IN THE ENEMY CAMP, OR NOT?

I tried to comprehend the meaning in the portrait of the Confederate Civil War General hanging in my hotel room at the Church Street Inn in Charleston, South Carolina, where we were enjoying a short vacation. It didn’t quite jibe with what I had read about Charleston’s conversion from its racist past, nor did it jibe with our previous visit two years ago, when we were treated so well. The portrait was, however, consistent with the white haired and bent old, White man, who emerged from a store front and greeted me with, “Hi, boy.” So, I suppose the lesson to be learned is that you can change the past but you can’t obliterate all of the old relics of the past.

SHELBY STEELE ANALYZES WHITE FOLKS’ WATER/COSBY CARRIES IT

It was a pleasure watching Shelby Steele beguile Fox commentator, Bill O’Reilly, and his co-host regarding his book, “A Dream Deferred,” in which he very intelligently explains the need for Black Americans to take full responsibility for their lives. While pointing out that the debt owed to Black America by White America remained unpaid, Steele theorizes that it is unrealistic and counter-productive for Black Americans to think that the debt ever would be or could be repaid. It was especially pleasing to hear him respond to O’Reilly’s effort to compare him to Bill Cosby, who has pleased well meaning and not so well meaning White folks with his simplistic description of the state of Black America. While Cosby left altogether too much room for misinterpretation and abuse, especially suitable to Fox news types, Steele left none. In the interview (and more in depth in his book), Steele coolly analyzes past deeds of White folks and their present mindsets, explains them in a historical context and proposes a realistic approach for the future for Black Americans, who he urges to look beyond racism and seize full responsibility for their own future. Metaphorically speaking, Cosby carried White folks’ water while Steele analyzed it. Unfortunately, in Dream Deferred,” Shelby Steele allowed his intriguing theoretical arguments to be obscured by his all too-consuming crusade against affirmative action.

HOMOSEXUAL WARRIORS—A LESSON TO BE LEARNED?

In 378 B.C., while opposing Spartan occupation of its country, the Greek city-state of Thebes “put in hand a major army reform that included the creation of the Sacred Band, consisting of 150 pairs of homosexual lovers.” (Paul Cartledge, Alexander the Great, Overlook Press, 2004) Certainly flies in the face of the United States Armed Forces’ policy of “Don’t ask, Don’t tell,” doesn’t it?

SPEAKING OF SCHIZOPHRENIA!

The United States is officially protesting the United Emirates’ policy of arresting gay men and forcing them to undergo hormone therapy. It is also pushing a Supreme Court case, which is designed to force colleges that receive federal funds but bar campus recruitment because of the Armed Forces’ anti-gay “Don’t ask, Don’t tell” policy, to allow it to recruit on their campuses. A case of official schizophrenia, maybe?

EVERYTHING IS TRULY RELATIVE!

When the Black proprietor of a Boston specialty store, who sold T-shirts with the words “Stop Snitchin” printed on the front, was told of Boston Mayor Menino’s crime fighting plan to stem deadly violence by taking the T-shirts off the store’s shelves, he made a few significant observations. First, he pointed out that he doesn’t discriminate. He also sells shirts that say “Stop Killing.” Each month, however, customers buy 300 to 400 of the “Stop Snitchin” shirts and only 10 to 20 of the “Stop Killing”shirts. In fact, the shirts are so popular that one mother of an accused murderer wore a “Stop Snitchin” shirt to her son’s murder trial (which, of course, probably suggests at least one reason why her son was in trouble in the first place). The proprietor’s second observation is more compelling. He was quoted in the Boston Herald (December 12, 2005) as saying, “If the mayor really wants to stop the violence then he ought to go into Smith & Wesson and pull the guns off the shelves, because my shirts aren’t the ones killing people.” Hmmmm!

BUT IN BOSTON, "SNITCHIN" AIN’T NECESSARY

Boston police are investigating how an internal report containing the names of witnesses in a murder case ended up in the hands of a 20-year old man who was fleeing from the police in a car linked to a fatal shooting hours earlier.

A WELL KNOWN DISTINCTION, NO?

In a story in the Sunday Republican, a recently arrived Somali immigrant, describing the difference between herself with lighter skin and another Somali with darker skin, was quoted as saying, "How do you say it in America? They are black. We are white." Ain’t it amazin’ how fast even foreigners learn the rules that govern race relationships in America?

IT’S NOT EVEN SOPHISTICATED!

A Black Merrill Lynch & Co. broker is suing for discrimination. He claims that African-Americans are discriminated against in the allocation of accounts, referrals and leads for new business and that the potential clients steered to African-American brokers were typically minorities or individuals with lower net worth. The law firm representing the Black broker is also representing 30 other Black complainants and is attempting to convert the lawsuit into a class action. No wonder! The same law firm won $300 million dollars in a gender discrimination lawsuit against the same company and another defendant. In a report on the lawsuit in the Wall Street Journal, the writer defensively wrote, “The allegations are striking because Merrill’s chief executive, Stan O’Neal, is African-American and has instituted several diversity initiatives.” (December 1, 2005). It’s as if the writer actually believes that, because Stan O’Neal is Black and committed to change, he can change the White old boy culture overnight and/or erase the many years of racial damage it has caused.

IT’S NOT EVEN SOPHISTICATED!

Following a mandate from its financial contributors, the all-White St George’s Independent Elementary School in Memphis, Tennessee decided to tackle the racial divide by establishing an inner city campus catering to primarily Black and Hispanic students. Students were provided the same quality curriculum and school program as their White suburban peers and within a short period of time, they were testing at nearly comparable levels. Plans to build a quality campus in the inner city are in the works and eventually the two campuses will merge. Rather than “quick emersion,” the school decided that it would gradually integrate the two campuses over the years, starting with the integration of the first fifth grade class in 2009. In the interim, Black and White students and parents are engaged in programs designed to gradually bring them together. (For more see The New York Times, November 24, 2005).

NEW YORKERS SHOULD BE SHOCKED!

A five million dollar slavery exhibit at the New York Historical Society containing 400 artifacts, documents, paintings and maps spanning 9000 square feet in 10 galleries is shocking New Yorkers who were raised connecting slavery to the South. That the famous city’s growth into the most prominent in the modern world was built on the backs of slaves, who were brought from Africa and the islands and traded on the blocks in New York in a system that was as brutal as any the South had produced, was lost history. Yet, up to 20% of New York’s population were slaves. “Slaves in New York worked sunup to sundown. Slaves helped build the wall on Wall Street (and were sold there) and built the first City Hall and Trinity Church. Slavery was the lifeline for hundreds of city businesses. During British rule, about 40 percent of the city’s households owned slaves.” The New York Times, November 26, 2005. New Yorkers should be shocked, not at the facts revealed in the exhibit, but at the fact that they didn’t learn the same facts through their educational system.

NEEDLE SALES SENSE

Massachusetts, one of the few states in the union that doesn’t allow the sale of hypodermic needles without a prescription, is finally considering a bill to make over-the-counter sale of hypodermic needles legal. The bill will also decriminalize possession of hypodermic needles. Privatization of needle distribution seems to be so obvious a solution to the proliferation of dirty needles that one can only wonder what has taken so long. Now we can take all of that money used to fund expensive needle exchange programs and help the homeless and the hungry or those in need of winter heat assistance while remaining safe and secure in the knowledge that the spread of HIV and AIDS from sharing of needles will be minimized. But, even better, we can be rid of the hot air emanating from holier-than-thou Springfield city councilors, who have been so willing to sacrifice good health policy to bad politics. n