blacksnextdoor

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.

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.

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.

Have been in bed mostly since Tuesday when I returned from the hospital. Following doctor’s orders. 

Aside from browsing through old magazines, books, the internet and talking on the phone, have been staring into the empty gaze of daytime TV in search of my own personal Stimulus Package.

Sulky black men flapping their arms and shuffling in glee when DNA tests prove them to not be the father of the children of the angry black female guests sicked on them by judges and talk show hosts for whom ‘paternity porn’ is apparently the best way to win viewers — is not stimulus.

Maury Povich. Honestly, he’s no different than a drug dealer or pimp — should be arrested for that show.

A sadist feigning concern, he follows a young woman who can’t bear the humiliation of having learned another young man she thought was the father of her child, is not, back stage.  

There —  away from the TV audience of rowdy youngsters that he oversees as if they’re his own kids — even though he’s rich and white and they’re poor, black and Latin —  he consoles her by offering to continue to help her find her child’s father.  

And she will probably take him up on it because Mr. Povich has the curious ability to deceive his guests into believing that he is somehow helping them even if that involves them being placed at the center of a ring of laughing, name-calling hecklers.  

Even if the tagline: IM BACK FOR THE FOURTH TIME TO FIND MY BABY DADDY set to a spazzed out beat can elicit nothing but ridicule, self-loathing and contempt.

McDonald’s commercials featuring smiling urban black families dunking their MCchicken into gloopy Mcbarbecue sauce with gently humming gospel choirs in the background is NOT stimulus. (McDonalds is basically a black brand these days). And why?

Because their products cause obesity and poor health…

Conning senior citizens into buying scooters too large to use indoors and unsafe to ride outdoors, people who don’t have jobs or are on public assistance into high priced degrees at make believe universities makes me wants to call the police but — is also not stimulus.

Will Smith on Oprah, plugging his new film Seven Pounds. Why was he wearing big diamond studs in each ear?

(Am I the only black woman turned off by that look)?

Sorry Will, not stimulus.

Rosario Dawson…hmmm. Getting closer. Getting closer because Rosario is indisputably hot…but alas dear, this film — is not stimulus.

That Dolce & Gabbana ad for their new men’s cologne, The One. Shot in smoky black and white to cool jazz where camera flashing papparazzis follow Matthew McConaughey into a hotel.  

So lovely in his jacket and shirt as he saunters along moody like into his room and strips down.

Absolutely lovely, yet masculine in every way. Never been a fan of his really but such a classy and sexy detour that ad is for a woman confined to ugly nightgowns and a slightly lumpy mattress until January 2 though it is still NOT quite –stimulating.

Closer: Jean Paul Gaultier’s punk girl scissoring off her hair for his fragrance, Madame.

But it was only young Barack modeling for Lisa Jack in Time Magazine that really, really took me somewhere so to speak.

My favorite is of him kneeling in sandals in that carefree hat, chin raised, egging on the world.  I don’t think there’s a woman anywhere who has a bigger crush on our brave president elect than I do. And those photos just reinforce my impression that if anyone can liberate this spiritually tapped out nation it is this man.

Really craving so much more of his sparkling aura but until the inauguration, pear crumble and vanilla bean ice cream I guess it is. 

Leave comments, notes, please!!!!