By the time I got the phone call, two young men had been rushed to the hospital. One was dead. The other was fighting for this life. Both had been shot.
It was just before 6 o’clock. The cell phone in our news truck rang. My assignment editor was on the other end.
“There was another homicide tonight at Amber and Cambria. Police say a 16 year old boy is dead, and an 18 year old male is in critical condition.”
“What else do we know?”
“Nothing, that’s it.”
“Okay”.
We drive the news vehicle to Amber and Cambria Streets in the Kensington section of Philadelphia. It’s a part of the city that never makes it into the tourism brochures.
The neighborhood is dark and uninviting. Its row houses are a patchwork of dilapidation. Even the people seem strange. I look at them with a measure of curiosity.
In neighborhoods like this, you always pay attention.
Knots of young black men emerge from the darkness. Their gait is slow and they move without purpose. They look at us but say nothing.
A dark colored car with shiny wheel covers and tinted windows pulls up and stops. I brace myself; and the car eases away.
The flashing red and blue lights of three police cars explode against the darkness like rubies and cobalt. The only other bright light comes from the Ming River Chinese Restaurant. It spills easily from the waiting area onto the sidewalk.
Ming River is a typical inner-city Chinese restaurant. It is closed during the day and opens late at night. And, until the owner arrives and thrusts open the overhead metal door covering the plate glass window, the restaurant looks like a rusted bolt screwed deeply into the street corner. Inside, thick plexiglass separates the man from beast. At least that is the inference.
A slender, black woman walks into the restaurant. Her skin is medium brown and she appears to be wearing hair extensions. Her jeans are blue and there is writing on her black t-shirt.
She orders rice and a few minutes later, the Chinese man slides a stout plastic container of food from an overlapped vertical opening in the plexiglass.
“Put it in a bag! she demands.” He looks at her, says something I cannot make out and then offers up a half smile as he puts her rice into a white plastic bag.
“I give you my money you put my stuff in a bag!”
Meantime, the police remain outside investigating this double shooting.
We look around trying to figure out who will talk to us on camera. I turn to the police.
Philadelphia beat cops are not supposed to talk to the media, but often they will, never on camera. I don’t need a lot, just enough to put a story together.
I see a white policeman. He is tall and has a pleasant face. We say hello to each other and he smiles.
“So…a 16 year old is shot?”
“Yeah”
“He’s dead”?
“Yeah”
“The other person is…18?”
“Umm, Yeah.”
“What sparked the incident?”
“Not sure…trying to figure that out ourselves.”
“Thanks”
I have enough.
A little while later, the cops pull off and we are left to fend for ourselves should anything snap.
We have some video but no sound. I need to get someone on camera. This is often the hard part. People tend to shy from the cameras after blood is spilled. They are held captive by fear. It is a deep seated fear stirred fresh by young men who ramble through the streets.
There is a woman fumbling to get into her house. She appears to be in her 40’s. The shooting happened on the steps right next to hers. “I’m starting to panic”, she says, as she pounds the door. BAM, BAM, BAM. The sound ricochets down the street and fades into the darkness. It is obvious she does not have her key. She pounds harder and harder in desperation. “Let me in” she groans.
There is a gaping bullet hole in her front window. It is round with small cracks that make it look like a child’s attempt to draw the sun. Police have already determined that no one was inside when the bullet whizzed through the house. A small white dog looks out excitedly, just inches below the bullet hole.
The evening air is raw. It carries the smell of blood. Gobs of it are caked on the sidewalk.
Finally, someone talks with us on camera. “I just came in the house from work, and I heard the shots.” She refused to give us her name.
Her skin is coffee colored. And her shirt is bright yellow. Against the dark backdrop of the street and harsh camera light, she appears to radiate with color. “My son was just over there with em’ and as soon as he came in the house, that’s when they shot…the car backed up and shot at them.”
She tried to get her son to speak with us, but he didn’t want to. He was a teenager and I wasn’t interested in putting him in the spotlight.
As we work the story, more cars pull up. The pattern is always the same; dark car, tinted windows. The driver’s side window rolls down about a quarter of the way, just enough to expose a set of eyes. No words. Then, the car slowly pulls off.
Time moves on and closer to our deadline.
A little later, a large woman arrives. She goes over to the area were the two were shot. She squats down and begins wailing. Her haunting cries linger in the night air and echo like the call of a strange animal.
I do not approach her.
Other cars pull up. People walk over to the spot. Already, a lit candle and a teddy bear signify the moment. It is another memorial to cut-down life. Other cars pull up, and people get out. More candles are lit. Flowers and stuffed animals are dropped off.
A few people etch the letters R-I-P on a large section of poster board. Then, they stand around as if unsure of their next move. Some exchange words. Others cry. A few smoke cigarettes. Then, they leave and the candles burn quietly. It seems appropriate.
Then as now, no one is ever sure what it all means. Sadly, people speak of it as part of the natural order of things; of life, but mostly death.
An occasional bus roars through the block, kicking up dust and the curiosity of its passengers.
We get a few more pictures of the scene and hope someone else will speak with us on camera. It doesn’t happen, so we settle for what we have. It was more than I expected and it is enough to work with. We opt not to go “live” here, but at Police Headquarters downtown. This neighborhood is uneasy and the vapor of revenge is discernible in the night air.
These were the final two of twelve shootings I covered this day. In all, four people had been shot to death; the other eight were wounded. Of those eight, four of them were shot at the same time in the same bar. Just across the street from the bar, a 60 year old man was beaten to death by a 29 year old woman. Elsewhere in the city, two others were stabbed but survived.
As we leave Amber and Cambria I gaze at the Chinese man nestled behind the thick glass in Ming River. He appears oblivious as he leans on the counter watching a small TV set, waiting for his next customer.
###
© Byron Scott
May 2008
Monday, May 19, 2008
Thursday, April 10, 2008
McCain's Apology and Other Ruminations
On April 4, 2008, Republican Presidential candidate John McCain seized the moment. He appeared at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, the longitude and latitude of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The motel courtyard was dense with people. The air was thick with rain. They had gathered to remember a moment of tribulation; 40 years to the day. Apropos to the occasion was the weather’s uncertainty.
40 years ago, the tectonic plates of America’s destiny shifted when a 30 caliber slug of hot lead cut into Dr. King’s face. I don’t need to remind you of the immediate results. City after city caught fire as the land mines of legitimate black anger exploded. And for those of you who remember Jackson Avenue, it became a metaphor for abandonment and a city’s decline. Then, later, the name was changed to Martin Luther King Drive. It was supposed to instill a measure of pride. But like most of the other 500 or so streets, boulevards, roads, and drives, named after King, the designation serves more as a red flag than a flag stop on the road map of a people’s history.
And there was John McCain.
His appearance should not have come as a shock. He was running for office of President of the United States. But on this rainy day, McCain, the maverick, wanted to connect with the people and apologize for voting against the federal MLK day legislation in 1983.
Yet, when I looked up at my television set and saw McCain at the King remembrance, my initial reaction was visceral. I said to myself, “Why is he there?” “Why!” It was a rhetorical question, of course. So, I listened to McCain’s comments and said, “hmmm”, and later I read McCain’s words just to make sure I didn’t miss what I thought I missed when I heard him say what he said! Follow me?
In other words, I was curious as to his change of heart. I wanted to know why. It was a fair question, so again, I listened to and read his words, “We can be slow to give greatness its due…I was wrong…I was wrong.” To that end, he was absolutely correct.
Let he that is without sin cast the first stone.
Still, since McCain never explained the why, we are then left to fill-in the blanks. Did the candidate apologize out of political expediency? Or did he have an epiphany? And just what was his mistake? Was it that he voted against the measure, or that he voted against legislation that could later bite him in the leg like one of Bull Connor’s dogs? In other words, was his mistake a strategic one or a moral one? There is a world of difference. Perhaps, McCain had a good reason. Still, some will…and have…resorted to their machinations as they seek to navigate and explain the deep waters of a politically tuned heart.
Erstwhile and present, this has been an interesting presidential race to say the least. It is history in the making and we are seeing it unfold with our own eyes. Thus, we don’t have to wait for the victors to tell us what we can figure out for ourselves. For the first time in American history, a major party is running for the office of President without a white male leading... or at this point... on the ticket. There is Hillary Clinton, who is well liked among Black voters. But now, the colored electorate is being torn along the rugged fault line of appreciation and ancestral ties. Sadly, for her, Sen. Clinton is running a campaign tormented by a thorn in the flesh and that thorn has a name. It is Barack Obama.
His candidacy has not been without its nails-on-the-chalkboard-moments. Most Americans never heard of Rev. Jeremiah Wright until…
But when they saw snippets of the Reverend speaking a “gospel” they weren’t akin to, a lot of people, (conditional friends, and foe alike), turned to the Senator. They demanded that Obama explain, and answer for words that proceeded out of someone else’s mouth. To be sure, what Jeremiah Wright said was over the top, but they were taken out of context. Still, who was shocked? Not black folks. Wright’s fulminations were part of a cultural dynamic that is played out quite often in Black churches across the fruited plain. The naysayer…and there were many…seized Rev. Wright’s video clips as an “A-ha!” moment. So, the candidate did what he had to. He closeted himself into a quiet place and penned a speech that no one else could have written for him. It had to come from the heart.
The conservative media, the purveyors of hate and pushers of delusion are digging deep into the Earth’s core, hoping to tap into some well of Barackian indiscretions. They do so, not because Sen. Obama is unqualified, but precisely because he is qualified.
One radio host often, if not always, uses Obama’s middle name, Hussein, when referring to him. And while, in this case, there is nothing in a name, the idea is to play the populace like a cheap fiddle. Thus, when you hear “Hussein”, you are supposed to think, “Saddam”. When you hear “Hussein”, you are supposed to think, “Muslim”. When you hear “Hussein” you are supposed to think, “terrorists…9/11…” You are supposed to give in to your fears.
The electorate this year really isn’t the brightest. Never has been. A woman told National Public Radio (early on) that she was voting for Mitt Romney, because “he looked and sounded Presidential.” Duh!
Remember Rudy? While the world watched the World Trade Center fall on 9/11, Mayor Giuliani had apparently mistaken the towers falling, for a dove descending from heaven. What did Rudy hear as the towers came down…“This is my son in whom I am well pleased?” In that defining moment, Rudy decided that 9/11 was his anointing.
And after all that talk about leadership and what he did for the world’s greatest city, Rudy’s campaign folded like a cheap suit; and in all places, Florida, a state that exudes as much sunshine as one of Giuliani’s smiles. Rudy talked a lot but he had effectively written off early primary states by ignoring them as if the people who lived there didn’t exist. He was hedging his future on all those “law and order” Republicans and angry Cubans. And, was I the only one who was stunned by Pat Robertson’s endorsement of him? What was that all about? And from a man who has helped foster and nurture the myth that being a good, God-fearing, clean-living Christian is the sole territory of registered Republicans.
McCain is still in the running and gaining the support from his base even as he tries to position himself as more of a right-wing Republican than he feels comfortable with. Yes, he is a maverick, and as a candidate, we can expect him to go where no right winger has gone before (deep into black political territory). And so, as we await the “why” regarding McCain’s MLK vote, it may, in the end, not be that important after all. The nation is gripped in a recession. So as America readies to go to the polls and ponders its future, let us look at the larger picture, as King would have us do, and make sure we don’t have to go before the microphones of the future saying, “I made a mistake…”
Byron Scott Class of 77
40 years ago, the tectonic plates of America’s destiny shifted when a 30 caliber slug of hot lead cut into Dr. King’s face. I don’t need to remind you of the immediate results. City after city caught fire as the land mines of legitimate black anger exploded. And for those of you who remember Jackson Avenue, it became a metaphor for abandonment and a city’s decline. Then, later, the name was changed to Martin Luther King Drive. It was supposed to instill a measure of pride. But like most of the other 500 or so streets, boulevards, roads, and drives, named after King, the designation serves more as a red flag than a flag stop on the road map of a people’s history.
And there was John McCain.
His appearance should not have come as a shock. He was running for office of President of the United States. But on this rainy day, McCain, the maverick, wanted to connect with the people and apologize for voting against the federal MLK day legislation in 1983.
Yet, when I looked up at my television set and saw McCain at the King remembrance, my initial reaction was visceral. I said to myself, “Why is he there?” “Why!” It was a rhetorical question, of course. So, I listened to McCain’s comments and said, “hmmm”, and later I read McCain’s words just to make sure I didn’t miss what I thought I missed when I heard him say what he said! Follow me?
In other words, I was curious as to his change of heart. I wanted to know why. It was a fair question, so again, I listened to and read his words, “We can be slow to give greatness its due…I was wrong…I was wrong.” To that end, he was absolutely correct.
Let he that is without sin cast the first stone.
Still, since McCain never explained the why, we are then left to fill-in the blanks. Did the candidate apologize out of political expediency? Or did he have an epiphany? And just what was his mistake? Was it that he voted against the measure, or that he voted against legislation that could later bite him in the leg like one of Bull Connor’s dogs? In other words, was his mistake a strategic one or a moral one? There is a world of difference. Perhaps, McCain had a good reason. Still, some will…and have…resorted to their machinations as they seek to navigate and explain the deep waters of a politically tuned heart.
Erstwhile and present, this has been an interesting presidential race to say the least. It is history in the making and we are seeing it unfold with our own eyes. Thus, we don’t have to wait for the victors to tell us what we can figure out for ourselves. For the first time in American history, a major party is running for the office of President without a white male leading... or at this point... on the ticket. There is Hillary Clinton, who is well liked among Black voters. But now, the colored electorate is being torn along the rugged fault line of appreciation and ancestral ties. Sadly, for her, Sen. Clinton is running a campaign tormented by a thorn in the flesh and that thorn has a name. It is Barack Obama.
His candidacy has not been without its nails-on-the-chalkboard-moments. Most Americans never heard of Rev. Jeremiah Wright until…
But when they saw snippets of the Reverend speaking a “gospel” they weren’t akin to, a lot of people, (conditional friends, and foe alike), turned to the Senator. They demanded that Obama explain, and answer for words that proceeded out of someone else’s mouth. To be sure, what Jeremiah Wright said was over the top, but they were taken out of context. Still, who was shocked? Not black folks. Wright’s fulminations were part of a cultural dynamic that is played out quite often in Black churches across the fruited plain. The naysayer…and there were many…seized Rev. Wright’s video clips as an “A-ha!” moment. So, the candidate did what he had to. He closeted himself into a quiet place and penned a speech that no one else could have written for him. It had to come from the heart.
The conservative media, the purveyors of hate and pushers of delusion are digging deep into the Earth’s core, hoping to tap into some well of Barackian indiscretions. They do so, not because Sen. Obama is unqualified, but precisely because he is qualified.
One radio host often, if not always, uses Obama’s middle name, Hussein, when referring to him. And while, in this case, there is nothing in a name, the idea is to play the populace like a cheap fiddle. Thus, when you hear “Hussein”, you are supposed to think, “Saddam”. When you hear “Hussein”, you are supposed to think, “Muslim”. When you hear “Hussein” you are supposed to think, “terrorists…9/11…” You are supposed to give in to your fears.
The electorate this year really isn’t the brightest. Never has been. A woman told National Public Radio (early on) that she was voting for Mitt Romney, because “he looked and sounded Presidential.” Duh!
Remember Rudy? While the world watched the World Trade Center fall on 9/11, Mayor Giuliani had apparently mistaken the towers falling, for a dove descending from heaven. What did Rudy hear as the towers came down…“This is my son in whom I am well pleased?” In that defining moment, Rudy decided that 9/11 was his anointing.
And after all that talk about leadership and what he did for the world’s greatest city, Rudy’s campaign folded like a cheap suit; and in all places, Florida, a state that exudes as much sunshine as one of Giuliani’s smiles. Rudy talked a lot but he had effectively written off early primary states by ignoring them as if the people who lived there didn’t exist. He was hedging his future on all those “law and order” Republicans and angry Cubans. And, was I the only one who was stunned by Pat Robertson’s endorsement of him? What was that all about? And from a man who has helped foster and nurture the myth that being a good, God-fearing, clean-living Christian is the sole territory of registered Republicans.
McCain is still in the running and gaining the support from his base even as he tries to position himself as more of a right-wing Republican than he feels comfortable with. Yes, he is a maverick, and as a candidate, we can expect him to go where no right winger has gone before (deep into black political territory). And so, as we await the “why” regarding McCain’s MLK vote, it may, in the end, not be that important after all. The nation is gripped in a recession. So as America readies to go to the polls and ponders its future, let us look at the larger picture, as King would have us do, and make sure we don’t have to go before the microphones of the future saying, “I made a mistake…”
Byron Scott Class of 77
Monday, April 7, 2008
The Real Patriots
Brothers, if someone tells you over and over again, they are fair and balanced, then they probably are not. If someone tells you over and over again, they are superior, they are probably not and even they don't believe such blather. If it were true, then it would be obvious, so why state the obvious. In any event, brothers, I came acorss this piece which I gave the title: The Real Patriots. I did not write the piece. Let's read it and discuss it. Byron
In 1961, a young African-American man, after hearing President John F. Kennedy's challenge to, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country," gave up his student deferment, left college in Virginia and voluntarily joined the Marines.In 1963, this man, having completed his two years of service in the Marines, volunteered again to become a Navy corpsman. (They provide medical assistance to the Marines as well as to Navy personnel.) The man did so well in corpsman school that he was the valedictorian and became a cardiopulmonary technician. Not surprisingly, he was assigned to the Navy's premier medical facility, Bethesda Naval Hospital, as a member of the commander in chief's medical team, and helped care for President Lyndon B. Johnson after his 1966 surgery. For his service on the team, which he left in 1967, the White House awarded him three letters of commendation. What is even more remarkable is that this man entered the Marines and Navy not many years after the two branches began to become integrated. While this young man was serving six years on active duty, Vice President Dick Cheney, who was born the same year as the Marine/sailor, received five deferments, four for being an undergraduate and graduate student and one for being a prospective father. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both five years younger than the African-American youth, used their student deferments to stay in college until 1968. Both then avoided going on active duty through family connections. Who is the real patriot? The young man who interrupted his studies to serve his country for six years or our three political leaders who beat the system? Are the patriots the people who actually sacrifice something or those who merely talk about their love of the country? After leaving the service of his country, the young African-American finished his final year of college, entered the seminary, was ordained as a minister, and eventually became pastor of a large church in one of America's biggest cities. This man is Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the retiring pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, who has been in the news for comments he made over the last three decades. Since these comments became public we have heard criticisms, condemnations, denouncements and rejections of his comments and him. We've seen on television, in a seemingly endless loop, sound bites of a select few of Rev. Wright's many sermons. Some of the Wright's comments are inexcusable and inappropriate and should be condemned, but in calling him "unpatriotic," let us not forget that this is a man who gave up six of the most productive years of his life to serve his country. How many of Wright's detractors, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly to name but a few, volunteered for service, and did so under the often tumultuous circumstances of a newly integrated armed forces and a society in the midst of a civil rights struggle? Not many. While words do count, so do actions. Let us not forget that, for whatever Rev. Wright may have said over the last 30 years, he has demonstrated his patriotism.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-
In 1961, a young African-American man, after hearing President John F. Kennedy's challenge to, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country," gave up his student deferment, left college in Virginia and voluntarily joined the Marines.In 1963, this man, having completed his two years of service in the Marines, volunteered again to become a Navy corpsman. (They provide medical assistance to the Marines as well as to Navy personnel.) The man did so well in corpsman school that he was the valedictorian and became a cardiopulmonary technician. Not surprisingly, he was assigned to the Navy's premier medical facility, Bethesda Naval Hospital, as a member of the commander in chief's medical team, and helped care for President Lyndon B. Johnson after his 1966 surgery. For his service on the team, which he left in 1967, the White House awarded him three letters of commendation. What is even more remarkable is that this man entered the Marines and Navy not many years after the two branches began to become integrated. While this young man was serving six years on active duty, Vice President Dick Cheney, who was born the same year as the Marine/sailor, received five deferments, four for being an undergraduate and graduate student and one for being a prospective father. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both five years younger than the African-American youth, used their student deferments to stay in college until 1968. Both then avoided going on active duty through family connections. Who is the real patriot? The young man who interrupted his studies to serve his country for six years or our three political leaders who beat the system? Are the patriots the people who actually sacrifice something or those who merely talk about their love of the country? After leaving the service of his country, the young African-American finished his final year of college, entered the seminary, was ordained as a minister, and eventually became pastor of a large church in one of America's biggest cities. This man is Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the retiring pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, who has been in the news for comments he made over the last three decades. Since these comments became public we have heard criticisms, condemnations, denouncements and rejections of his comments and him. We've seen on television, in a seemingly endless loop, sound bites of a select few of Rev. Wright's many sermons. Some of the Wright's comments are inexcusable and inappropriate and should be condemned, but in calling him "unpatriotic," let us not forget that this is a man who gave up six of the most productive years of his life to serve his country. How many of Wright's detractors, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly to name but a few, volunteered for service, and did so under the often tumultuous circumstances of a newly integrated armed forces and a society in the midst of a civil rights struggle? Not many. While words do count, so do actions. Let us not forget that, for whatever Rev. Wright may have said over the last 30 years, he has demonstrated his patriotism.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-
Monday, March 31, 2008
NYTimes Article and then my comments
Peter DaSilva for The New York Times
San Francisco Shafia Zaloom and her husband, Brian Neece. They named their son Kyle to honor Mr. Neece’s Irish roots and named their daughter Mei Lan for Ms. Zaloom’s Chinese heritage.
“I remember getting a lot of flak because of the fact I wasn’t 100 percent black,” said Ms. Bratter, 34, recalling her years at Penn State.
“I was very hurt by that,” said Ms. Bratter, whose mother is black and whose father is white. “I remember feeling like, Isn’t this what everybody expects me to think?”
Being accepted. Proving loyalty. Navigating the tight space between racial divides. Americans of mixed race say these are issues they have long confronted, and when Senator Barack Obama recently delivered a speech about race in Philadelphia, it rang with a special significance in their ears. They saw parallels between the path trod by Mr. Obama and their own.
They recalled the friends, as in Ms. Bratter’s case, who thought they were not black enough. Or the people who challenged them to label themselves by innocently asking, “What are you?” Or the relatives of different races who can sometimes be insensitive to one another.
“I think Barack Obama is going to bring these deeply American stories to the forefront,” said Esther John, 56, an administrator at Northwest Indian College in Washington, who identifies herself as African-American, American Indian and white.
“Maybe we’ll get a little bit further in the dialogue on race,” Ms. John said. “The guilt factor may be lowered a little bit because Obama made it right to be white and still love your black relatives, and to be black and still love your white relatives: to love despite another person’s racial appearance.”
Americans of mixed race say that questions about whether Mr. Obama, with a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya, is “too black” or “not black enough,” as the candidate himself brought up in his speech on March 18, show the extent to which the nation is still fixated on old categories.
“There’s this notion that there’s an authentic race and you must fit it,” said Ms. Bratter, an assistant professor of sociology at Rice University in Houston who researches interracial families. “We’re confronted with the lack of fit.”
The old categories are weakening, however, as immigration and the advancing age of marriage in the United States fuel a steady rise in the number of interracial marriages. The 2000 Census counted 3.1 million interracial couples, or about 6 percent of married couples. For the first time, the Census that year allowed respondents to identify themselves as being two or more races, a category that now includes 7.3 million Americans, or about 3 percent of the population.
Many people still stick to a one-race label, even if they are of mixed descent, researchers say, sometimes because of strong identification with one racial group, and occasionally because of a conscious effort not to dilute the numbers of the group they most identify with.
In interviews, people of mixed race said their decision about how to identify themselves was deeply personal, not political; it is influenced by how and where they were reared, how others perceive them, what they look like and how they themselves come to embrace their identity.
James McBride, 50, who described growing up in a Brooklyn housing project with his white mother in a memoir, “The Color of Water,” said that, like Mr. Obama, he identified himself primarily as a black man of mixed race. As a child whose father was black, he said: “I really wanted to be like all the other black kids. It was the larger group around me.” And through life, because of his brown skin, society has imposed its own label. “If cops see me, they see a black man sitting in a car,” he said.
But being proud to call himself African-American, Mr. McBride said, does not negate his connection to his “Jewish part,” his mother’s heritage. Asked which part of him was dominant, he said, “It’s like grabbing Jell-O.”
“But what difference does it make?” he added. “When you’re mixed, you see how absurd this business of race is.”
Mr. McBride and other mixed-race Americans said they took pride that Mr. Obama was presenting his biracial identity as an asset for the presidency. Even if he calls himself black, and has made a central element of his campaign biography the quest to claim that identity after his father left him, Mr. Obama is seen as giving equal weight in his story to his white mother and grandparents.
“He’s really having to play the field and know his audience really well,” said Phillip Handy, 21, a junior at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., whose mother is white and father is black. “In the end, when I hear his message, I don’t think he’s bailing out on any of us.”
While many mixed-race people say they see their heritage as a plus, they also say they often face pressure from others who want to pigeonhole them. Mr. McBride said his books invariably were shelved in the African-American sections of bookstores. “Why can’t I be a white author?” he said. “I’m half white.”
Shafia Zaloom, 36, a teacher in San Francisco who is Asian and white, said she was often asked if her two children, who look like her white husband, were adopted. “Sometimes, when I’m at the playground, people think I’m the nanny,” she said.
Ms. Zaloom, who gets her looks from her Chinese mother, said she had been on the receiving end of insensitive racial remarks and gestures about Asians. But she fully identifies as mixed race.
“It’s really unfair to expect people to choose,” she said. “It’s like asking to be loyal to one parent or the other.”
Although still small, the mixed-race population is increasingly visible among the young. The 2000 Census found that 41 percent of the mixed-race population was under 18. Multiracial advocacy groups like the Mavin Foundation in Seattle say that mixed race people now find themselves better reflected in books, in college courses, in school brochures and in teacher’s training in public schools than they did in the past. Carmen Van Kerckhove, a diversity consultant who runs a blog on race and popular culture, racialicious.com, said she doubted that the uproar that greeted Tiger Woods when he described himself as “Cablinasian” (for heritage that includes Caucasian, black, American Indian and Asian) in 1997 would be as strong today.
“When you’re multiracial, you can be several things at the same time,” said Ms. Van Kerckhove, 30, who is white and Asian and has endorsed Mr. Obama on her blog for moving the race debate away from “who’s black and who’s white, or who’s a victim and who’s an oppressor.”
Unfortunately, Ms. Van Kerckhove added, suspicions persist about the motivation of people who identify themselves as mixed race. Many people, she said, wonder, “Are multiracial people trying to be multiracial as a way to escape racism?”
The mixed-race terrain is full of such bumps and tricky balances. But at least, many multiracial Americans say, they are no longer seen as oddities. Ms. Zaloom expects that her 6-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son will experience a different journey to self-identity than she did. At times while growing up, Ms. Zaloom recalled, she struggled with questions about whether she was white enough or attractive. She rebelled against Chinese language lessons, her mother’s Chinese food and eating with chopsticks.
But when her daughter was born, she named her Mei Lan, like her maternal grandmother, to honor her Chinese roots. Then she named her son Kyle in deference to her paternal Irish side. Her wish for her children, she said, is that they realize that the benefits of a mixed identity outweigh any challenges.
“Ultimately,” she said, the goal is “to not have to check a box.
MY COMMENTS:
Forcing a wedge into the racial divide. And, by racial divide, I do not mean black against white. I mean dark black against light black. That has always existed...ever since the days of the plantation. And, so, here we are in 2008....just days after Obama makes a speech on race, running in circles. It's not the black versus white....but that dark versus light. What I see over the horizon is this new push...that is fueled not so much by racial pride and diversity as much as it is, the divisiveness of separation. In other words, "oh, you're mixed race." The underlying theorem is ... "you are not like them...you're different." But the math doesn't add up. Neither does the one drop of blood nonsense. And neither did that crap that made its way into the United States Constitution that ignored the God (many of them claimed to have worshipped) and decided that black people were only three-fifths of a person. The problem is, people will buy into this new move for mixed racial identity. And now it appears, they are trying to blame THAT on Obama as well. But let that mixed race person get stopped by the cops, or apply for a job...if his or her skin is a little too dark, or their hair a little too wooly, then they will quickly learn that mixed race is of no consequence. Because in the eyes of the "politburo", They're still niggers. Sorry, but it's true. Once again, we are being played, like a fiddle. And the people who buy into do nothing more than fuel the separation we so desperately DO NOT need.As for the article...paragraph 12
"In interviews, people of mixed race said their decision about how to identify themselves was deeply personal, not political; it is influenced by how and where they were reared, how others perceive them, what they look like and how they themselves come to embrace their identity."
I assert, identity can also...has also been used...to distance ourselves from "the others".paragraph 5 (page 2) "Although still small, the mixed-race population is increasingly visible among the young. The 2000 Census found that 41 percent of the mixed-race population was under 18. Multiracial advocacy groups like the Mavin Foundation in Seattle say that mixed race people now find themselves better reflected in books, in college courses, in school brochures and in teacher’s training in public schools than they did in the past. Carmen Van Kerckhove, a diversity consultant who runs a blog on race and popular culture, racialicious.com, said she doubted that the uproar that greeted Tiger Woods when he described himself as “Cablinasian” (for heritage that includes Caucasian, black, American Indian and Asian) in 1997 would be as strong today."The Mavin Foundation "found" that mixed race people now find themselves better reflected in books. Has the Mavin Foundation NOT BEEN paying attention. EVER!!! Think, Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, and the host of books and commercials (certainly not all) that made a very conscious decision to avoid using Negroes with real Negro features!!!!! The consultant, Van Kerckhove, asserts the uproar over Tiger Woods use of Cablinasian would not engender a backlash today. I fully believe it would. However, the media would not focus on the backlash as much as it would those who find solace in it in this new flavor on the month. Once again, we are being played like a fiddle. By the way, I am not, never have been and probably never will be a Tiger Woods fan. And not for what he said, but because it was...I believe....not an attempt to unite...as much as it was a very deliberate attempt to DELINEATE, SEPARATE, PUT SPACE BETWEEN himself and the darker among us. Ironically, when he forgot from whence he came, it took fellow golfer, Fuzzy Zeller, just a few seconds to verbally tap him on the shoulder and say, "hey boy, you ain't nothing but a nigger, so don't you forget it. You hear?
Bscottharrison 3/31/08
San Francisco Shafia Zaloom and her husband, Brian Neece. They named their son Kyle to honor Mr. Neece’s Irish roots and named their daughter Mei Lan for Ms. Zaloom’s Chinese heritage.
“I remember getting a lot of flak because of the fact I wasn’t 100 percent black,” said Ms. Bratter, 34, recalling her years at Penn State.
“I was very hurt by that,” said Ms. Bratter, whose mother is black and whose father is white. “I remember feeling like, Isn’t this what everybody expects me to think?”
Being accepted. Proving loyalty. Navigating the tight space between racial divides. Americans of mixed race say these are issues they have long confronted, and when Senator Barack Obama recently delivered a speech about race in Philadelphia, it rang with a special significance in their ears. They saw parallels between the path trod by Mr. Obama and their own.
They recalled the friends, as in Ms. Bratter’s case, who thought they were not black enough. Or the people who challenged them to label themselves by innocently asking, “What are you?” Or the relatives of different races who can sometimes be insensitive to one another.
“I think Barack Obama is going to bring these deeply American stories to the forefront,” said Esther John, 56, an administrator at Northwest Indian College in Washington, who identifies herself as African-American, American Indian and white.
“Maybe we’ll get a little bit further in the dialogue on race,” Ms. John said. “The guilt factor may be lowered a little bit because Obama made it right to be white and still love your black relatives, and to be black and still love your white relatives: to love despite another person’s racial appearance.”
Americans of mixed race say that questions about whether Mr. Obama, with a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya, is “too black” or “not black enough,” as the candidate himself brought up in his speech on March 18, show the extent to which the nation is still fixated on old categories.
“There’s this notion that there’s an authentic race and you must fit it,” said Ms. Bratter, an assistant professor of sociology at Rice University in Houston who researches interracial families. “We’re confronted with the lack of fit.”
The old categories are weakening, however, as immigration and the advancing age of marriage in the United States fuel a steady rise in the number of interracial marriages. The 2000 Census counted 3.1 million interracial couples, or about 6 percent of married couples. For the first time, the Census that year allowed respondents to identify themselves as being two or more races, a category that now includes 7.3 million Americans, or about 3 percent of the population.
Many people still stick to a one-race label, even if they are of mixed descent, researchers say, sometimes because of strong identification with one racial group, and occasionally because of a conscious effort not to dilute the numbers of the group they most identify with.
In interviews, people of mixed race said their decision about how to identify themselves was deeply personal, not political; it is influenced by how and where they were reared, how others perceive them, what they look like and how they themselves come to embrace their identity.
James McBride, 50, who described growing up in a Brooklyn housing project with his white mother in a memoir, “The Color of Water,” said that, like Mr. Obama, he identified himself primarily as a black man of mixed race. As a child whose father was black, he said: “I really wanted to be like all the other black kids. It was the larger group around me.” And through life, because of his brown skin, society has imposed its own label. “If cops see me, they see a black man sitting in a car,” he said.
But being proud to call himself African-American, Mr. McBride said, does not negate his connection to his “Jewish part,” his mother’s heritage. Asked which part of him was dominant, he said, “It’s like grabbing Jell-O.”
“But what difference does it make?” he added. “When you’re mixed, you see how absurd this business of race is.”
Mr. McBride and other mixed-race Americans said they took pride that Mr. Obama was presenting his biracial identity as an asset for the presidency. Even if he calls himself black, and has made a central element of his campaign biography the quest to claim that identity after his father left him, Mr. Obama is seen as giving equal weight in his story to his white mother and grandparents.
“He’s really having to play the field and know his audience really well,” said Phillip Handy, 21, a junior at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., whose mother is white and father is black. “In the end, when I hear his message, I don’t think he’s bailing out on any of us.”
While many mixed-race people say they see their heritage as a plus, they also say they often face pressure from others who want to pigeonhole them. Mr. McBride said his books invariably were shelved in the African-American sections of bookstores. “Why can’t I be a white author?” he said. “I’m half white.”
Shafia Zaloom, 36, a teacher in San Francisco who is Asian and white, said she was often asked if her two children, who look like her white husband, were adopted. “Sometimes, when I’m at the playground, people think I’m the nanny,” she said.
Ms. Zaloom, who gets her looks from her Chinese mother, said she had been on the receiving end of insensitive racial remarks and gestures about Asians. But she fully identifies as mixed race.
“It’s really unfair to expect people to choose,” she said. “It’s like asking to be loyal to one parent or the other.”
Although still small, the mixed-race population is increasingly visible among the young. The 2000 Census found that 41 percent of the mixed-race population was under 18. Multiracial advocacy groups like the Mavin Foundation in Seattle say that mixed race people now find themselves better reflected in books, in college courses, in school brochures and in teacher’s training in public schools than they did in the past. Carmen Van Kerckhove, a diversity consultant who runs a blog on race and popular culture, racialicious.com, said she doubted that the uproar that greeted Tiger Woods when he described himself as “Cablinasian” (for heritage that includes Caucasian, black, American Indian and Asian) in 1997 would be as strong today.
“When you’re multiracial, you can be several things at the same time,” said Ms. Van Kerckhove, 30, who is white and Asian and has endorsed Mr. Obama on her blog for moving the race debate away from “who’s black and who’s white, or who’s a victim and who’s an oppressor.”
Unfortunately, Ms. Van Kerckhove added, suspicions persist about the motivation of people who identify themselves as mixed race. Many people, she said, wonder, “Are multiracial people trying to be multiracial as a way to escape racism?”
The mixed-race terrain is full of such bumps and tricky balances. But at least, many multiracial Americans say, they are no longer seen as oddities. Ms. Zaloom expects that her 6-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son will experience a different journey to self-identity than she did. At times while growing up, Ms. Zaloom recalled, she struggled with questions about whether she was white enough or attractive. She rebelled against Chinese language lessons, her mother’s Chinese food and eating with chopsticks.
But when her daughter was born, she named her Mei Lan, like her maternal grandmother, to honor her Chinese roots. Then she named her son Kyle in deference to her paternal Irish side. Her wish for her children, she said, is that they realize that the benefits of a mixed identity outweigh any challenges.
“Ultimately,” she said, the goal is “to not have to check a box.
MY COMMENTS:
Forcing a wedge into the racial divide. And, by racial divide, I do not mean black against white. I mean dark black against light black. That has always existed...ever since the days of the plantation. And, so, here we are in 2008....just days after Obama makes a speech on race, running in circles. It's not the black versus white....but that dark versus light. What I see over the horizon is this new push...that is fueled not so much by racial pride and diversity as much as it is, the divisiveness of separation. In other words, "oh, you're mixed race." The underlying theorem is ... "you are not like them...you're different." But the math doesn't add up. Neither does the one drop of blood nonsense. And neither did that crap that made its way into the United States Constitution that ignored the God (many of them claimed to have worshipped) and decided that black people were only three-fifths of a person. The problem is, people will buy into this new move for mixed racial identity. And now it appears, they are trying to blame THAT on Obama as well. But let that mixed race person get stopped by the cops, or apply for a job...if his or her skin is a little too dark, or their hair a little too wooly, then they will quickly learn that mixed race is of no consequence. Because in the eyes of the "politburo", They're still niggers. Sorry, but it's true. Once again, we are being played, like a fiddle. And the people who buy into do nothing more than fuel the separation we so desperately DO NOT need.As for the article...paragraph 12
"In interviews, people of mixed race said their decision about how to identify themselves was deeply personal, not political; it is influenced by how and where they were reared, how others perceive them, what they look like and how they themselves come to embrace their identity."
I assert, identity can also...has also been used...to distance ourselves from "the others".paragraph 5 (page 2) "Although still small, the mixed-race population is increasingly visible among the young. The 2000 Census found that 41 percent of the mixed-race population was under 18. Multiracial advocacy groups like the Mavin Foundation in Seattle say that mixed race people now find themselves better reflected in books, in college courses, in school brochures and in teacher’s training in public schools than they did in the past. Carmen Van Kerckhove, a diversity consultant who runs a blog on race and popular culture, racialicious.com, said she doubted that the uproar that greeted Tiger Woods when he described himself as “Cablinasian” (for heritage that includes Caucasian, black, American Indian and Asian) in 1997 would be as strong today."The Mavin Foundation "found" that mixed race people now find themselves better reflected in books. Has the Mavin Foundation NOT BEEN paying attention. EVER!!! Think, Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, and the host of books and commercials (certainly not all) that made a very conscious decision to avoid using Negroes with real Negro features!!!!! The consultant, Van Kerckhove, asserts the uproar over Tiger Woods use of Cablinasian would not engender a backlash today. I fully believe it would. However, the media would not focus on the backlash as much as it would those who find solace in it in this new flavor on the month. Once again, we are being played like a fiddle. By the way, I am not, never have been and probably never will be a Tiger Woods fan. And not for what he said, but because it was...I believe....not an attempt to unite...as much as it was a very deliberate attempt to DELINEATE, SEPARATE, PUT SPACE BETWEEN himself and the darker among us. Ironically, when he forgot from whence he came, it took fellow golfer, Fuzzy Zeller, just a few seconds to verbally tap him on the shoulder and say, "hey boy, you ain't nothing but a nigger, so don't you forget it. You hear?
Bscottharrison 3/31/08
Friday, March 28, 2008
Celebration of Friends
As some of you may know, our brother, Charlie Wilson, (Class of 1977) passed last November. The cause of death was a heart attack. I received word, via a phone call, on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Ironically, I had been talking about Charlie with a mutual friend just days before he passed.
Charlie was a fun-loving cat, with a broad smile and a great disposition. He loved sports and played football and ran track for The Prep.
After graduation, Charlie enlisted in the U.S. Army and made a career of it. Several years ago, he moved to Tennessee with his family. He left behind brothers, sisters, a wife, children and grandchildren.
I met Charlie in the late 60's. He, too, lived in Curries Woods, during its better days. We spent a lot of hours together playing football, hanging out and just talking. Charlie was the kind of cat who was able to bring calm and order to a situation. On my wedding day, in 1985, I got into a huge argument with the best man, so much so that he, (the best man) was out of the wedding. And while I cannot remember what sparked the argument, it was Charlie Wilson, who uttered the words, "fellas, fellas..." (with that broad smile) and calmed us down. The wedding went on without a hitch.
Charlie was a great cat, who walked this Earth with a sense of confidence and humility. He will forever be missed.
Charlie was a fun-loving cat, with a broad smile and a great disposition. He loved sports and played football and ran track for The Prep.
After graduation, Charlie enlisted in the U.S. Army and made a career of it. Several years ago, he moved to Tennessee with his family. He left behind brothers, sisters, a wife, children and grandchildren.
I met Charlie in the late 60's. He, too, lived in Curries Woods, during its better days. We spent a lot of hours together playing football, hanging out and just talking. Charlie was the kind of cat who was able to bring calm and order to a situation. On my wedding day, in 1985, I got into a huge argument with the best man, so much so that he, (the best man) was out of the wedding. And while I cannot remember what sparked the argument, it was Charlie Wilson, who uttered the words, "fellas, fellas..." (with that broad smile) and calmed us down. The wedding went on without a hitch.
Charlie was a great cat, who walked this Earth with a sense of confidence and humility. He will forever be missed.
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