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.

I don’t know about you, but when I find myself suddenly staring at the ceiling in the wee of hours of the morning, I reach for the remote and watch Oprah. I have no idea when exactly she’s on EST time, but there she was beside Tyra Banks Friday morning sometime before dawn using Chris Brown and Rihanna’s troubling relationship as a case study of sorts.

Wow, I never cease to revere how she’s taken a tacky forum like the talk show and transformed it into something between a temple and a town hall that not just Americans but people all over the world – she’s huge in Saudi Arabia – depend on for moral direction and advice on how to live whole, fulfilling lives.

As for Tyra, post modeling, she has bloomed into even more of a femme fatale — as unbelievable as it is that she could have become more of a tigress than she already was but I think there are all these dimensions to her that modeling didn’t let her explore that she’s leveraging.  

I mean she’s basically cleaned up the down and dirty Rickie Lake time slot and audience in a way I didn’t imagine possible, is actually guiding a demographic  of younger women that Oprah doesn’t reach, into a more stylish, informed femininity that does however — positive aspects  aside — seem to be embedded in too many accessories!

Anyway, I know not a single song by Chris Brown, have very little familiarity with what he does. I have observed him once or twice on a TV in my teenage nephew’s bedroom that always seems to be tuned to BET and my impression of him right off the cuff was that it’s unnatural for a young man that age to smile so sweetly, so it comes as no great surprise to me that he has a hellish flipside.

As for Rihanna, I know her music a little better, though I would like to mention as a disclaimer that I feel like an ancient Greek discussing a fight between Zeus and Hera somewhere up on Mount Olympus when I attempt to wrap my head around a celebrity couple’s argument in a Lamborghini en route to the Grammys .

Oprah and Tyra did their best to take Rihanna’s bite marks and bruises and turn them into a ‘teaching moment’ for the young girls nationwide who have seen this whole awful drama unfold and may have needed help processing it, especially in light of the fact that Chris Brown and Rihanna are apparently still dating.

The problem I had with the whole discussion was the way young men were discussed or —  weren’t. They never got past being ‘they’ and ‘them,’ and hovered over the whole discourse in a way that could only be felt as problematic.  At one point when a girl in the audience brought up the possibility that Rihanna may have gotten physical with Chris Brown first and that Rihanna’s reconciliation with him may have been evidence of her complicity in the violent nature of their relationship, the point that a boyfriend can only restrain a violent girlfriend was made without addressing the issue of violent girlfriends.

Something’s missing.

For starters, there’s no male version of Tyra to help young men work through this discussion.

As for the the absence of nurturing role models for young black men on the home front and in our neighborhoods, that’s best illustrated by Tied To Greatness, an idea of Alex Ellis, a black designer, amongst other things, who visits schools in cities like Philadelphia and Chicago to teach young black men how to groom themselves for success.

To date, Mr. Ellis has given out around 2500 ties to young black men who have never undergone such a basic male rite of passage as being taught how to knot a tie.

Hello!

Aren’t our sons one of our community’s greatest resources? 

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.

I intended to write about something fun I did the other day, but I’m too flustered for that. I have to vent. From Suze Orman to George Will, TV pundits are attributing the current financial crisis to ’subprime’ borrowers. People with low credit scores who bought homes and other material comforts they couldn’t really afford but tried to own anyway. You know, minorities, the same fiscal scavengers who brought you welfare.

Well, as far as I’m concerned, all this bitchy finger pointing is more indicative of how America’s wound up in this situation than anything minority consumers have done.

We’ve all been offered financial products as addictive and harmful as illegal street drugs. Every night when I reach my front door and reach in the mailbox, they’re there. The faux checks made out to me, cardboard credit cards for which I’ve been pre-approved, offers to purchase all kinds of furniture and luxury goods for no money down etc.  A friend of mine is a single mom with two kids who ran up tons of debt in the last fifteen years trying to provide her kids with a couple of vacations, music lessons, a piano in the living room for the kid who was taking the music lessons. I can hear some crazy at a John McCain rally now, yelling, kill her!

I can also hear some smarmy suit at a round table coldly connecting the dots between her and our current economic demise and I can’t believe this is the society that we tout as the most humane in the world.

Nobel Peace Prize Winner and founder of Grameen Bank, Muhammad Yunus, while being interviewed at http://www.bigthink.com on his book, “Creating a World Without Poverty,” points out that our current free market system is lacking, incomplete. It’s created a one dimensional citizen insulated from the religious, emotional, and social whose value in this life is all numeric.

Which is why I hate being referred to as a ‘taxpayer.’ 

If the Democrats manage to seize the national stage from the Republicans in a few weeks — because for all their talk about God and patriotism, Republicans are a buckwild, self-serving bunch — or as my 80 year old aunt sadly observed about Sarah Palin the other day: She calls herself pro-life but she’s a hunter — what I’d like to see is the birth of a more ethical America, an America that is what the Somali blogger, Bashir Goth eloquently describes in a recent http://www.washingtonpost.com piece as economically ‘holistic.’

Americans who have less than others, black or otherwise, should not be regarded with such disdain at such a distance.

If it’s true that folks trying to improve their standard of living but who were ultimately unsuccessful at it can cause a financial virus like this to spread through global markets, the response should not be pathologizing them.  It should be making the acquisition of wealth more possible, less risky.

Ok, I’ve vented enough for now. What do you think?