who speak of destiny speak of some grandiose Destiny, some Ultimate Purpose - and too often, they are speaking of love. If the entire point of my life is to find whomever I will love who will also love me, and to spend the rest of my life with her....how will we not drive each other crazy? You can't -- no, I'll speak for myself, I can't put that on any one other human being. Too well, I know what the twin weights of expectation and disappointment can do to the psyche, no matter how benign the expectation or how minimal the disappointment.

People will always disappoint you. It's a reality; it's not a particularly sad one, for me, because it flows quite nicely with what I'm getting at. People will always disappoint you because (just to pick one reason off of the tree of human nature) their ideas of what they need to be doing are not always going to be your idea of what they need to be doing. In my adolescent pride and arrogance, I often tried to lead my most cherished friends about - not by the nose, but rather by a gentle hand at the small of the back, saying to them that this or that would be better for them than their present course of action or inaction. That this person would be better (or worse) for them than the current object of their desire. I thought I was the benevolent director, who came, who saw a production that was an utter mess, and set things to rights without stepping on any toes. I saw chaos; I thought I could gently impose order.

I got what I deserved. Three or four of those ten people (yeah, we kept track) are still in my life today, and even now, when discussing this particular portion of our shared history, they may grow a little silent, a little taciturn. They have never quite believed that they are free to offer any (constructive!) criticism they wish to me, or have simply never chosen to offer such criticism for their own reasons, but that's fine. I know what this silence is. The playing out of the last of my "Just Desserts" - for when we try to control what we love, do we not destroy it?

People will always disappoint -- If you place expectations upon them. Don't expect anything of them. Let them live their lives. You've got your own to worry about, and I'll explain why I believe that no matter who you are, that's an exciting proposition.

I believe the phrase "Intelligent Design" is nothing more or less than a two-word description of a central thesis of every organized religion of which I am aware, a spiritual commonality. In defense of a God, or an overarching Order to things, people look about themselves and see a world that is so complex, in a universe so incomprehensible, that there must be some "outside" force or power that ordered it all in this manner. A divine hand, whose will imposes order: the Titans and the Olympians, the Aesir, the Egyptian Pantheon, the forgotten gods of Sumer, the Trimurti of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva; and, of course, the great god to whom they must all bow, the concept into which they have all (courtesy of the Holy Roman Empire) been subsumed: the Judeo-Christian triune God, who is called Lord, Abba Father, Adonai, Allah, but whose name is seldom spoken by those who believe. I don't write it here out of respect, as much for those who believe as for my own upbringing, but I mention it because when I say God, I am not referring to this most benevolent of He's-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. I speak of the God-Consciousness. The part of us that touches the divine. I don't attempt to define the divine (heh), that's beyond me. But I know it's there, as sure as I know my name. (Hold on.....yep, check. David Alan Sherrell.)

Your life is important. Your mind is utterly unique - if you happen to be an identical twin, you know this for sure. The twinned mind is said to operate according to the principle of quantum entanglement - that what is done to affect one brain at a certain level, will affect the other, no matter the distance between them. And yet, you and your twin have developed completely separate identities, have you not? What I believe this means for the rest of us is that what goes on in our heads and our hearts is intrinsically indispensable to the latticework of life on Earth. So do not allow your mind, and most especially do not allow your heart, to become Dumpsters. Don't settle for survival, for sustenance, for food, clothing, and shelter. Climb the Hierarchy of Needs. Self-Actualize. Live, truly live. Love, get your heart stomped into little-bitty emo-bits, and love again, this time with gusto, next time harder. Wring this world of every experience that comes across your path, seek out whatever others interest you, and wonder actively about the rest of them.

If you live this life, you will have fulfilled your mere destiny, though you know not what it was. Perhaps some average functionary's mere destiny is to raise a child who goes on to be a doctor who saves the life of the woman who develops the vision that leads mankind into the next Enlightenment. This little cubicle-dweller, who thinks no big thoughts save the occasional idle wish to be the Jerry Maguire of his office, who merely walked through life with the sole purpose of succeeding - essentially, living the real-world equivalent of the Game of Life - could be that integral link in the chain that produces a kinder, less violent, more self-aware and self-loving human race.

I spent my youth and the lion's share of my adolescence not belonging, and hating both that fact and myself. I was a frail and sickly child, and only appeared healthier as a young adult. By eighteen I had already survived more than a few bouts with death. And yet by my nineteenth birthday, my life would be called 'successful so far' by any standard: I had a 4.2 GPA, I'd been accepted to my first-choice school (and my mother's alma mater), Vassar; I'd successfully performed not one but two lead roles in the school musical, my last hurrah on the high school stage - it's like starting in the last game of the season senior year, for us theater kids; I had a girlfriend who was the sweetest girl I knew; I had my pahtnas, my brothers, on either side of me, two men who - if they didn't always get me, always accepted me for me. I had three short months until I was three thousand blessed miles away from my family, and yet close enough to my mother's best friend (as good as family if not better) in case of emergency or homesickness. Even chronic illness characterized by debilitating pain could not break my inexorable march forward.

Addiction could, and did.

My Semi-Annual Dose of Brevity, As Regards Obama, Hawaii, His Birth Certificate, and the Most Irrelevant of the Right Wingers:

Don't name them. Birthers? Even as ludicrous as the name and the whole concept are, naming them legitimizes them.

Reasons

The reason I'm here: a friend whose mind I respect and admire, and whose opinion I value greatly, has asked me to write. Anything. (A book, he says. Who's got time, energy, or the central thesis for a book? I can't even keep a central thesis to my posts.) His plea was, though not the first along these lines from friends, family, loved ones, the first one I took seriously. "At least friggin' blog," he says.

Be careful what you wish for.

He had sent me this article, about a topic near and dear to my heart, and asked me to pontificate.

(Pontificate - v. to speak or express opinions in a pompous or dogmatic way," from the Latin pontifex pont, pons (bridge) + facere (to build or make). Note that pompous and dogmatic are synonymous with the chief epithet of the Pope. Just sayin'.)

I held forth in my accustomed fashion, without any thought to brevity:

• “For many black middle class, and black elite, accomplishment and class identification are simply ways to differentiate themselves from the masses, from the stereotype of being poor, black, uneducated, and intellectually inferior.”
• Uh-uh. Mr. Reya is actually demonstrating what I believe to be the root cause of any perceived need of the Black Elite and/or Middle Class to self-differentiate: fear of persecution from those with whom they would identify. It’s a hell of a thing to say, “I am this; this is a large part of who I am,” and have the majority of those who also identify in that way say to you, “No, you are not. We reject you.” It happens on a very, very regular basis. I’ve heard it said of Professor Gates, Cornel West, President Obama – note, these are all Black literati. Sam Jackson and Denzel Washington, Michael Jordan, Dr. Dre and Chuck D., even Kanye West won’t get these allegations, despite their affluence, intelligence, or how well-read they are, because they “represent.”
• Or, in other words, this is what happens When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong.
• “Having become less isolated and thus more exposed to the contempt and hostility of the white world, but at the same time cherishing the values of the white world, the new black bourgeoisie with more money at their disposal, have sought compensations in the things money can buy. Moreover, their larger incomes have enabled them to propagate false notions about their place in American life and to create a world of make-believe. (Black Bourgeoisie p. 148 -149)”
• I haven’t had my hands on Black Bourgeoisie since my Vassar days, but I wish I could look for what on Earth “the values of the white world” are. My guess is, consumerism, valuing appearance over substance, keeping up with the Joneses and damn the cost, and liberal or lenient child-rearing models. I could go on, but you get the point. Too often, Black Americans (among others) conflate “white values” or “white ideas” with “American values” and “American ideas.” I’m not sure either label fits very snugly.
• I don’t know what world of make-believe we’re supposed to live in. I’ve said it often enough of myself, and it’s true of most in the Black American Middle Class: we’re too poor for the rich folk, too rich for the ‘poor’ folk, too Black for the White folk, and too “White” for the Black folk. When your desire to be acknowledged as nothing more or less than what you choose to identify as meets universally with nothing but dismissal and/or scorn, what world can you devise for yourself?
• In other words, it’s not just the White world whose contempt and hostility such Black Americans as we are exposed to (as I’m sure you noticed).
• “Affinity fraud”
• What a horrible, horrible term. The idea being, those with whom you wish to identify somehow possess the insight and power to determine whether or not you truly identify with and relate to them, in your heart and mind. To my knowledge, no racial classification or socio-economic stratum has developed telepathy in their pursuit of keeping their boundaries closed to all, save those who belong.
• If anything, there’s a phenomenon by which Black Americans have time and again voted against their self-interest because of religious identity, socioeconomic identity, and regional identity. Racial identity, to my knowledge, hasn’t historically had a large enough effect on the voting patterns of Black America writ large – at least, not until recently. If Blacks could be swayed by arguments of racial unity by someone claiming affinity, Prop 8 would never have passed. Instead, they were swayed by arguments of religious and moral unity by others claiming affinity. If the Civil Rights Movement had been more powerfully evoked…who knows?
• In such an environment, this [is] the probable response he’d get from the average black man, "Player, your struggle ain’t mine, don’t come crying to me when shit changes up on you."
• Well, the ‘average Black man’ may (or may not, which is how I’m leaning) indeed speak to his friends and family in that way; I just highly doubt that’d be anyone’s response if he found himself in a debate with Professor Gates. It’d be like telling the President, “G’awn witcha bad seff” if given the chance to meet him in the Oval Office. Really, that’s a very condescending conclusion.

However, if you put aside the stinging and baseless condemnation of Professor Gates and other Black literati, I mostly agree with the premise that, as a social group, Black Americans are starting to identify more with their particular class than their race. I have noticed a lessening of the principles behind the Talented Tenth – that the advancement of a relative few talented, educated Black Americans would serve as the rising tide to float the foundering ship of Black America.

I just don’t blame the Talented Tenth for that. We live in a culture that prizes “keeping it real” – a culture that rewards mediocrity and apathetic stagnancy. This author is catastrophizing and limiting to Black America a dynamic I’ve seen the country over: fallout from the growing belief that the American Dream is dead. It’s not Black America that’s dispersing and going our separate ways, it’s any and every culture that had heretofore bound together in search of opportunity, betterment, advance, to leave a better life for their children than they had. I’ve heard a poll quoted that most Americans no longer believe they’ll be able to leave their children better off than they themselves were. My ethnic studies professor once said “If you’re working right now, on the books, and paying into Social Security, thank you – because you won’t see a dime of that money, Social Security will be dead long before you retire. I’m good, though, so thanks.” This is the prevailing belief – even amidst the hope the Obama administration generated during the election and the months after and even through the first hundred days, there was a sense that the best he could do would be to minimize the scope of disaster.

So nobody in “the masses” is really listening – not because they’re consumer-zombie barbarians, but because they’re running on fumes in the Hope department. And again, this isn’t just Black America. Community is dying, but not just in Black America. People are becoming more selfish, but not just in Black America. It’s one thing to look at how the fallout from this phenomenon affects a specific race and/or socioeconomic class, and quite another to presume that the phenomenon only affects that group. The latter premise allows the author to conclude that Black America is somehow being subsumed: at the upper level, into White America, and at the lower, into Poor America.

It’s bullshit. We’re as much Black America as we’ve always been, and this blog is proof of it. My current understanding of one thing Black America has always been: on a constant, painful search for identity, at (often violent) odds with itself, fearful of both continued oppression and continued advancement, and above all, fearful that our identity will be stripped away entirely before we have a chance to define it. Many Black Americans tend to (mistakenly) ascribe power over their ability to self-identify to others, and is it any surprise? Black America is just plain used to others having the power. Freedom of choice is very, very new to this group: I am of only the second generation to experience it. In any case, having signed away this power, all that’s left are the labels ascribed to them, these ‘masses’, this ‘average Black American’; those Black Americans who refuse to accept the labels, or who remain in active search of betterment, are scorned – because we scorn what we fear. Especially when they might win, and then what does that mean to me, if I’ve refused even to fight? It must mean that I am apart from these, these who win battles of progress. But I may take solace in knowing that if I am apart from them, I am at least in good company – it would be more comforting to me to say then that they are apart from me. They are other, they do not belong, and we must not and will not allow them to identify with us – because our hope is gone, and to rouse it is painful.

I could go on for a year. My brother and I have this discussion frequently, both as Black Men fighting all of these pressures I’ve outlined, and as Black Men who have chosen professions in which we are de facto shepherds of our Black American clients. In his case, they’re all Middle Class and Elite youth. In mine, they often are the beaten, hopeless ‘masses,’ but who come from all walks of life with one thing in common: having turned to drugs to shut out the hope, the fear, the despair. We who have taken back (with pain) the power to self-identify, and to hell with anyone who would label us differently or strip from us that with which we label ourselves, observe the continued search for identity as a sort of shadowboxing match – all you really need do is stand up and say, “this is what I am; these are the ways I identify myself.” There are battles to be fought, surely, but they’re battles of economic status and enfranchisement – we must continue to wrest the freedom secured by so many other Americans, but they are external battles. To struggle for the freedom to identify yourself, to find your own identity, is to struggle with yourself – your doubts, your fear, your despair. And too many Black Americans (this author, I believe, among them) are choosing the wrong battles. Furthermore, when they lose (as one must invariably, when battling oneself), they strike out at those who appear to be “winning.”

This criticism of Professor Gates, to come back around to the point, is absurd. The idea is that somehow, due to his success, intelligence and/or affluence, he no longer has the right or claim to speak against the indignity and omnipresent threat of racial profiling, even in the wake of being a victim thereof. So what if he didn’t really think about it before? So he’s a little in the dark. I’m sure he’s been tailed home several times, and has just fallen out of the habit of looking because he knows he’s where he belongs, on his way home. Personally, I would love to see a world in which more Americans of various stripes had the luxury of forgetting how “vulnerable all people of color are to capricious forces” like a rogue cop. Nothing about that blissful ignorance, though it may affect his ability to relate to the “masses” on a more quotidian, external level, has anything to do with his right or privilege of self-identification. Neither does whom he chooses to marry, where and how thoroughly he was educated, nor – most ridiculous of all – who has and who has not heard of Professor Henry Louis Gates. How is that not a symbol of the ignorance of the “several working class Blacks” being polled? And, if they haven’t heard of him, so what? He isn’t Barack Obama. While he’s certainly on my list of “Black Americans all Black Americans Should Learn a Little About,” he’s certainly not on my list of “Black Americans all Black Americans are Supposed to Know About.”

And as to the rest of the allegations of his being out of touch, I wonder what gets discussed at board meetings of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund if not the plight of Colored Persons in need of Advancement and Funds for their Legal Defense. (Okay, I know the answer to that last, but you gotta figure the aforementioned plight works its way in there somewhere.)

Thus Pontificated

D

And now here we stand, you and I. You have read what you would of the background I have chosen to provide (to call it "my background" would be worse than disingenuous), and you have seen a sampling of what is in inventory during an honest appraisal of my Weltanschauung. Will you be back to visit? I make no promise of regular updates, but it's quite often that the world sees fit to inspire or annoy (guess which happens more frequently) me to the point that I need to get "it" off my chest. I hope you'll come around now and then; I don't mind being alone in the forest with my one hand clapping (yes, I've tried, yes, it makes a sound, if you're stubborn enough), but I'd greatly prefer if maybe just a few occasional readers left some feedback. I don't have much of a real mission statement, since all that was asked of me was that I share my perspective on the world, my take on things.

But when I get on my high horse, you'll be the first to know. When I get knocked down, you'll be the first to know (likely, the topic - if you're skimming - will be "Tubthumping"). When someone else puts me on an ivory tower and I forget to laugh uproariously at the notion, you'll be able to tell. Y'wanna know what I think? --wait, y'do? Why?

I'll be back. But what do you think?

Say It Loud

Greetings, Friend Reader, to the first post of the new blog. Now that you've (ostensibly) read some or all of the stuff I just copied over from my more private, personal blog, I hope you'll take my observations, opinions, off-color color-commentary on Color, my missives of musings from the far-off state of mind, made manifest and maintained here, with a grain of salt the size of the Serengeti. I'm just a supporting character in the story of the world, here to shatter the fourth wall. Are you on stage with me? Or have you been in the audience so far? If so, get up! Get out! Get into it! (Why yes, I did just quote Tevin Campbell!) It's a large story, the story of the world, and even if ya didn't know it, like Jim Carrey's Truman, you've got a part to play.

Without further ado (well, except for the ado of saying "without further ado," and the necessary follow-up commentary, and...right, right, here we go--) :

I was fired three days before Christmas. Three days after Christmas, I thought it would be a good idea to start a blog. Then the shock of the massive change in my life passed, and I was totally disinterested in life for two months. Exactly one thing from that period is worth mentioning: my trip with my mother to the Inauguration. Thus, mentioned.

What the linked-to videos do not show is the discussion my mother and I had on the red-eye flight from LAX to IAD. Thrilled to no end about the changes afoot in the world, Mom and I batted thoughts, opinions, perspectives, feelings and intuitions back and forth for nearly the whole five-plus hours. (The lady in front of us was not impressed.)

I will not bother to chart the course of our discussion here. As you may have noticed of me, I have a meandering method of coming to the point - I'll only do it once I'm sure you've got all the information I think you'll need to peep my perspective. My mother has the same proclivity.

Her eventual point was one I've heard before. It was personal, and had to do with differences between the manner in which I identify, racially, and the manner in which she does. Now, I'm not talking terminology; we do differ in that way, but words are just representatives of concepts, and the concept behind all that terminology is the same. I like "Black American," so let's go with that. Occasionally, for flavor, I'll say Negro. You won't hear that other word in my narrative "speech" - I leave it for others to abuse. If I happen to quote them, so be it, I ain't a-scared. (You may also catch my occasional lapse into dialectic writing, or lengthy parentheticals; I write how I think.)

But I digress. The identification process I refer to is not what we identify as, or even what that thing (Black) really is, but what it means to us. What does it mean to my mother, who marched in protest rallies in her teens, to be a Black American Woman? She was a dirt-poor and brilliant child, living in Ohio and Michigan towns whose industries had abandoned them. She wouldn't thank me for telling you the rest, but suffice it to say that she's faced the hardest times you can imagine (song lyrics will be quoted often), and seen them through, and excelled. Her brain took her to Vassar, which took her to UM postgrad, and along with my father, eventually took her to a lucrative professional career. By the arrival of 1980 and David Alan Sherrell, my parents were practically the Black scenester ideal of the 80's: the young, upwardly mobile Black Professional, the "Buppie" - The Huxtable. (A friend once asked me if my mom was "Black like Claire Huxtable." Far from being offended, I responded immediately that Claire Huxtable was Black like my Mom.) This image has fallen from favor in recent years, but I won't allow it to be wiped from the annals of our struggles that it was a valued concept, part and parcel of the American Dream for many less well-off Blacks. Education, vocation! That's the way "out."

What does it mean to me, to be a Black American Man? Born at the tail end of Generation X, 'released' the same month as The Empire struck back, I am a child of the 1980's: of inexorable progress, of interconnectivity, universality, of irony (fuck post-irony, let the 'tweens have it), of observation; and yes, of rampant consumerism, of apathy, of voluntary disenfranchisement (a concept that should not exist), of snide, ignorant derision, of the very unexamined life we were so exhorted against. I remember when MTV played music videos, when MP3 players were Discmen were Walkmen, when the NES beat the Commodore 64 all to hell (and '64' does not refer to bits). I am Yo! MTV Raps and The Cosby Show. I am 227 and A Different World. I am The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (more on this later). I am also Saved by the Bell, 90210, My So-Called Life, and (though I am loathe to admit it, it played a role) The gotdamned Real World.

From the end of school until the late evening, I was educated (some would say, raised) by television, by our housekeeper who began employ with us as my baby-sitter in my first years, and yes, by my mother (though she never quite 'got' me), who had left her job when a) my sister was adopted, and b) when my father was more than able to provide us with a life of not just comfort, but real luxury.

Money was not ever tight in my house, but it was made clear to me: we are not rich. Mom & Dad are rich. (This was, line for line, also in a Cosby Show episode; I have no idea which came first.) The difference between rich (you have money to burn) and wealthy (your grandchildren will still be burning your money) was explained to me in detail - because I went to school with kids who partied in mansions and lived on I-shit-you-not Mount Olympus. (God, the conceit. I drive past it all the time, and only recently has it really begun to gall me.) I had a carpool driver just like any other kid; unlike most other kids, he was the sixth man on the Los Angeles Lakers and the Best Defensive Player of 1987. When we drove home, we cruised down Crenshaw Blvd. playing Koo Mo Dee's "The Wild Wild West," the unofficial theme song of Showtime. A vivid memory of mine from childhood is being in the Laker locker (say that five times fast) room, and somehow coming face-to-naked-crotch with A.C. Green.

What does Black mean to me? At the time, it meant "community church" actually being a church in our community, gospel choir rehearsals at home; it meant difference, being teased, being proud, at school - first it was just the lessons of Black History Month, then G-Funk made living in 213 much cooler than living in 90210 or the then-brand-new 310.

Being a Black American Male is as much a part of me as my ability to sing, my overactive thought process, my addict's brain and my recovering spirit; they're the largest puzzle pieces that make up Me. Because my Blackness is indisputable (you'd be surprised how often that is not the case) and obvious, it is one of the first identifying characteristics applied to me. I accept that gracefully; I am, after all, Black. And damn proud of it. I can't at this point, imagine wanting to be anything else. But there's much more to the trip. I have had, in a way my mother has not, to define myself 'against' others. My mother was Black, Negro, Colored, and that's all she was allowed to be by powers beyond her control, until victories in the Civil Rights Movement and her own brainpower empowered her. I was free to be whatever I chose, as long as I understood: I wasn't like the rest of my neighbors, because my daddy was rich (and my ma was good-lookin - still is - but my livin' ain't ever, ever been easy), drove a BMW; because I went to a private elementary school in West Hollywood; the list went on. I could go to church with my peers, we could bike around the neighborhood together, play 'intendo (as some called it) or SEGA, shoot hoops (I sucked the whole time I lived there; price of being short and sickly); but I wasn't like them, didn't quite belong. I wasn't the only boy in the neighborhood with this kind of issue - but I was the only one I knew with the mouth to make it worse. Because I just wouldn't take it. Even at a young age, I resisted attempts to label me, not that I knew that's what I was doing. I just knew I was being picked on, and I had to stand up for myself. I never threw a punch, but I'd also never met a fight my mouth couldn't start. (I've learned to use that power for good - I can stop just about any fight, too.)

And at school: I was different. Classes were tiny, and my sixth grade class had about fifty kids in it. Six of us were Black, which at the time was pretty good numbers (percentage-wise) for a private school. But boyo, when I took that leap into seventh grade, at the illustrious Harvard-Westlake (razzumfrazzumracistrazzumfrazzumpsychoticfrazzum), I learned that there was more to being different than just being different: there was being judged. Only my own people had done that to me so far, really. I mean, kids say stupid shit, but kids are only regurgitating what their parents say - which is why, by the way, I shouldn't be blamed at four years of age for telling my teacher she was just some dumb old White Lady.

Now I was getting it from all sides. I did. Not. Fit. Not that I had no friends; this was 1993, and I was in good company with the other misfits - even if I never quite forgot that they had that choice. They chose Nirvana over NKOTB (and really, at that point, few seventh graders had). The first time I was addressed by that most storied and painful of slurs, I stalked the kid around the basketball court for a solid five minutes without working up the rage to nail him in the solar plexus. But damn, I tried. "I'm sorry! You can call me Chink!" He was Korean; I pointed this out to him before I walked off. To the dean's office, or to call my mother, I can't remember. (Probably the latter; I was ill-equipped for confrontations with non-familial adults at the time.)

After all of this has been reported to the dean, a kindly old lady, her response is: "Well, you must have done something to provoke it, what happened?"


I guess my point with this whole narrative is: my mother fought hard to give me the kind of life she did not have, growing up. The virtues and vicissitudes of that life combined with my natural and inherited predilections to form my racial self-identification. My mother has essentially told me that she is disappointed in how unimportant being Black seems to be to me. (My father and I don't have this kind of talk.)

Pwwahhh? Put me in a world where Black doesn't have to be the beginning and the end of me, and cock your head in disapproving confusion when Black isn't the beginning and the end of me? Now I'm getting it from my own mother, this where-do-you-fit-in thing. Only thing is, I've figured it out: there are many places I belong. I belong in the private school circle, amongst children of Hollywood and big business and professional sports. I belong in Baldwin Hills, and in Ladera Heights, the modest white-flight homes and it-ain't-much-but-it's-clean neighborhoods mostly unsullied by the gang violence a few miles in any direction but north. I belong in the rooms of recovery, keenly aware of the disease(s) I possess, and the near-total lack of awareness of it in the public eye. I belong on the sidewalks and streets and beaches of Monterey, Carmel, Salinas, Pacific Grove, Pebble Beach, where my best friend and brother in punditry retreated after fourth grade, and where I have ever since found a respite from the insanity of Los Angeles.

Because I am Black American. And I am proud of it. But I am Angeleno. I am Vassar, Oakwood, The Center for Early Education, Glendale Community College. I am sober. I am melody, rhythm, and rhyme. I am America's Dream and her Nightmare. I am Black America's dirty little secret, that fifteen year-old and suspiciously rounding girl sent to live with relatives "up north," that season when Julia Louis-Dreyfus was only shot from the waist up. I am what Black America's conservatives and reactionaries try desperately to pawn off on White America, on Rich America, on any other America. But I am hers, and she is mine. I am more than Black, but my origin story undeniably begins - in media res - on the sweltering Southern cotton fields of a Scot named Sherwill. My melody, rhythm and rhyme were born there. Fear of a Black response to all that was born there - Fear, if you will, of a Black Planet - gave birth to the tidy white-flight neighborhood in which I was raised to be so much more than the sum of my parts. And the terrifying reality:

I am not alone. I am legion.

But what do you think?

EDIT: I have invited the aforementioned, inimitable and inestimable Mom to read my blog. You'll know when it happens; it'll be the "DAVID ALAN SHERRELL---!!!!!" heard 'round the world.