Archives
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
You have to love us.
Unconditionally.
CONSOLATION. Every movement goes through stages. First, there is the raw creativity of rebellion. Then there's a period in which key ideas are refined and consolidated to establish a vocabulary and grammar for what follows. Next, a mature phase in which masterpieces employ the settled conventions to reach extraordinary heights of accomplishment. This is usually succeeded by a rococo phase in which style becomes more important than substance. Finally, there is a period of disintegration, in which all the conventions are turned on their heads and irrational destruction of the status quo leads to a new and far different incarnation of rejuvenated creativity.
The American civil rights movement is, and has been for a while now, in the fifth stage. Resistance to Jim Crow laws and spontaneous challenges to segregation in the south were the beginning. The rise of leaders like Martin Luther King who were able to convey the trauma experienced by black Americans to white Americans was the second stage. Landmark legislation by federal and state governments, broadly accepted by the American people in the wake of King's assassination, were the height of the movement. Then came the rococo era: civil rights bureaucracies led by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, affirmative action that overturned the quintessential value of the King era in favor of race privilege and political correctness. The suffocating nature of this extremity led directly to disintegration -- the blatantly self-destructive and reactionary expression of a slave value system that prided itself on its violence, its anti-intellectualism, and a physical, bauble-oriented, instant-gratification mentality so degenerate that even its most hateful opponents couldn't have envisioned a better argument for racial prejudice.
My hope is that gangster rap and all the permutations of it that have invaded the general culture are merely the precursor of a new generation of African-Americans who will mount a revolt of their own. I've spent enough time in the Caribbean to know that anti-intellectualism is not a black thing; it's a uniquely black-American thing, perhaps the worst single affectation any culture has exhibited in recorded human history. But it's a real thing. And a tragedy. The smartest guy I knew at Harvard -- a black graduate of Middlesex School -- was also the loneliest; he tried to teach me chess because he thought I could learn and be his friend. I couldn't get the chess (never have), and over the years I have gradually come to understand the opportunity I lost thereby. The smartest and ablest guy I knew at the Cornell Graduate Business School was nonplussed by the prejudicial reactions he got from Africans, not from the Americans who readily accepted his boldness, experience, charm, and judgment. I'm pretty sure he's rich by now, which I most assuredly am not.
All of this is context for what I'm sure will be decried as hate speech. In the space of the past few years, black people in America have done more to perpetuate the culture of racism in this country than at any other time in my life. Black Americans have failed utterly to celebrate the careers of Colin Powell and Condi Rice. They have allowed Democrats who promise everything and deliver nothing but more dependency to brand them with racist epithets and dismiss their achievements. They have stood still while Democrats use the crudest of minstrel imagery to sabotage the senatorial campaign of Michael Steele in Maryland. They do not stand up for their own military heroes in the Marines and the U.S. Army, who died for them as well as the rest of us, which is the very definition of principle and courage. They did not rise to defend the Duke lacrosse players -- despite the clear parallels with cases in their own experience that were decided based on race first, facts second. They continue to elect and reelect disgraced, corrupt idiots like William Jefferson and Ray Nagin, regardless of their competence or integrity. They have consented in the minstrel parody being enacted in Louisiana around the Jena 6. They reflexively defend a rap culture that Louis Armstrong, one of the great artists of human history, would have damned to hell. And they disgrace themselves in the most personal, moral sense by defending Michael Vick -- and even dogfighting -- as if white people were offended because of their racial prejudice rather than their love of defenseless creatures almost all of them have known.
So I'll say what no one else will. Not EVERYTHING is about race. Some things are about humanity. Other things are about character, aspiration, responsibility, and morality. Equality occurs when morality is no longer situational -- based on which of them is accusing which of us of something we won't concede to be a crime, no matter how unspeakable, because they have no right to hold us accountable. We really do have to agree that some things are beyond the pale, beyond explaining away in terms of demographics and past injustice.
It's not enough to have been injured in the past. That doesn't excuse everything that happens now. I have been privileged to know black people who have a sense of morality that would stand the test of any time. Most of them are dead now. I hate to think what their response would be to so-called men who wear their pants so far below their genitals they couldn't run -- even if they wanted to -- to save another person's life. They'd be embarrassed to hear of it. And about the dead dogs of Michael Vick. Not to mention defending thugs as if they were -- shudder -- men.
With any luck, there will be a new phase in which African-American men discover they want to be men. It's called the American Dream. At the moment I'm more wistful than hopeful about that.
Still, LaShawn says she enjoys the discussion. I hope she doesn't mind an interloper.
Unconditionally.
Regardless.
CONSOLATION. Every movement goes through stages. First, there is the raw creativity of rebellion. Then there's a period in which key ideas are refined and consolidated to establish a vocabulary and grammar for what follows. Next, a mature phase in which masterpieces employ the settled conventions to reach extraordinary heights of accomplishment. This is usually succeeded by a rococo phase in which style becomes more important than substance. Finally, there is a period of disintegration, in which all the conventions are turned on their heads and irrational destruction of the status quo leads to a new and far different incarnation of rejuvenated creativity.
The American civil rights movement is, and has been for a while now, in the fifth stage. Resistance to Jim Crow laws and spontaneous challenges to segregation in the south were the beginning. The rise of leaders like Martin Luther King who were able to convey the trauma experienced by black Americans to white Americans was the second stage. Landmark legislation by federal and state governments, broadly accepted by the American people in the wake of King's assassination, were the height of the movement. Then came the rococo era: civil rights bureaucracies led by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, affirmative action that overturned the quintessential value of the King era in favor of race privilege and political correctness. The suffocating nature of this extremity led directly to disintegration -- the blatantly self-destructive and reactionary expression of a slave value system that prided itself on its violence, its anti-intellectualism, and a physical, bauble-oriented, instant-gratification mentality so degenerate that even its most hateful opponents couldn't have envisioned a better argument for racial prejudice.
My hope is that gangster rap and all the permutations of it that have invaded the general culture are merely the precursor of a new generation of African-Americans who will mount a revolt of their own. I've spent enough time in the Caribbean to know that anti-intellectualism is not a black thing; it's a uniquely black-American thing, perhaps the worst single affectation any culture has exhibited in recorded human history. But it's a real thing. And a tragedy. The smartest guy I knew at Harvard -- a black graduate of Middlesex School -- was also the loneliest; he tried to teach me chess because he thought I could learn and be his friend. I couldn't get the chess (never have), and over the years I have gradually come to understand the opportunity I lost thereby. The smartest and ablest guy I knew at the Cornell Graduate Business School was nonplussed by the prejudicial reactions he got from Africans, not from the Americans who readily accepted his boldness, experience, charm, and judgment. I'm pretty sure he's rich by now, which I most assuredly am not.
All of this is context for what I'm sure will be decried as hate speech. In the space of the past few years, black people in America have done more to perpetuate the culture of racism in this country than at any other time in my life. Black Americans have failed utterly to celebrate the careers of Colin Powell and Condi Rice. They have allowed Democrats who promise everything and deliver nothing but more dependency to brand them with racist epithets and dismiss their achievements. They have stood still while Democrats use the crudest of minstrel imagery to sabotage the senatorial campaign of Michael Steele in Maryland. They do not stand up for their own military heroes in the Marines and the U.S. Army, who died for them as well as the rest of us, which is the very definition of principle and courage. They did not rise to defend the Duke lacrosse players -- despite the clear parallels with cases in their own experience that were decided based on race first, facts second. They continue to elect and reelect disgraced, corrupt idiots like William Jefferson and Ray Nagin, regardless of their competence or integrity. They have consented in the minstrel parody being enacted in Louisiana around the Jena 6. They reflexively defend a rap culture that Louis Armstrong, one of the great artists of human history, would have damned to hell. And they disgrace themselves in the most personal, moral sense by defending Michael Vick -- and even dogfighting -- as if white people were offended because of their racial prejudice rather than their love of defenseless creatures almost all of them have known.
So I'll say what no one else will. Not EVERYTHING is about race. Some things are about humanity. Other things are about character, aspiration, responsibility, and morality. Equality occurs when morality is no longer situational -- based on which of them is accusing which of us of something we won't concede to be a crime, no matter how unspeakable, because they have no right to hold us accountable. We really do have to agree that some things are beyond the pale, beyond explaining away in terms of demographics and past injustice.
It's not enough to have been injured in the past. That doesn't excuse everything that happens now. I have been privileged to know black people who have a sense of morality that would stand the test of any time. Most of them are dead now. I hate to think what their response would be to so-called men who wear their pants so far below their genitals they couldn't run -- even if they wanted to -- to save another person's life. They'd be embarrassed to hear of it. And about the dead dogs of Michael Vick. Not to mention defending thugs as if they were -- shudder -- men.
With any luck, there will be a new phase in which African-American men discover they want to be men. It's called the American Dream. At the moment I'm more wistful than hopeful about that.
Still, LaShawn says she enjoys the discussion. I hope she doesn't mind an interloper.
