A Prayer for George Zimmerman

For anyone who's been reading my blog recently, I'm sure the title of this post is a bit surprising.

But it's Sunday.

I have so many thoughts and feelings going through me right now.  But let me start with the Black Panther Party.

Most people don't know that the full name of the organization was "The Black Panther Party for Self Defense", which was originally conceived as a response to police brutality.  In addition to using California's open carry laws to defiantly confront law enforcement with their own weapons, people forget that the Panthers also feed the hungry, clothed the needy, and even organized schools for the children in their neighborhoods.

They forget because the sight of Huey Newton walking into the California State Assembly brandishing a shotgun overpowers any story about school lunches or clothing drives.

Guns have a tendency to do that.

If you'd like to know what happened to the Black Panthers, don't look at these impostors who are occasionally trotted out on Fox News as if they were Emmanuel Goldstein from the book "Nineteen Eighty-Four." According to the documentary "Bastards of the Party", you should look at the Crips, the notorious LA street gang, which, after years of sabotage from law enforcement, violence, arrests, political pressure, and the introduction of the drug trade, is what the Los Angeles Panthers devolved to in the late 70's.  Most of the prominent leaders of the party are either dead, in prison, or in exile.

Guns have a tendency to do that, too.

In "Bastards of the Party", the filmmaker, a former gangbanger, lamented the cycle of violence, where you feel compelled to kill the people who killed your friend, just like they felt compelled to kill members of the gang who killed their friend, and so on, and so on, and so on.

In the end, he said that the only way he could help brake the cycle was if he chose NOT to seek revenge on the people who'd murdered one of his family members.

As one of my friends, an AME minister, once pointed out to me, mercy is where you give someone something they don't deserve, but GRACE is where you don't give someone exactly what they deserve.

It's Sunday, and despite the pain and fear in my heart, grace is on my mind, because it's what Christ would ask of me in this moment.

My old film school instructor once said that, according to Catholic canon, the definition of a miracle is any moment where fear is transformed into love.

It was fear that led that jury to say George Zimmerman was justified in stalking and killing an unarmed Black teen.  It was fear that led Zimmerman to arm himself and appoint himself protector of the neighborhood.

And as angry and as fearful as I've been since the verdict, as much as I've imagined being Trayvon  (I can not tell you how many times I've walked home at night from the store wearing a hoodie) and, being someone who hopes to be a Black father one day in an affluent and largely white suburb of Los Angeles, as much as I've imagined the unspeakable pain of his parents, Christ calls me to also imagine being George Zimmerman.

This is a man who wanted to be a hero, a small man who dreamed of pride and respect from being a protector and defender.  Never in his wildest dreams did he imagine he would become one of the most hated men in America because of his own prejudice and fear. Ironically enough, his unspoken fear of African Americans has transformed into a very real and, sadly, justifiable fear after this whole business.

There will be plenty of time for lawsuits and recriminations and acrimony.

But today is Sunday, and so, in addition for praying for Trayvon's soul, I'm also praying for George Zimmerman and his soul.  I am digging deep into my heart to find, if not love, a measure of empathy for a man who has rightly earned my rage.   In the same way, I pray for the jurors.  I pray that my heart and my prayers can reach out to those who would fear me, my sons, and those that look like us for no reason and feel justified in our murder.

I'm sending them love to cancel out their fear.

I'm praying for them because America needs a miracle.

For George Zimmerman, I can only say what the priest said to Jean Valjean: "I've bought your soul.  No go forth and be a good man."

For Travyon's parents, I'll ask for their forgiveness.

And for Trayvon, well, he's with God right now, so he already knows what's right.

The Only Thing That Should Matter about Trayvon Martin

Before an armed stranger stalked him in the middle of the night, Trayvon Martin had committed no crimes.

None.

Up until the moment a man with a gun started chasing him.

For no reason.

Let me repeat that.

A complete stranger with a GUN was stalking him at night.

Not a cop or a security guard.  Not even a man who owned a property where Trayvon was trespassing. A total stranger with absolutely NO authority of any kind whatsoever was STALKING HIM WITH A GUN.

And Trayvon had committed no crimes.

A court of his peers may decide that George Zimmerman did not, according to the letter of the law, murder Trayvon Martin (and, sadly, that does sound like the direction we're heading).

But I guarantee you that George Zimmerman knows, in his heart, that he is a murderer.

And that thought either makes him feel remorse or it makes him feel pride.

Consider that for a moment.

For Trayvon

A while ago I had a conversation with my fiance about this screenplay I wanted to write about some super secret geopolitical thing that I thought wasn't widely known and didn't get the attention it deserved, and she just looked at me, incredulous.

"Of course no one's written about it!  Do you think you're the first person who thought of this?  How do you think they keep it secret?"

Sometimes, I can be really stupid.

But the point she made was that I'm becoming a family man now.  I had to start considering how my actions effect my family.

Family.

For most of my life before now, that equation equalled "Mom+Dad+Brother+Nana+Me", or some broader combination of aunts, uncles, cousins, and the like.  But now, the most important version of that term, the one for which I'm directly responsible for, is the one I'm building personally with my better half right now.  Children are very important to both of us.

And the idea that a grown man could look at my child, literally walking down the street minding his own business, and KILL them, and then walk away without even an arrest, let alone a trial to even determine if  a crime has been committed just terrifies and infuriates me.

I think of Emmett Till.

I think of Ennis Cosby.

I think of the legions of Black boys who have their lives stolen from them every day because of someone else's irrational fear and hatred.

It's a delicate balance, because I don't want my future children to live in fear, or to expect any less from their home, their community, or their country than any of their white classmates.  Yet I also don't want them to be blind to what I perceive to be the realities of race in America.  I'm struggling to see past the years of learned behavior to find the appropriate level of paranoia and mistrust in a world where most people are good and decent and honest but there are still people out there who will take your life just because you're Black and male.

And it's the callous disregard for that life that horrifies me even more.  Who gives a drug test to a corpse?  Who takes the word of the man with the smoking gun in his hand that the dead guy had it coming as "evidence"?


Even if Trayvon Martin struck first (which I think is a ridiculous claim), doesn't the evidence show that he, too, could have legitimately claimed self-defense under the "Stand Your Ground" law?

Discretion is the better part of valor, people.
 

I'm trying not to get off on a rant about law enforcement and Black Americans, so let me just say two things: paraphrasing Ice-T, your authority is not a license to kill.

And God is watching.

Things I Didn't Know About Black America: Shirley Sherrod

So, I'm not going to get into the guts of this whole Shirley Sherrod/Andrew Breitbart fiasco.

But what I will say is, I think the sister has a serious point when she said she'd like to talk to the President about what he doesn't know about the history of Southern Black America.

One of my very good friends invited me to come along with him this summer to tour civil rights era sites throughout the south.  And, in my smugness, I said "dude, I'm Black from Maryland - my family LIVED the civil rights movement.  I don't need to be a tourist."

That said, Maryland is very much the line state.  There was terrible racism and race terrorism there, of course.  But it wasn't really the epicenter of Jim Crow like, say, Alabama, Mississippi, or Georgia during the 50's & '60's.

I don't really know.  And just because I'm Black doesn't mean I know by default.

And neither does President Obama, who, as far as I can tell, has yet to visit any of those Southern states since the election.

My Jewish friends have quite skillfully laid claim to the term "never again" in the face of the Holocaust, and I have yet to meet a young Jewish person who doesn't have some vivid living memory handed down to them by parents & grandparents & great grandparents about why they need to be both eternally vigilant and eternally better than the examples of their oppressors.

How did our history get lost, Black America?  Why aren't we talking to the Shirley Sherrods and Bill Cosbys and Dick Gregorys and Harry Belefontes and Ruby Dees and, yes, Clarence Thomases and Condolezza Rices, about how we always remember, always honor, and always excel despite the horrors?

Things I Didn't Know About Black America: Clarence Thomas

Thanks to my fellow netizen Brokenbeatnik, I came across the Washington Post article about the opinion Clarence Thomas wrote supporting the Supreme Court's decision to strike down Chicago's anti-handgun law as an unreasonable restriction of the 2nd Amendment.

Now, ordinarily, I'm not big on gun rights (after all, as my brother always says, nobody in the hood manufactures Uzis), and I'm really not crazy about Clarence Thomas, but I've gotta say, he really caught my eye with this opinion.  If you look at the nearly 20 page paper he wrote, you see that his vigorous defense of 2nd amendment rights is founded in his own first hand experience, I'm sure, of growing up in the Jim Crow South.

Cue Wikipedia again.

I didn't realize that Thomas' home town was founded by freed slaves, or that Gullah (or Geechee) was the spoken language in his home.  I didn't realize the man didn't live in a house with in-door plumbing until he was 7 years old.  I didn't know that he dropped out of seminary after hearing his classmates celebrating Martin Luther King's assassination.

If I did, I shouldn't have been surprised that, in his mind, the Federally protected right to own a gun, unabridged by a local or state authority, was the only think protecting him & his family (heck, even his whole home town) from organized, often local government sanctioned, white racist terrorism from the likes of the Ku Klux Klan and God knows what else.  Justice Thomas practically echoes Rob Brown's book "Negroes With Guns", a tome of self defense that became the cornerstone of Huey Newton's thinking in founding the Black Panther Party.  I have huge problems with many of Brother Clarence's votes, and I'll disagree with him with a lot of things, but I doubt I'll ever question the sincerity of his intentions again.

It reminds me of how I used to think of Condolezza Rice:  she grew up with the same four Black little girls who were murdered in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing of 1963 that Spike Lee featured in his documentary "Four Little Girls".  I used to think, "How can she not be more super-pro-Black nationalist after having lived through the horrors of that era?"

But Thomas reminds me that, while many Black folks were radicalized by the internal terrorism of the late 50's and '60's, just as many were raised in households more aligned with Booker T. Washington's thinking than, say, my man W.E.B. DuBois.  That the best revenge was success & dignity in the face of the terror, and those children like Clarence Thomas or Condolezza Rice or Colin Powell owed it to the people who died to reach and strive as far as they could.  So many radicals who didn't have access to the opportunities they had ended up dead, incarcerated, or ostracized.

Huey Newton?  H. Rap Brown?  These are not stories with happy endings.

But are those the only choices?

One could argue that Clarence, Condolezza, & Colin and many others like them earned their success by turning their backs on the broader Black community.  Yes, they're all involved in charity and philanthropy, but when decisions were made in their midsts regarding economic policy, war policy, social policy, and the like that had a direct impact on African Americans at large, did they really do all that they could to protect their voiceless brothers and sisters?

I don't know.

Just like I don't know what sort of sacrifices they had to make in order to reach their positions.  Does their mere presence in those positions carry more weight than their actions while in those positions?

My generation came of age in the post-"Black is Beautiful" era.  We take our ethnic pride and abilities as a given.  But that has not always been the case.  Folks like Clarence and Ward Connerly and others carry the scars of de-legitimacy to this day.  And the memories of the horror probably never go away.

I find myself thinking a lot about "The Spook Who Sat By The Door" as I read about Clarence Thomas this week.

Just getting to the door has been so hard for so many.  But does simply sitting there make it easier for others to join you and/or walk through?  Or are you responsible for wedging it open, no matter the personal cost?

Things I Didn't Know About Black America: Supermax

I grew up in a house with three sets of encyclopedias, which, of course, means, today, I am a compulsive researcher.

Or, as one of my friends from the all-girl's private school around the corner from my all-boy's private school once said, "You're such a little bibliophile."

Whenever I learn about something new that I can't really talk about in some detail and great length, the first thing I do is look it up on Wikipedia.

But through an odd confluence of inputs over the last few days, I find myself knee deep in the recent history of African Americans here in these United States.  So, here's the first in a series of web research diversions into my own cultural & ethnic history...
---------
I was watching Zombieland, and was wondering what else Woody Harrelson was up to as a part of his recent career resurgence.  Cue wikipedia - turns out Woody's dad was a contract killer who died in supermax prison on conviction for taking out a Federal judge and occasionally bragged that he was one of the dudes on the grassy knoll who helped take out JFK.

Crazy, right?

Realizing that I didn't really know what constituted a supermax prison (in short, solitary confinement for everybody 23 hours out of the day and no interaction with any other prisoners), I followed the links to to ADX Florence, the only supermax federal penitentiary.  And the current inmate list reads like a who's who of enemies of the state: FBI double agent Robert Hansen; the shoe bomber; the unabomber; the 1996 Olympic park bomber; Oklahoma City accomplice Terry Nichols; the guy who masterminded the first World Trade Center bombing; H. Rap Brown.

H. Rap Brown?!?

Wasn't he supposed to be one of the heroes of the civil rights movement?  Shows how little I know, right?

Cue wikipedia again.

Turns out the brother, one of the founding fathers of the original Black Panther Party for Self Defense (yes, let's get the full name right, folks), had converted to Islam and attempted to become an arbiter of peace of sorts.... until two cops got shot up trying to serve him an arrest warrant (one died) and he fled the scene in a bullet-ridden Mercedes.

In reading this, I realized I'd confused him with Eldridge Cleaver.  Probably because they'd both written books about being Black and radical in America in the 1960's (Brown's "Die, Nigger, Die" and Cleaver's "Soul On Ice").  Honestly, I only really knew about them from Mario Van Peebles' movie "Panther".  Oddly enough, Cleaver had become a born-again Christian and a right wing Republican in his old age before he died.  Brown, for his part, had originally been involved with SNCC - the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee - who helped organize the Freedom Rides, Freedom Summer, and the March on Washington, before interference from law enforcement and increasing threats of violence led to a schism in the group.  They had to change their name because, as one leader said at the time "I don't know how much longer we can stay nonviolent.

But, still: a supermax prison?  That guy is still considered an enemy of the state on the level of a traitorous enemy agent and Al Qaeda operatives?  Really?

More to come on these.  In the meantime, if you're not familiar with the history of SNCC, The Panthers, and the crazy political climate of the late 60's & early '70's, you may want to check some of these out:

Should I really like Bruce Wayne?

So, before I begin, let me just say, I love "The Dark Knight". I never get tired of watching that movie. I think it's a masterpiece at every level.

But there are two moments that always get this nagging little voice in the back of my brain squawking.

The first is where Morgan Freeman's character puts the conniving Wayne Enterprises lawyer who uncovers Batman's identity in his place:

"Let me get this straight: you think that your client, one of the richest, most powerful men in the world, is secretly a vigilante who spends his spare time beating criminals to a pump with his bare hands. And your plan is to BLACKMAIL this person? Good luck."

Good writing & performances. But stick with me for a moment.

The second scene is when The Joker crashes the crime boss meeting. And as great a scene as that is, I couldn't help but notice something.

Sal Maroni - Italian American.
The Chechen.
Gambol - African American.
Lau - Asian.

This one room had more ethnic diversity than any other scene in the entire movie. But these were the criminals.

Who were the heroes? With the exception of Lucius Fox and, some may say, The Mayor, they're all non-ethnic whites. In the case of Bruce Wayne & Harvey Dent, fairly upper class non-ethnic white men at that.

Dent constantly refers to the criminals as "scum".

I don't know. Am I crazy?

But I felt like I never saw what was actually so bad about Gotham City. Did it have criminals? Of course. Every city does.

But if John D. Rockefeller's great, great, great grandson & his wife had been gunned down after sneaking their scared son out of an opera at Lincoln Center, and that son grew up to decide that he would devote all of his considerable resources to allow him to run around New York City in a costume to shoot up the Gambino crime family and the Brooklyn drug cartels with military grade firepower, would we really consider that kid a hero?

There's a really understated element of direct class warfare in the Batman mythos. In many ways, Bruce Wayne starts reminding me more and more of Bill the Butcher in "Gangs of New York". And class warfare almost always has a racial undertone to it.

I mean, I know it's just a movie based on a comic book, but, as a writer, I always try to think about the fantastic in the most real terms possible.

Like the irony that Captain America, who makes his debut punching Hitler in the face, is, in fact, the living embodiment of the Nazi ideal of a so-called master race. I guess that's why The Red Skull is constantly trying to steal Cap's body.

And let's not even get into the homoerotic undertones of THAT superhero conflict!



But I digress.

I love The Dark Knight. It's one of my favorite movies.

But still....

Two Americas

Last time I checked, wasn't the City of Chicago and, for that matter, the whole State of Illinois, still part of the United States of America?

So why are all of these conservatives cheering because AMERICA, not just Chicago, but AMERICA, lost the bid for the next Olympics?

Oh, right. I forgot. It's because Obama lobbied for it.

I'm reminded of an incident way back when I was in high school. I was driving home late one night after visiting a classmate who lived in the Northeast corner of Baltimore. Since I lived on the exact opposite side of the city, I had a bit of a drive ahead of me, so I wanted to stop & get some gas. There were no brand name stations around, but I did manage to find one mom & pop-ish full-service station still open at 11PM.

So, I pull up to the pump, and the guy in the station waves to me, saying "I'll be there in a second."

So I wait. And I wait. And I wait. And another car pulls into the station. The guy comes out of the booth, pumps gas for the other car, and then goes back into the booth.

And I wait. And I wait some more. And then the guy looks out of the booth and smiles, saying "Oh, did you want some gas?"

I said "I get the picture" and left.

Do I even need to say that I'm Black and this guy was white?

What I could never fit my head around was this: I was coming to buy gas from him. I was going to literally put money in his hands.

But no. He doesn't want MY money. He doesn't want anything to do with me. He would rather hurt his own business than help me in any way.

Cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Now, am I saying that all opposition to Obama is racial? No, not really.

But what I AM saying is that a lot of opposition to Obama is just as irrational, crazy, and self-destructive as racism.

They don't want him talking to their children so he can tell them to stay in school. They don't want him lobbying for an American city to host the Olympics.

They don't want him anywhere doing anything for or with or about anyone.

It may not be race-based, but, if I can use a computer programming analogy for a moment, it sure has the same methods and interface as racism.

Born in the USA

I have, on occasion, been known to indulge in conspiracy theories.

For instance, there's a part of me that still believes that John Kerry struck some kind of deal born of Skull & Bones to basically throw the 2004 election for George Bush. After all, he fought like a hellcat to destroy Howard Dean, robocalls & all, but declined from using similar tactics against the 43rd president.

So, yes, I do buy into some conspiracy theories. But I find the recent Birther phenomenon so amusing for two reasons:

1. for it to be true, you have to assume the complicity of The State of Hawaii, at least two major Hawaiian newspapers, the Federal Election Commission, John McCain, Sarah Palin, and basically the entire Republican political apparatus. And that various elements had been upholding this conspiracy for nearly 50 years (that, or they went back and planted false evidence in the record, 1984-style). To which, I would respond, why? If Sarah Palin had some serious doubt about Obama's citizenship, do you think she would have waited a second to use that in a campaign speech? She was damn near calling the man a terrorist because he'd been in some guy's house. Which gets to the larger issue of most conspiracy theories, namely the presumption that all of the important famous people are out to punk the rest of the world so they can.... do what, exactly? "Control us"? I mean, really, if all of these players were interested in fabricating Obama's birth, wouldn't they have come up with a better cover story.

2. To borrow a line from Rush Limbaugh, the Birther movement is totally about race. The guy who's credited with originally trying to discredit Obama's nationality is a dude who once ran for congress on the promise that he would "exterminate Jew Power in America". The woman who shouted down that congressman in his town hall meeting about the birther stuff ended her tirade with "I want my country back!", because, of course, this can't really be America if a Black man is now president. Lou Dobbs teased the notion that Obama might even be an illegal immigrant. The fact is, these people are looking for anything that would just undo the last election, because that election proves that the majority of America thinks they're a bunch of crackpots.

Barack Obama is an American.

And he's your President.

Suck it up.

Sistas, move beyond "The Ratio"

A friend brought to my attention yet another news article about how there's no hope for Black women to find a decent Black man to marry, so they're forced to start marrying white men.

Personally, I've had enough of this crap.

Now, before I proceed, let me first state a few things for the record: I have absolutely no problem with interracial dating, except when a Black woman that I personally desire for myself chooses instead to date a white man. :-)

Frankly, I'd have a problem if she choose to date a brother, too, but because she picked a guy with whom I have less in common with (at least, physically), it just really drives home the point that I don't suit her tastes. Beyond that, I say, you love who you love. Just be true to yourself.

But when I hear sisters complain about brothers who are cocky and who think they're all that because they know the numbers are in their favor, so they just throw up their hands and say "forget it", to me, that says that they don't really want a successful Black man because they're unwilling to raise their game to get him. Now, does that mean compromise your principles (i.e. he'll only talk to you if you blow him first)? Of course not - that would make him a bad Black man instead of a good one. And any man who makes you feel less than you are isn't worth your tears if he picks a white girl. However, if you're willing to acknowledge that, from your POV, it's a seller's market, you need to bring your A-game, which is more than just education and credentials, but personality, spirit, physical & emotional beauty. And I'm not talking about hitting the pilates classes or getting breast implants or wearing a super-slinky outfit. I hear all this talk about looking for a husband, but are you actually ready to receive one? Are you ready to open your heart and share your life with someone else, or are you just checking something off of a "things to do before I'm 40" list? Are you actually ready to love? Give love AND receive love?

Which brings me to the larger point - all of these articles talk about how many interracial marriages there are and how many unmarried sisters there are and how low our marriage rates are - but, as far as I can tell, the majority of Black people who get married are still marrying Black people. So, despite "The Ratio", Black men & black women are still finding each other and getting married. I've been invited to a ton of Black weddings over the last 10-15 years, and not a single one of them involved an interracial couple. NOT ONE.

It's all about perspective and state of mind. I vividly recall a moment in college when a beautiful dark-skinned sister was complaining about how she'd been at a party and was ready to cry because all the brothers where dancing with light-skinned sisters..... the very same party where I had been dancing with her that night!!!

My point is, if you have an idea in your head, you'll always find evidence to support it. It's like that movie "The Number 23" - once you start to think that the number is everywhere, you start seeing it everywhere. But you only see it because you focus on it.

Everyone wants to focus on the successful Black men married to white women, but I can name just as many successful brothers married to sisters.

Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Bill Cosby, Eddie Murphy (past & future), Chris Rock, Boris Kodjoe, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Courtney Vance, Reggie Rock-Blythewood, Barack Obama, Denzel Washington, Will Smith, etc., etc.

Have I made my point?

So, I would suggest that, all of these people who are complaining about this subject, take a look in the mirror. There are Black people who can't find other Black people to marry, and there are Black people who can. It's a very simple equation - DECIDE which one you want to be, and then BE it. Period.

And, honestly, is marriage even the point?

I had a real epiphany at this time last summer, as I was ending a very beautiful, fairly long-term relationship that, at one point, was very much moving towards marriage. But it was a forced movement - we wanted to get married because we basically wanted to freeze time and capture this moment forever. We were terrified of letting so much love end.

But, the reality is, things born out of fear only create more fear.

All things end. Even love. But just because it's finite, doesn't make it any less valid. And just because something ends doesn't mean it's been destroyed. Our romance may have been finished, but the connection of two souls - true friends for life - will live for an eternity. We just needed the courage to let go and let it be.

And that's when I realized that I had drunk the Kool-Aid and was fitting damn near every women I'd ever dated for a wedding dress in my mind. I suppose it starts with being a child produced from a 40+ year marriage. Props to Mom & Dad, but there's no trophy waiting for anybody in Heaven just because you got and stayed married until one or both of you died.

Joy is the point. Happiness is the point. Love is the point.

We're so fixated on the norms and forms that these things take that we lose sight of WHY these institutions were created in the first place.

I know a couple who've been married over 20 years - produced two beautiful childen, live in a lovely house - a portrait of happy Black buppie affluence.

And, as far as I can tell, they've never had a single moment of true, shared bliss between them from the second they said "I do".

I wouldn't wish a marriage like that on my worst enemy.

Everything has a life of it's own - when you put two people together, the relationship that gets formed is a separate entity, with it's own energy & personality & life expectancy. Case in point - most people will say that I'm generally a fun, jovial, generous, caring soul. But there is one ex-girlfriend of mine where we really just brought out the most malicious, vindictive, and evil aspects of each other's personalities. Away from each other, we're totally different.

Needless to say, we don't talk anymore. :-)

Personally, I'm no longer focused on marriage. I'm interested in having relationships that are aligned to my intentions (love, joy, fun, growth) and living them to their fullest potential. If that full potential is a marriage and 6 kids, great. If that full potential is one really good a cup of coffee, beautiful.

Sisters - I hear you, and I know your pain. But be honest with yourself about what you really want and why you want it. And take stock for a moment - does that which you desire truly nourish your soul? Because, if it doesn't, find the courage to let it go.

You'll need your hands free to pick up the manna that's been waiting for you.

Oprah, Imus, and Hip-Hop

OK, so, I think I watched just about the whole Oprah/Hip-Hop thing...

honestly, I want to see two things:

1. It doesn't really address the issue to have someone like Common, who's the quintessential consciousness rapper, talking about the misogyny problems in hip-hop. I want to see a conference that includes people like Lil' Kim, Trina, Lil' Jon, the Ying Yang Twins...you know, the people who are the actual promoters of these images. I want to see THEM in a room with the likes of those girls from Spelman and Oprah and such.

2. The other thing that was clear to me was that the people from the first panel on Monday and the guys repping the hip-hop community come from completely different realities - they're simply not speaking the same language and it raises the point: It is totally within Russell Simmons or Kevin Liles' power to not put out an album by an artist that they find personally offensive, but SHOULD they not put out a record like, say, "Wait" or "My Neck"? Because that IS a reflection of an aspect of what's happening in the community. It's almost like an alarm bell ringing - if you're house is on fire, do you get mad at the blaring smoke detector?

On the other hand, Oprah raised the ultimate point - do we have to solve poverty to get them to stop calling women hos?

Post Accident Report

My girlfriend & I recently moved into a lovely little suburban house here in the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles. Two car garage, front & back yard, porch - the works. Nothing but palm trees line the street. Three speed bumps on the block. It's primarily a neighborhood of working-class Black folks, many of whom have lived on this very same block for years. Just before we moved in, an old Black man on a bicycle, a part of the neighborhood watch, stopped to question me until he was satisfied that this actually WAS my house.

I keep telling everyone I'm going to get an L.A. Times subscription just so I can pick up the paper in my bathrobe every morning and complete my "Ward Cleaver" fantasy.

I used to live in Hollywood. My old apartment building was, originally, a pretty wide mix of Hispanic families, Armenian families, and students like yours truly from the film school around the corner. But, over the course of the three years I lived there, most of the other students had left, and many of the Hispanic families, growing from new little ones or recently arrived relatives, expanded to fill in the gaps. The Armenians were relatively quiet, except for this one kid who was always in trouble with the cops. One day, he just disappeared. This was after he started threatening his girlfriend with a gun in the middle of the building driveway.

The rest of my neighbors were relatively quiet & pleasant. Working class folks, raising their kids and making the ends meet. I still have fond memories of our local handyman, a recent immigrant from Guatemala, who barely spoke English. And, I, with my 8th grade Spanish, wasn't doing much better. But we still managed to chit-chat and communicate and maintain some level of friendship. I liked him, and I think I missed him the most when I moved.

But, to be quite honest, I didn't miss the weekly Salsa lessons that had just started to be given just outside my window. And I didn't miss the weekly barbeques, also being thrown outside my window, where they all seemed to listen to the exact same Tejano song all day every freakin' day.

I'm originally from Baltimore. I once got into an argument with one of my college classmates about living in "the Black Community". This was a concept that, at the time, seemed patently absurd to me. Retrospectively, of course it would. Baltimore was 60% Black. You really had to go out of your way to NOT live in the Black community.

Not the case in Los Angeles.

And I know, one of the big factors that lead my significant other and I to move into Crenshaw (as opposed to Silver Lake or Pasadena or even Hollywood) was that we really missed our own culture. We missed the comfort and the ease and the familiarity of living amongst our own.

We missed being home.

Oddly enough, when we initially started looking for a place, if you go through most of the online apartment rental hubs, and most realtors, they don't even mention or list spaces south of the 10 Freeway. Everyone told us we could never find the kind of place that we wanted for the price that we wanted.

But we visited a friend who was living in a 2-story apartment down here in Crenshaw, who was paying roughly the same amount as I was paying for my one bedroom in Hollywood.

And how did she manage that? The little inside secret, in her words: "Black people will work with you."

And, so, here we are.

We recently had a visit from a close friend and her kids. They are absolutely lovely souls, deeply intuned with their spiritual sides. Very warm and loving. My girlfriend's known these people for years.

But, as they drove through the streets approaching our home, one of their sons kept saying to himself over and over again "I'm going to get shot!". That is, until he realized that he wasn't just passing through the Black neighborhood, but was actually going to be spending some time there with the family friends that he knew so well.

Did I mention they're white? Do I even have to?

Anyway, after an unusually exhausting weekend, we opted to stay home last night to watch the Oscars.

About an hour into the show, our doorbell rang. We both looked at each other, as if to say "did YOU invite someone over?" Not knowing who this might be, I flicked on the porch light and opened the door.

Across the threshold, I found a Hispanic man who spoke extremely poor English. From what he could manage, the best I could figure was that he'd traveled through Honduras & Guatemala en route to Los Angeles, but, since then, he'd been sleeping on a bench in Leimert Park. He constantly mimed pulling his denim jacket tight & shivering, to indicate how cold he's been. He often jestured to the ground, and then made reassuring motions, saying "es no problemo". But, despite how many times I asked, he could never actually say what he wanted.

In all honesty, I found myself falling into that trap that everyone talks about, where you try to speak slower, as if distinct syllables will suddenly tranform into Spanish from English in mid air if they'd only slow down.

Neither of us had any idea who this man was. From the looks of him, he appeared to be a migrant worker of some sort. But all he could say was that he was cold sleeping in the park.

Now, this entire non-conversation took place across our fairly heavy duty screen door. I remember the day our landlord suggested to us that he install one. See, we have a little window near the top of our front door, and, as the landlord demonstrated, a tall guy like him could just come right up to it and peek inside.

It was only when I started to close the front door, apologizing the whole way, that the man FINALLY brought his hand to his mouth, as if he were eating something.

He wanted food.

He walked all the way from Leimert Park into a darkened suburban neighborhood and randomly picked our house to ask for assistance.

We'd just had dinner. I was just coming back from grocery shopping when the Oscar telecast had started.

Whenever I'd walked past a panhandler in Manhattan, I always remembered the Gospel scripture where Jesus said "whatever you have done to the least of my children, you have done to me."

But when I looked at this poor man on my newly acquired doorstep, I thought two things.

1. He was obviously much stronger than me & my girlfriend combined.
2. He was desperate. Desperate enough to knock on the door of a complete stranger in a strange country.

Desperate men commit desperate acts.

And now, I'm the man of the house.

I remember my right wing Republican brother (and father of two) once said, "it's hard to stand on your principles when you're responsible for other people's lives."

All I could say to the man was "I'm sorry".

I closed the door, locked it shut, and turned off the porch light.

And later, as I took out the trash, I remembered that the lock on the flimsy wooden gate that leads unto our driveway and backyard was broken. My mind was racing: just how desperate was he?

Desperate enough to camp out on our porch until someone eventually opened the door?
Desperate enough to sneak into our backyard and lay in wait?
Desperate enough to smash a window and just come in to take what he needed?

I put away the trash VERY quickly.

A few hours later, Crash won the Oscar for Best Picture of the Year.

Just a few days before, I heard a bunch of local film critics on the radio completely trash the film, saying that it's stereotypical and doesn't reflect the REAL Los Angeles, i.e. the Los Angeles that THEY live in. They didn't just dislike the movie. They hated it. They were offended by it.

If I had to guess, I'm willing to bet that every single one of those critics, along with most of the people who loathe Crash, are, politically, very liberal, and, ethnically, very White.

And while the movie may not reflect THEIR Los Angeles, it sure as Hell reflects mine.

Los Angeles in all of it's complexity. Beauty. Horror. Love. Hate. Joy. Pain. Wisdom. Ignorance. Mercy. Vengeance.

This is a City of Possibilities. Where everyone is capable of EVERYTHING, good and bad, at any given moment.

And to pretend otherwise is the highest, most onerous form of denial.



And, on a related note, for all those people who felt like Brokeback Mountain got robbed, and that it's a sign that Hollywood just really isn't ready to embrace such a landmark, watershed film, so they picked Crash, the safe choice - I have this to say:

Yes, Crash is the safe choice - it's a better movie.

Brokeback Mountain was beautifully composed and depicted, which is why, among the nominated directors, Ang Lee deserved to receive an Oscar for his work.

The original short story Brokeback was based on is, like, 15 pages or something. So, to be able to stretch that out into a 2 hour movie with authentic characters & real pathos is a true feat of screenwriting. Which is why, among the nominated screenwriters, Diana Osanna & Larry McMurty deserved to receive an Oscar for their work.

But that, my friends, is it. Because, at the end of the day, Brokeback Mountain is merely a portrait of two lives interrupted. A snapshot. A beautifully depicted, amazingly acted snapshot, but a snapshot, nonetheless.

It's NOT, in the strictest sense of the word, a story. It's incomplete, and, in the end, for me, at least, unsatisfying.

In fact, that's the way that I felt about all the nominations for Best Picture. In fact, Munich was so unsatisfying, I didn't even go see it. (bad joke, I know). Not to say that I didn't enjoy these films. On the contrary. I thought Capote was exquisite, and I wish there were more films in the same vein as Good Night and Good Luck. But they all left me somewhat wanting. And not in a good way.

All, that is, except Crash.

Of the films that were actually nominated, Crash is the best.

And, personally, I can't wait to see what Paul Haggis does next.

After he's done re-writing Casino Royale, that is.

Willie Lynch is Dead (1712?-2003)

There is No Willie Lynch
OK, this is something I've believed for years, so I'm glad to see someone has finally done a little research to support my theory.

For those of you who don't know, allegedly, there's a copy of a speech written by a slave holder named Willie Lynch to instruct his peers on ways to foster disunity among the slaves as a means of nonviolent pacification. The basic idea is that, if you're too busy fighting your brother, you won't worry about the boot of the oppressor on your neck.

OK, so, for the moment, let's ignore the rather absurd image of the keynote speaker at the Colonial Slavedrivers Convention.

This gentleman, Dr. William Jelani Cobb of Spelman College, points out the obvious inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and anachronisms in the letter itself in this column.

But, at a deeper level, when have young people ever needed someone to tell them to hate old people? When have men ever needed to be formally instructed to hate women? And when have people ever needed a coach to instruct them how to hate people who look different than them? The crux of the Willie Lynch argument is that, if it wasn't for the damned white man, all Black people everywhere would all just love each other and work in spiritual-humming unison towards our common goal.

I'm sorry, but that's simply rediculous. All you have to do is look at the example in the master's house itself. Even rich white people can't get along with each other. As long as human beings have individual & conflicting needs, there will never be a united hive mind where we all agree to do our part & not hate on each other. It's human nature.

But this gets at the larger problem with conspiracy theorists. I think alot of people would much rather that there actually was an all-powerful boogeyman who has some massive document stored on his laptop called toying_with_everyone_elses_lives_for_my_amusement.pps. The idea of a malavolent controller can be far more comforting than the alternative: a world where, sometimes, bad things happen that are completely outside of anyone's control. After all, a bad daddy is better than no daddy at all, right?

Willie Lynch is a fairy tale. Rather than expending our energy assigning blame, maybe everyone (black, white, etc.) should devote their time to doing the things WE ALREADY KNOW WE"RE SUPPOSED TO BE DOING, i.e. treating members of the opposite sex with at least courtesy to give folks the chance to earn our respect; honoring the elders who've been where you're going while respecting the young for their fresh energy; KNOWING (and I don't mean just saying it, KWOWING) that you have intrinsic value because you are a living, breathing human being and not worrying whether some other person is more valuable than you because they're lighter/darker/taller/shorter/skinnier/fatter/etc.

To Hell with Willie Lynch.

Keep working on yourself.