blacksnextdoor

In Najla’s kitchen the other day, Najla, while preparing dinner for me and a couple of friends who hadn’t arrived yet, reminded me that it’s foolish for me to not consider marrying Wael, a journalist friend of hers from back home who wants U.S. citizenship so bad he’ll pay me enough to make the whole venture worth my time.

I don’t believe that marriage should be a business – least of all an illegal one.  It’s something very serious, very emotional and I’ve told her this every time she’s brought it up. She always gets quiet immediately afterwards as if I’m being holier than thou and need to get real – but the other day, she said something that offended me:

“You’re lucky. You were born here.”

I know that Najla is very proud of her cultural and national origins. In a few minutes, her apartment would flood with friends of hers from her country and their kids who will use the language of their homeland with each other, who even having lived in the US after a number of years, mostly socially interact with each other, their notion of being an American based on it seems having access to jobs and services that don’t exist back home.

So I know that Najla wasn’t undermining her origins when she referred to me as the lucky one.

But she was undermining mine. Because she was saying that being an American is just a matter of paperwork that I could sign off on to share the wealth or not.

I’ve never felt so arbitrary.

But it’s not just Najla, it’s so many of my friends, Hicham, a cool Moroccan contractor I know who ‘just wants to make enough money so he can get the hell out of here’ or my French friend Fatima who hasn’t been around for more than a year but who likes to take both fists and gesture as if she’s squeezing water from a sponge to portray the US quality of life.

OK, in an economic crisis like the sort we’re in, the numbers are very important. But just focusing on numbers alone does not address the dilemma of being an American today.

In fact, it’s this notion of America being a mega grab bag that all we have to do is refill to restore, that causes this cynicism.

Increasingly, whole communities full of memories are being erased.

The southernmost area of Harlem becomes ‘Soha.’ Instant neighborhoods like this are invented in every major city eliminating real neighborhoods rich with urban history.   

Surging numbers of people enter the U.S. every day with the popular conclusion being that if this constant social churning feeds the economy, it’s healthy.  I’m not convinced of that. I’ve seen blocks transition from one ethnic group to another.  It’s seldom this natural wave that pundits who live in static, affluent communities, say it is.  Afterwards, you wonder where people and stores are that are gone, filled with nostalgia and loss.

There are those who say Obama bent over too far during the G20 – see that obsequious bow to King Abdullah for an embarrassing example – but I feel like he’s trying, really trying to get the point across that America’s not just an economic and military empire, not just a dropper of bombs or a revolving door for the world’s work force, but a country with a heart and soul.

Everyone agrees his eight day tour of the world was a success in this regard, but now let’s see if this case can be made right here, at home — or have I become too much of an irrelevant spectator to refer to this country with such familiarity?

So, Barack and Michelle are sweeping through Europe like the black John Steed and Emma Peel. Can’t you see Michelle next in a spandex cat suit with those dangerously arched eyebrows, brandishing a swishy sword?

Watching the rage filled crowds with cries of ‘eat the rich’ on the streets of the UK, I was — as always worried at how routinely life goes on stateside even as we lose our homes, jobs, savings.  If American democracy has a pulse, guess it’s reflected in those poll numbers always flatlining our TVs.

Good thing we have a leader that can passionately emote. Barack’s press conference at the ExCel Center following the G20 summit was unbelievable.

I almost didn’t pay it any mind because I had a million things to do, but Barack drew me in. Made me listen. 

I am slightly ashamed to admit this but it’s official: I adore our President the way some women adore certain Hollywood actors and sports stars.

I love Barack and Thursday just took my enfatuation with him to new heights because it felt so much like an intimate chat between the two of us that had nothing to do with my eyes or lips or any of that nonsense former significant others have narrowed me down to to distract me from the missing bigger picture. 

He discussed the plans he was making with heads of state around the world to protect my financial stability from any future funny stuff.  He spoke in behalf of me as a woman with her own distinctive interests that he was appointed and ready to defend – oh with such deep throated sincerity by the way — but whose range of opportunities he was expanding on globally in as much as the rest of the world was ready to meet us halfway.

The opposite of inspiring, that morning I had ridden the subway in a car with just a few people doing a reverse commute away from Manhattan, two of them a younger but not quite young black man and woman. The woman was pregnant, just showing, her hand unsurely on her rounded belly the whole ride.  

The man had this ultra diesel sitting posture, legs and elbows spread wide, meticulous corn rows spilling down his shoulders that some woman, perhaps the one sitting beside him had toiled over for who knows how long.

Everything about him spoke of this sense of entitlement that trumped the worried looking woman next to him as well as their unborn child. At one point when the woman who apparently was not his wife mentioned that she didn’t want her child to have a different last name than she did, he slung his big, strong arm around her small, frail shoulder and gave her a lecture on ‘not caring what other people think’ the whole time he asserted ownership over her emotionally and physically, masterfully disowning her socially and economically.

You didn’t need a crystal ball to know that this woman’s future as a mom was going to heavily rely on state help, state enforced child support payments and maybe even a phone call or two to 911.

When the two of them stepped off the train, an elderly woman next to me rolled her eyes in the air at what we had both witnessed, not because we had never seen such a thing before but because we had both seen so much of it, see so much of it every day.

I understand that Mr. Wonderful may have not grown up in a home with a father who was kind to his own mother or had had no father around at all, but what I don’t understand is a masculinity so trifling it’s at odds with its own legacy which is what that woman and child under the right conditions offered him.

Anyway, see Beyonce’s new film Obsession with a white female homewrecker as the fave scapegoat for the stressed out sexual politik of black men and women — or grab the one you’re with to waltz in the romantic  glow of this long overdue first couple of ours, Barack, who also grew up fatherless yet models a manliness that’s as graceful as it is strong, and Michelle, a jazzy dynamo confidently exemplifying the virtues of being a black wife and mom for all the whole world to behold!

I was over the sink, washing dishes the other day when of all things, I wondered how Mariem was doing.

Mariem was a fiery Latina Republican who I worked alongside for TWO, I repeat TWO years which included the last very fierce campaign for President in which her ugly world view was this inescapable background noise in the office I tried in vain to block out day to day.

She’d quote Karl Rove and Sean Hannity after reading the latest headlines on her computer screen, turning a professional space into her own personal right wing podium, in these sudden hostile outbursts, egging on the politically like minded around her to join in the most miserly, bigoted, cynical little tete a tetes that would make smoke fume from my ears.

When I couldn’t take it anymore, I complained about her during a meeting with a couple of higher ups. Instead of them showing the slightest bit of interest, they recited clichés about team spirit that left me wondering  (like I always do before I quit a job), if my financial stability was as important as my mental health.  

One night, upon leaving the office, Mariem appeared in front of me on the street and began to rant and rave about how much she distrusted upper management, hated our company. When she was done venting, she offered me her hand and clasped mine as if we were comrades in some worker’s revolution.

From that moment on, every day at noon, she’d ask me if I felt like having lunch together. She’d ask with a grimace as if she expected me to ignore her or say ‘no,’ which for a while I did. One day, I decided to join her and the next thing I knew, it became a regular routine.

Was it a cheap thrill? Were we re-inventing or betraying ourselves? How was it possible that I was able to sit with such an evil witch at small tables for two every day and enjoy my salad?

One answer may be that Mariem’s cell phone chats with her sister had the same intensity and tone as those with mine. Sometimes, in fact, when she’d end a super hyper sisterly chat with Lorena, it would seem as if the same breathless confidence would continue between us and vice versa.

We were both inspired and moved by this similarity without ever really acknowledging it, our lunches often becoming this super personal time in the course of the very impersonal business day where I could expect Mariem to insist that ‘I eat some steak or a burger for my anemia’ or coerce me into sharing a red velvet cupcake with her lest she eat a whole one by herself and risk getting fat.

How the hell in my journey into myself, did I find this…this…reactionary McCain Palin supporter? Was there any benefit in this strange exercise?

During this time, I remember an African American friend of mine in marketing at one of the famously liberal New York publishing companies, telling me that she had white co-workers who wore Obama buttons on the lapels of their jackets but never uttered so much as a ‘hello’ or ‘good-bye’ on any given day at the office.

Anyway, I no longer work in the same office as Mariem.  My last days, I was unable to take a minute more of the morbid, venomous, racist critiques of the Obama administration that would sporadically rise up from her desk and spread throughout the room like some toxin poisoning everyone within reach and I recall not so much as uttering a word to her in parting.

Were the contradictions of our friendship error messages we ignored or was there something natural at the core of it  that our clashing political interests obscured?

Still, as much as I fondly recall dashing through the streets of Manhattan shoulder to shoulder with Mariem, laughing, if I ever see that witch again, I’ll keep things simple and exclude her from my view.

Despite everyone obsessing over Barack’s appearance on Leno, I think Michelle ‘shovel ready’, planting veggies around the White House was the far more provocative political moment of the last few days.  

If the country has come to characterize Ms. Obama as someone accessible and unpretentious, perhaps watching her toil over a patch of land around the White House was pushing things.

Yes, black folks should garden but there was something about watching her, our black first lady, digging and planting in what did not look like a yard as much as a field,  that was difficult — even as I applaud her efforts to lead America into a Green era.

Equally as interesting was her appearance at a DC public school where she attributed her success as a student in the black Chicago of her childhood to ‘talking like a white girl.’

I’m sure if Ms. Obama had been able to elaborate in less of a controlled setting, a really interesting discussion about black versus white English would have spun out because the Obamas – like most black people and even some whites who use black English to varying degrees, switch back and forth between both.

I believe Ms. Obama’s message to the young black audience she was addressing was that there are certain skills you have to acquire to make the transition from the margins into the mainstream though to some it may have seemed that she was advocating imitating white people as a program for self-improvement which I’m fairly certain she was not.

The whole subject of how black folks talk in America is weighed down by very neurotic identity issues. If I wanted to be morbid, I could recount stories of being ridiculed back in my own school days for the same reason as Michelle Obama, but the fact of the matter is you adapt.

 At 48, I now speak all kinds of ways.

I switch codes so much, I don’t even know what the real way is that I speak anymore – though when I’m in the company of certain African-American women there’s an expectation that I use a very specific black female voice – you know that cynical song that the black female character in every commercial and TV show has to sing with her hand on her hip and one eyebrow raised –  that I’m afraid for so many reasons just doesn’t work for me.

In fact, recently, during a first time business meeting with another black woman, when she instantly referred to me as ‘girl’ and then ‘chile,’  instead of her breaking the ice with me, what she did was make me doubt that I should be taking her seriously.

I’m  middle-aged, gray haired, in no way a child or a girl and find it unfortunate that so much of what passes so proudly  for black English, including that infamous word thrown around in every other rap song, is just an exercise in self-deprecation.

A few summers ago, I got in a cab in Harlem with a Guinean driver named Alpha, an intense guy who could switch from English to French to Spanish to even Russian not because he had some great passion for learning the world’s languages but because he had had to become versatile to survive.

Similarly, Black people in America are going to need to embrace a much more complex sense of self.

That said, may a patch of organic collards sprout somewhere in the Obama garden. Because this new paradigm could be as easily served by just seeing the greens in Green.

This morning, I woke to a bird singing outside my window. The song was about love and rebirth. It had nothing to do with share prices or consumer spending. I was so relieved.

The bird’s subversive solo inspired me to eat breakfast under the veranda outside my kitchen. I ate a bowl of mangu topped with grilled onions and fresh lemon juice, cracking into a lemon seed as I chewed, welcoming the bitter taste in my mouth as it joined with the seductive sense of a Sunday on the cusp of Spring.

Unfortunately, my reverie was broken at the gym while on the treadmill soon after. Watching This Week With George Stephanpoulous on the monitor in front of me, instead of turning the damned thing off, I read the captions below George Will’s weasley face with a grimace.

Mr. Will mocking Obama’s ‘Stock Broker in Chief,’ routine last week when the President admittedly with some sheepishness recommended Americans start buying up stocks since there are some great deals out there if you have a long term perspective.

I’m really done with the tension between Barack and Wall Street. Done. Absolutely done, in fact with the tyranny of numbers over my day to day life.

This is the last great domain of racism. The Stock market as an echocardiogram of the American heart that does not respond to Obama, that is broken by ‘minorities who couldn’t afford to own homes but bought them anyway,’ that proves that blacks don’t stimulate intense economic desire, only paralyze it.

(Oh, such deep, deep despair I feel at the possibility that the worrisome market activity of Americans with black skin may not arouse the most rapturous investment outcomes. Sniff. Sniff).

Sarcasm aside, I didn’t feel Obama’s recent foray into being national financial advisor. If I want to get the latest casino gaming tips, there’s no shortage of it elsewhere.

What I appreciated most about our President’s rise onto the political stage was the humanity he brought to Washington. The Republicans would have us believe there is no VALUE to being alive that is not monetary.

Their ‘Patriotism is consumption,’ ‘greed is good,’ ‘nothing matters but the numbers’ message has brought the fear of a permanent winter where the sun doesn’t come out anymore, the warmth doesn’t return, flowers and fruit no longer blossom because they’re besides the point.

The point is the most narrow definition of profit.

So please, please, monsieur le President, don’t pander to these trading floor gangstas.

Your legacy will be defined by how well you’re able to execute the inspiring promise of your campaign which was never to be able to pick winning stocks for my portfolio but to inspire a dialogue between the races that is as enlightening as intimate and yes, inspire collaboration where before we had only bombs, improve human and ecological health care, motivate Americans young and old to be part of community projects that nurture our neighborhoods  and our urgent need to be more than spectators in sports stadiums.

Obama, perhaps not Elizabeth Alexander – but more poetry please – and support for the poetic, aesthetic, non-commoditized.

If fresh clay and paint, the sound of violins, flutes, and cellos would return to the hallways of our local schools, President Obama, an homage to you would resound more prodigiously than the most arrogant closing bell. Anyway…you get my drift…

In faith & solidarity

Jen Jefferson/Blacksnextdoor

Wow, life so very chock full of drama personal and otherwise, stayed in bed until close to noon Saturday I was so wiped out and even then, ventured outside my blankie with extreme reluctance.

Choppy rewind: Eric Holder in a speech honoring Black History Month accuses the U.S. of being a ‘nation of cowards’ for not discussing race enough.  

Honestly, I find our Attorney General quite good looking – love his laughing eyes, that dark ‘stache and the way he wears a tie and jacket.  But that remark was a boisterous power chord without music to follow.

All Americans seem to discuss is race. The commentary is non-stop and mostly grudge driven.  For instance, if one more black woman tries to bond with me by referring to white women as if they’re some radioactive force that must be controlled, I’ll jump screaming off the nearest cliff.

The problem seems to be that there are no clear guidelines for what healthy discussions about race are. I would say NO discussions about race are what I look for day to day. I prefer taking people one at a time and am always invigorated by those I meet who don’t follow the script.

On the subject of ‘the script,’ the Bullet Proof Weave story that emerged mid-week never mentioned race, yet seemed to have no function other than to question black female beauty.  Surely, in a trigger happy nation like ours where guns are in such abundance, people survive being shot at every day.

But for some reason, a black woman’s scalp was suddenly being shown over and over inviting viewers to step right up and take a peek at the monstrous mechanics of her hair. It’s a real downer when the news has the same circus bark as The Maury Povich or Jerry Springer show. Had little time to process how to respond to the leering anchor people on Eyewitness News in New York reporting this trash with the controversy over the New York Post cartoon raging, however.

I don’t see the point in accusing The New York Post of being racist. It’s a Murdoch creation like Fox News designed to be just that.  All the hurt feelings and shock that The Post could print such a thing struck me as dumb.

What I did relate to was singer, John Legend putting companies who advertise with the Post on the spot by asking them to not run ads in the paper as well as refusing interviews with Post reporters and encouraging other entertainers to do the same.

Perfect.  The Post has been a dying paper for a while and will regret publishing that cartoon because of threats to its revenue stream far more than black people sobbing and putting on temper tantrums about how hurt we are and vulnerable our feelings.

From Rush Limbaugh to The New York Post, the voices of the Republican party continue to broadcast fear of the future. That’s why the right wing fantasy of a chimp being murdered is so symbolic.

The planet has evolved without anyone’s consent. The future is a force of nature – and it’s coming no matter how much they try and shoot at it.

Meant to take a sabbatical from blogging. Too restless, feeling more and more trapped in the bleak news report that loops over and over without end: the economy this…economy that…the economy, the economy, economy…

Anyway, I’m back because before I began this Blacks Next Door public diary, I promised myself, to do it for one full year — so I will do my best – despite my wide mood swings to honor BND’s September 2010 expiration date.

“The economy’s still not doing well.” I overheard someone sigh in the elevator last week. You would have thought he was mourning a dying family member or dear friend such was the intensity of his melancholia.

Life by numbers is oppressive. It’s also stupid. Ever have a manager shove a spreadsheet into your face that’s supposed to be a snapshot of your value within your organization that doesn’t reflect any of the important intangibles like what the forces were that inspired you to perform well or may have led your daily performance to be not at all inspired?

Well, if the Republicans continue to have it their way, this is how America will be ruled: by spreadsheet.

Human potential will have no more meaning than what numbers justify. In fact, the future will be shut inside a coffin and handed back to you wrapped in a flag.

This is my final conclusion after a week of watching Republican politicos kick and scream and foam at the mouth over the President’s proposed Stimulus Package.

Allocating $50 million to The National Endowment on the Arts is a waste of money they ranted. How could citizens having music and art in their lives be stimulating except in some subversive way that only serves ‘liberal’ culture?

First of all, this is no longer the 80’s when the voice of the Right may have been more in tune with that of the mild mannered ‘man on the street’ than that of an artist like Andres Serrano.

After two terms of Clinton — who at least at the level of the streets I walk, was a conservative influence – and eight years of Bush, porn and gambling are bigger than ever.

And instead of the Piss Christ, we have Ann Coulter.

So the Obama team will have to use imagination as much as money to truly stimulate and inspire people to feel good, dream, innovate – not just consume but create.

Until then, as long as one of the most important cultural events in this country is basically a war game, yeah, sigh, The Super Bowl — with an ominous Bush regime icon like General David Petraus at the center to kick it off, America remains — as far as my watchful eyes can see — well, a Republican nation.

*Traduit de l’anglais par Abdoul Sow – merci Abdoul!

IF YOU DON’T READ FRENCH, PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ENGLISH !

J’aimerais mentionner d’abord, qu’en ces moments d’incertitude spirituelle, je fais une des deux choses. Je lis mon Coran ou bien, je regarde un film d’Ousmane Sembène.

Comment je peux comparer les deux?

Eh bien, les films de Sembène et le Saint Coran transmettent un regard très profond de l’essence de l’être  humain.

Je comprends que l’oeuvre de Sembène n’est pas sacrée comme le Saint Coran, mais si  vous  êtes  une personne de race noire et que vous êtes en apesanteur, ce qui est souvent mon cas, rien de mieux ne  vous aidera à avoir les pieds sur terre que de regarder un film de Sembène.

J’irais jusqu’à dire, gardez un film DVD de Sembène sur une étagère de votre boîte à pharmacie  entre  le Tylenol et la bouteille de vitamine C.

Si vous pensez comme moi que tous ses films sont profonds et que vous ne savez pas lequel choisir, je vous recommenderais Mooladé.

L’intrigue: six filles s’enfuient pour échapper au rite de circoncision. Deux d’entre elles préfèrent se suicider que de subir l’opération. Les quatre autres se réfugient chez Collé Ardo, une femme qui a été gravement  mutilée lors de sa circoncision ce qui a entrainé une incapacité d’accoucher sa fille par voie vaginale  et, était obligée d’endurer les peines d’une césarienne  faite par une ouverture brutale au ventre,.

Si la fourmillière du village est un  monument au premier Roi du village, et la mosquée du village  un monument à la conversion du village à l’Islam; la cicatrice sur le ventre de Collé Ardo, dévoilée dans un début de scène quand elle soulevait sa camisole pour attacher sa pagne, est un monument à la révolution qui commence quand elle s’engage à protéger les filles qui demandent sa protection afin qu’elles ne soient pas circonscrites.

Collé Ardo n’est pas une heroïne. Elle n’est pas une autorité du village, cependant elle doit faire face aux Saldanas, une bande de femmes tyranniques  en robes rouges avec des mouchoirs de tête dont leurs couteaux tranchants ont été ordonnés par la tradition de couper les filles du village. Elles viennent chez elle pour la terroriser et l’humilier pour ne pas laisser sa fille se faire circonscrire et pour avoir  abrité les filles qui ont échappé à ce qu’elles considèrent comme une purification.

Sembène met PURIFICATION en majuscule dans les sous-titres pour nous faire comprendre  l’usage peu sincère que  les Saldanas font de ce mot. C’est un acte de violence qui viole l’espace physique le plus intime de la femme. Ce n’est pas du tout de la  “purification”, cependant le mot est un instrument comme leurs couteaux qu’elles utilisent pour se maintenir au pouvoir.

Ainsi on est ici dans un village africain idyllique avec des maisons faites en argile. Avec des femmes noires portant  du tatouage autour de leur bouches. Avec des hommes forts drapés de leur étoffe qui peuvent déchiffrer les sons des tams-tams comme des mots d’un livre. Il y a une influence arabe à la culture de ce village, c’est indéniable, mais, cependant ce sont des peuples noirs, avec leur propre tradition dans leur propre pays et qui se prennent eux-mêmes en charge, et cependant il y a quelque chose de fondamentalement corrompu dans leur mode de vie auquel Collé Ardo refuse de se plier.

Voici ce que j’aime chez Sembène. Ses personages ont en eux totalité du potential  humain, le bien et le mal, ainsi quand on  regarde un film de Sembène, les réponses aux problèmes des peuples noirs existent dans la tete noire et peuvent être résolus, à travers une réflexion interne rigoureuse.

De toute façon, je pourrais écrire un livre si je continue et je veux maintenir mon blog simple.

Pendant que  je regardais ce film, Collé Ardo m’a rappelé Obama, et  les Saldanas me font penser aux forces du statu quo dans ce pays qui essayent d’arrêter le progrès parce qu’ils sentent leur pouvoir menacé. Ils feront tout  ce qu’ils peuvent  pour nous maintenir  misérables.

Ce voyage à travers une ère Obama où nos écoles deviendront des places où nos enfants  vont  vraiment apprendre, où nous aurons un accès abordable aux soins de santé, où les riches ne seront pas les seuls  Américains  qui comptent ; commencera en fait  lorsque les gens vont défender ces choses et arrêteront de se laisser faire.

Obama a une volonté d’acier sinon il n’aurait pas pu arriver jusqu’ici, mais assez à propos d’Obama.

Si Collé Ardo n’avait pas bénéficié du soutien des autres femmes du village, les Saldanas n’auraient jamais dépose leurs couteaux.

Moolade

First I’d like to mention, in moments of spiritual uncertainty, I do one of two things. I either read my Koran or watch a film by Ousmane Sembene.

How can I compare the two?

Well, both Sembene’s cinematic stories and the Holy Koran impart deep, deep insights into the essence of what it is to be human.

I understand that Sembene’s work is not sacred while the Holy Koran is, but, if you’re black and lacking gravity, which is often the case with me, nothing will help you to get your feet on the ground better than watching a Sembene film.

I would go so far as to say, keep a Sembene DVD on a shelf in the medicine cabinet between the Tylenol and bottle of vitamin C.

If you think all his films are as profound as I do and don’t know which one to choose, I would recommend Moolade.

The plot: six girls flee their circumcision ritual. Two commit suicide rather than undergo the procedure. Four take refuge with Colle Ardo, a woman who herself was so badly mutilated during her own circumcision that she was unable to give birth to her daughter vaginally and was forced to endure the pain of a cesarian cut across her stomach.

If the village anthill is a monument to the village’s first king and the village mosque is a monument to the village’s conversion to Islam, Colle Ardo’s scarred stomach, shown in an early scene when she raises her shirt to tie her skirt, is a monument to the revolution that begins when she vows to protect the girls who ask her to save them from being cut.

Colle Ardo is no hero. She’s no village authority, yet she has to stand up to the Saldanas – a tyrannical band of women in red frocks and head scarves whose sharp knives have been ordained by tradition to cut the young girls in the village. They arrive at the door of her home to terrorize and humiliate her for not having had her own daughter cut by them as well as for harboring the girls who have escaped what they refer to as ‘purification’.

Sembene puts PURIFICATION in caps in his subtitles which makes you aware that the Saldanas usage of this word is disingenuous. This is a violent act which violates a woman’s most private physical space. It is not ‘purification’ by any description, yet the word is a tool like their knives that they use to keep themselves in power.

So here we are, in this idyllic African village of mud houses. Beautiful black women with tattoos around their  mouths.  Strong men draped in fine fabric who can read the sound of drums playing like words in a book.  There’s an Arabic influence to the culture of this village that’s undeniable but all the same, these are black people whose traditions are largely their own in their own country, in charge of themselves – and yet, there’s something inherently corrupt in their way of life that Colle Ardo refuses to submit to.

This is what I love about Sembene. His characters contain the totality of all human potential – both good and evil so that when you watch a Sembene film, you’re in a world where the answers to problems exist within the black mind and can be resolved, through rigorous reflection from within.

Anyway, I could write a book if I go on and I like to keep my blog simple.

While watching this film, Colle Ardo reminded me of Obama, and the Saldanas made me think of the forces of the status quo in this country who are trying to stop progress because they feel their power being threatened. They will do whatever they can to keep the rest of us miserable.

This journey into an Obama era where our schools become places where our kids really do learn, where we really do have affordable access to medical care – where the rich aren’t the only Americans who matter will only really begin when people stand up for these things and stop being so easily pushed around.

Obama has a spine of steel or he wouldn’t have made it this far – but enough about Obama.

If Colle Ardo had not won the support of the other women in her village, the Saldanas would never have put down their knives.

It’s been a while since I heard from Hamid but last week we were in touch quite a bit by email and phone. Hamid is an Arab friend of a friend of a friend getting his own consulting practice based in the Middle East off the ground, trying to identify a candidate to oversee some kind of water treatment project over there on a temp basis.

I didn’t understand why he didn’t think he could find someone with the sought after skill set locally but he insisted the ideal recruit was going to come in from the US or Canada. As per a contract we created together, I would assist in the search.  If the government agency he was consulting for – and I am not saying exactly what Middle Eastern government this is for many reasons — chose to hire someone I referred, I’d make a fee.

My inbox filled up fairly quickly with resumes from a series of highly qualified Pakistani engineers.  After forwarding their paper work on to Hamed – or Dr. Mostafa as he likes to be called and getting little or no response, I spoke to Hamed by phone on Thursday.

Our discussion was not as insightful as I needed it to be. I found him vague in terms of who he thought the ideal person for the job was. Finally, he mentioned that the government always preferred guys with ‘blonde hair and blue eyes.’

It was awkward. There was a tense back and forth between us about the resumes I had sent. I was disappointed and shot him an email the next morning, letting him know that I was no longer interested in partnering with him on his search because of new priorities. As a P.S., I added:

I am shocked to hear that the _____ government prefers their consultants to be white males from the West. Here in the U.S., we’re realizing that some of the best minds in business are coming out of India and China, and I’m sure you’ve noticed that we’ve recently kicked out an incompetent white male President and replaced him with a much smarter black one!

Coincidence that last week President Obama reached out to the Arab world through Al Arabiya. He was typically genuine and earnest and did his best to convey the message that Americans and Arabs can work together in mutual interest.

My question is, is it really, truly in our black President’s best interest to ignore the anti-black climate of so much of the Arab mainstream than to address it head on?

Anyone who follows, Blacksnextdoor, knows I dislike Condoleeza Rice but why was it necessary for the Palestinian media to depict her in that infamous cartoon as pregnant with a monkey or use the fact that she’s black as part of so many of their otherwise justifiable attacks?

And as black Iraqis collectivize into The Movement for Free Iraq, hoping to improve their social mobility in a society where black skin is hardly an asset, is this an Iraqi social issue best left to white and black Iraqis to sort out — or the continuing civil rights struggle of people of African descent that the world’s most powerful black figure should acknowledge?

I notice that African Americans see commonality between themselves and the Palestinians. I’m not sure how mutual this sense of commonality is.

Certainly as far as Darfur is concerned, the Arab world would clearly much rather turn its head.

Still, I can see a socio-political collaboration between global Blacks and Arabs with Barack at the center possible that would take the dynamic between the West and the Muslim world beyond a military one. 

As the world sinks economically,however, Barack Obama is under pressure like Fareed Zakaria said, “to save capitalism.” So the focus for him, some would say, has to be bread and butter.

But for Barack’s presidency to be successful, he’ll have to continue to inspire this country and the world to reach for higher ideals. The symbolic nature of being a black American Democratic President demands it.

One could say a very quiet, bloodless revolution has taken place.

Blacks have taken over the White House.

Or as I heard a famously bigoted Spanish speaking colleague complain to a family member on her cell phone, “This is horrible. This country’s going down the drain.”

I’ve noticed too many times, immigrants with no history as long or as tied to the creation of this country from the ground up – literally —  as African Americans, waving American flags at the same time they exhibit extremely anti-African American sentiments.

A few years ago, my son and I got in a cab in Meriden Connecticut en route to Wesleyan University in Middletown. It was a perfect day and as he hurried from the cab to return to his dorm, he looked so inspired, his shoulder length dreadlocks bouncing as he rushed back to complete a summer program he’d already begun. My motherly reverie was quickly interrupted by the cab driver as he coasted off.

“Your son goes there? Wow. ” He began. “Black people lazy.  Very lazy.  No computers.  No studying.  All they want is to steal and sell drugs. You’re lucky. Your son is different .”

I instantly regretted having asked him to take me back to the train station and considered getting out, calling the company and requesting another cab. Peering into the rear view mirror, all I could see was someone gold-brown with a coif of jet black hair and an equally jet black unibrow.

I wasn’t able to tell if he was aware he was making the most racist observation one stranger can make to another, and intentionally insulting me or was someone so out of touch with the American mainstream, he considered this acceptable small talk with a black female passenger.

“How long have you been in this country?” I asked.

“Not long time.” He shrugged.

“Obviously, because you don’t know very much about African-Americans, “ I fired back, adding in afterthought, “Are you a citizen?”

You can find both my maternal grandparents on passenger lists at ellisislandrecords.org. I’m not exactly Captain America, but my reasoning was that if he had been given the educational materials on U.S. history and society that immigrants study to become citizens, he wouldn’t be so ignorant.

 “I am a citizen, miss.” he sang in an impatient tone.

I tipped him the same amount I would have tipped a driver who had not ruined my afternoon, fearing that by not doing so, I would somehow make his negative perception of black people worse. Noticing the angry stare he was giving me as I got out, I realized I shouldn’t have given him a dime. It occurred to me that I should place a complaint with the dispatcher. Too overwhelmed by the whole thing, however, I merely boarded my train feeling upset.

The prevailing myth is that on entering the US, an immigrant is granted economic opportunity unequalled anywhere else on the planet and that this economic mobility alone is what will define them as American. 

Still, there’s a little test that US Citizenship and Immigration Services requires that an immigrant pass that is written in the same disinterested voice as a driver’s manual.  I was able to find 100 of its sample questions online. Only one, which asks who Martin Luther King was, alludes to black people having played a crucial role in the creation of not just the physical, but ideological foundations of this country.

The correct answer seems to be: a civil rights leader.  I’m not sure, however,  how tangible the words ‘civil rights’ are to someone who may come from a society where minorities are discriminated against or even methodically raped and murdered as a social strategy.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 stopped lots of evil, extremely backwards behavior in this country.  More importantly, it set a standard — see MLK’s  “I Have Dream Speech”  for the most eloquent example of this — that we haven’t reached entirely, (some might say at which we’ve failed miserably) but still puts us light years ahead of so many of the countries from which immigrants arrive every day.

So it is absolutely essential to make it understood by immigrants and Americans alike, that the source of some of our countries most cherished ideals are the African-American community.

Or more simply put, there would be NO bill or legislation that grants such an open access society without thousands upon thousands of black people having visualized, protested and organized it.

May all we African-Americans work hard to create the context for an Afrocentric society that the Obama presidency presents.

Our race has never been in the national or global spotlight to the extent that it is now.  How can we really best leverage this moment?

As for those of you who didn’t get Aretha’s hat.  I have one word for you: gele. Go to http://www.gelestyles.com to acquaint yourself with how continuous this cultural continuum of ours really is!

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