Jobs & Justice - DC, 10.15.2011

{for pictures, click here.}

I arrived at the Mall around 11:30am, thinking I’d missed the march itself. Actually, it hadn’t started. Speakers were still speaking, folks were still gathering.

I noticed the youth first. They seemed ubiquitous, some in marching bands, others rhythmically shouting “Free DC!” as they made their way through the crowd. Black youth. I had to struggle to find whitefolks--one of the radio personalities cracked a joke about that from the stage a little later on.

stirring the pot

saw this via facebook today:



by force or otherwise, many great-to-the-nth-power grandparents and other ancestors of black folk were also the result of mixed-race unions. however, due to societal conventions or just straight up slave status, they had to stay "black"--unless they could pass or you were in louisiana or something like that.

however, given a choice, we don't necessarily know how they would have identified.

who would they have married?
who would we be/what would we look like as a result?

without all the one-drop rules and slave codes, i wonder if black identity in america would have emerged more along the lines of various latin@ cultures or the métis of canada. and let's not forget that whitefolks have lost quite a bit of history and ethnic identity by being lumped into the american salad bowl.

the parents' consciousness is also a factor. if you wanna just be "american", ok.  if you have a deeper understanding around your family history/identity and participate in your various cultural traditions, a different understanding might emerge. 

i also noticed that this trailer seems to focus on african-european parentage.  i'm told there's a whole other conversation that happens around having two parents of color (e.g., bi-cultural parentage among west indians, (afro) latin@/african-american, asian/african, etc.) that often gets overlooked in the typical american obsession with black/white relations. 

either way, it looks like an interesting documentary, and--given the changing demographics of this nation--something we need to begin talking about. 

amen & ashe

from 2002.

let's keep connecting those dots, folks.

...but am i really american?

"american" is a brand spanking new identity. one that is only about 230-400 yrs old for whitefolks (mayflower status proper), and MAYBE about 145 yrs old for blackfolks.

put this up against the millenia human beings have been on this planet.

this is one of many reasons songs like this - while i understand the attempt, sentiment, and meaning - frustrate the hell outta me.



in my opinion, this is one of the major differences between descendants of voluntary immigrants and the descendants of enslaved africans and indigenous american peoples (continentally speaking).

it is not a bad difference. you want a better life, i'm all for it.  come on thru and get your piece of the pie.

but while songs, imagery and sentiments like this may do wonders for soothing white guilt--especially when being sung sweetly by a woman of color (yeah, i said it. run tell dat.)--i don't know that they do much to address the cat-back-raising complexities the statement, "i am an american" holds for those of us who have...um...complicated relationships with this place.

or maybe i'm just being an angry black lady again.

i dunno.

oh, henry.

apparently, skip gates is at it again.

having read this in full, i realize i don't have the desire to go fully in on this white supremacy - in the theoretical/academic sense - apologist.

as sista jo so aptly said, "...and this is precisely why they champion him. He tells their version of our story"; a perfect example of what happens when the hunter (or the hunter's minion) writes the history instead of the lion. 

i do, however, wish to point out a few things.

Advocates of reparations for the descendants of those slaves generally ignore this untidy problem of the significant role that Africans played in the trade, choosing to believe the romanticized version that our ancestors were all kidnapped unawares by evil white men, like Kunta Kinte was in “Roots.” The truth, however, is much more complex: slavery was a business, highly organized and lucrative for European buyers and African sellers alike.

right about the business (kinda), wrong about the reparations.

from everything i've ever seen, the common ground in the case for reparations is the disproportionate contribution free slave labor made to the bloated wealth america enjoys today.  that's what we're owed for. period.

to paraphrase another brilliantly obvious twitter observation, africa didn't profit from the slave trade. as with any other capitalist power move, a few elites profited from the slave trade - which ain't the same thing. the maafa initiated a severe brain drain that continues to this day.

most regular african folks just suffered.  just like the enslaved folks here.

moving on...

For many African-Americans, these facts can be difficult to accept. Excuses run the gamut, from “Africans didn’t know how harsh slavery in America was” and “Slavery in Africa was, by comparison, humane” or, in a bizarre version of “The devil made me do it,” “Africans were driven to this only by the unprecedented profits offered by greedy European countries.”

But the sad truth is that the conquest and capture of Africans and their sale to Europeans was one of the main sources of foreign exchange for several African kingdoms for a very long time. Slaves were the main export of the kingdom of Kongo; the Asante Empire in Ghana exported slaves and used the profits to import gold. Queen Njinga, the brilliant 17th-century monarch of the Mbundu, waged wars of resistance against the Portuguese but also conquered polities as far as 500 miles inland and sold her captives to the Portuguese. When Njinga converted to Christianity, she sold African traditional religious leaders into slavery, claiming they had violated her new Christian precepts.

speak for yourself, dude. these facts aren't difficult to accept, they are what they are. for anyone who's studied this history, we know that whitefolks did any and everything in their power to win over whoever they could to feed their machine, and some africans played along.

it's known that slave trading has occurred in africa since the arabs came and conquered colonized spread islam all up and through west africa.  before that, there were inter-ethnic conflicts. everyone who's ever read  chancellor williams understands that it's been eons since there was anything resembling african unity in a social sense, despite the various examples of cultural unity.

however, that slavery was nothing like chattel slavery in the west. typically, slavery was not a permanent condition, did not render you less than human, and did not apply to your children and their children.  enslaved people had a particular set of rights, and harsh masters were sometimes shamed socially.

no matter what these african monarchs and elites may have been allowed to see on a slave ship or when they arrived in europe, it is possible that they had no cultural/psychological grasp of how dehumanizing the systems of black enslavement were in europe and the americas.  it is possible that they literally could not even imagine it, given their life experience.   

but even if i give gates the benefit of the doubt here, the bottom line is that talkin all this trash without even a glance to the equally, er, "complex" history of arabia/islam in west africa is foolish, at best.

oh, i'm sorry. i forgot.  you're just looking to make another drop in the soundbite bucket of "post-racial" america. my bad. 

then there was this gem:

And there were thousands of former slaves who returned to settle Liberia and Sierra Leone. The Middle Passage, in other words, was sometimes a two-way street. Under these circumstances, it is difficult to claim that Africans were ignorant or innocent [emphasis added].

skip, sweetheart? the middle passage was never, ever a two way street. it was a one-way ticket to hell. whether that hell was reached through "willingly" (think of the social/economic/psychic pressures here...) relinquishing one's culture, language and spirit to supplant them with european ways, or being stifled in the cargo hold of the henrietta marie.

i see what you were trying to say, but...very poor choice of words.

now, the absurd conclusion:

Fortunately, in President Obama, the child of an African and an American, we finally have a leader who is uniquely positioned to bridge the great reparations divide. He is uniquely placed to publicly attribute responsibility and culpability where they truly belong, to white people and black people, on both sides of the Atlantic, complicit alike in one of the greatest evils in the history of civilization. And reaching that understanding is a vital precursor to any just and lasting agreement on the divisive issue of slavery reparations.

obama is uniquely positioned to understand the insanity of race relations in america. i believe that.  but all that there? you're trying too hard.

it's glaringly obvious that you'd do well to undo some of your monocultural, classist, seemingly "objective" thinking before attempting to speak on this again.  otherwise, you're only convincing the same whitefolks who have used this same, short-sighted argument time and again to deny their role in perpetuating and profiting from a system that traumatized the entire world.


for more on this, check out:
kwame shabazz
problemchylde
brother jesse's blog
the root (by michael gomez)
the griot (by dr. boyce watkins)
nigerian village square (by paul adujie)

sorry, kid, no toys for you...

this is the latest article i've seen in a rather disturbing trend: some charities are excluding the children of undocumented immigrants* in their xmas programs.

so it's come to this?

instead of examining the real reasons for immigration...

instead of tearing down that insipid wall at the border...

instead of focusing on growing homelessness, hunger and unemployment for all of us...

we're just gonna be all grinch-y about who gets toys and who doesn't and make folks feel worse about themselves that way?

yeah.  that's really christlike, y'all.



*no person is illegal. also see no one is illegal - vancouver. some of the same factors are at play in the u.s. argument over immigration...

oh, yes.

evan handler's "america, i love you. americans on the other hand..."

i can show you better than i can tell you...

i should have known it would be easy to fall in love in a place like this.

vintage everything...




truths wrapped in myths wrapped in mysteries...






good times and debauchery



juxtaposed with sheer architectural beauty...





the pleasures & pains of the ancestors*






and the cultural triumphs of their descendants





please trust me when i say i will return. within hours of my arrival, new orleans found her way to my heart and made herself at home.


*the current site of the omni new orleans hotel used to be known as the st. louis exchange hotel. slaves were sold there. the second photo is a detail of congo square.

some notes for white supremacists

in memory of dr. george tiller, the peruvian earth warriors, ken saro-wiwa, the navajo and hopi of black rock mesa, my egun, and all those who have suffered at the hands of the insanity that is the white man's burden, whatever its manifestation.


do not be angry at us because the schemes and plans of your ancestors failed to exterminate those you find "undesirable".

it is not our fault the lies you've cultivated are crashing down around you.

the sooner you realize that those in positions powerful enough to affect the course of the world--who looked like you, not me, and who trumpeted your values, not ours--are the ones who exported us around the globe in an effort to make their lives easier; created the artificial borders; and forced you to die in their wars then abandoned you, the sooner you'll understand our enemy is a common one.

i admit that i am a fan of whitefolks getting their shit together before they come talk to us. thanks to the inordinate privilege built up over the 500 years since columbus sailed the ocean blue, it won't get better until you talk to one another and get the story straight.

because you won't believe us. you never have--well, maybe when we were the only people who could roundly educate you (remember kemet? timbuktu?). but not since. these days, you generally behave like genius-level--but wholly ungrateful--pupils.

please understand: you cannot stop the return to sanity and balance. the universe always rights itself. you could dilute, but not suppress, our bloodlines, languages, spirits and cultures.

the truth is slow, but dependable. it's time for new paradigms.

i apologize for the cognitive dissonance this must cause, but you will, quite simply, have to deal with it.

hating us won't help. globally speaking, there are more folks who look like us, and we're beginning to realize how illusory the world you've built around, over, and through us is.

denial won't help either. technology only continues to upset your deceptions and confirm our truths.

let go.

it's ok.

really.

it isn't about marriage. seriously.

thinking about the marriage equality issue again...

frankly, it's time to reframe the argument.

every article i see on the topic seems to be progressively devolving into nitpicky, almost juvenile squabbling. when that happens, you have to wonder: what are people really angry about?

if you can agree that marriage is, essentially, a familial contract, it's obvious that these contracts provide very specific bureaucratic privileges which can also tie into a certain amount of class privilege*.

contracts aren't about gender or religion, they're simply contracts, right? so any two consenting adults should have the right to enter into said contract.

to be fair, everyone--heterosexual or otherwise--involved in these contracts should be calling them civil unions. 'cause that's what they are.

let's not forget that the church doesn't marry you. the preacherman's (or woman) power is invested by the state, even if you don't have the marriage ceremony at the courthouse.

i have not heard one person argue that churches/spiritual orgs should change their practices, and if i did, i would call him/her an idiot. from a religious standpoint, marriage can most certainly be defined as a covenant between a man and a woman. i may not agree with you, but we can coexist. that's cool.

can you see how, when you start sifting through the messy details, marriage begins to emerge as something else entirely?

in my humble opinion, it is beginning to seem that the institution of marriage defined as a heterosexual relationship between one man and one woman may be one of the last tangible vestiges of the "america is and always has been a christian nation" myth.

when many of these state constitutions and statutes were being written, the myth was accepted as fact by the rich, white, (presumably) heterosexual males who wrote them.

furthermore, there are many people in the mainstream culture (which is already feeling threatened) who cannot abide the debunking of this myth.

maybe, on a very visceral level, folks are mad because the collective consciousness that does not subscribe to the western european, patriarchal context will not go away. understandably, those who are fully invested in that context--by birth or acculturation--are fighting to hold it up in all its oppressive, abusive, insanity-creating glory.

listen. many sane people have been trying to break this to you for years, but apparently it still has not sunken in. let me reiterate:

while the first europeans to step on what is now called american soil may have been fundamentalist protestants and catholics, many of the colored people who were subdued, captured and otherwise oppressed by those "founders" lied to you. they feigned adoption of your god in order to ensure their survival.

the indigenous people of this land were not christian.

the west africans who came over on the slave ships were not christian. it took generations--in the colonies as well as in the caribbean--to even nominally stamp out the memory of those traditions, and they were still never fully eradicated.

and so on.

to you, the great melting pot is a proud accomplishment. to many of us "others", it is a euphemism for cultural erasure.

as wade davis said, "other cultures are not failed attempts at being you. they are unique manifestations of the human spirit." i would venture that that statement applies to human sexuality as well.

again i ask: what are we really arguing about?



*marriage, for many upper and middle class folks (or those aspiring to the middle/upper class) equals legitimacy. our society further acknowledges the legitimacy of this contract with all the benefits mentioned above. simply put, married people are special. if you make them less special in any way--since us little folks in a big, capitalist world so rarely come to understand our true worth beyond these kinds of benefits--it's a threat. see how that works? part of how they distract us & turn us against one another...

you can take the people outta africa... (part 2)

ok. so i saw this:
('scuse the song's language...)



and this (would have embedded, but b. scott's fabulousness was jackin up the blogroll...), and it made me think that if you slow it down and change the lower body movements, it kinda looks like...




i'm just sayin.

what part of illegal don't you understand?

i'm digging this.

(unfortunately i can't literally "digg" it 'cause you've gotta sign up or something & i'm tired of arbitrarily signing up for crap, etc.)

i've been saying for years that america's kicking itself in the ass by refusing to properly educate its own kids simply because some of them don't look like kids we think should/need to be educated and/or are worthy of education.

...but we'll come up with all kinds of programs to get folks from elsewhere to do what we refuse to teach our young people to do. people who often take advantage of the opportunity to better themselves, then go back home.

it's really very simple: either you give everybody a true shot at the opportunity you're always going on about, or be honest and say it ain't here--unless you can pay for it.

it costs a lot more to keep someone in prison for 20-30 years than it does to provide them with a college education and/or job training. so what's the problem? who wouldn't want as many productive citizens as possible?

oh, right.

get outta line, and we'll toss you in jail with the quickness, age notwithstanding.

don't hate.

i tuned in to nightwolf this evening, and he was talking about the intersections of black folks and native americans in the context of the cherokee freedmen struggle.

i am grateful to him for his truth-telling, including his willingness to acknowledge the pre-colombian contact afrikans had with native americans.

i grew up knowing i had native american ancestry. later, i was able (pushed, really) to connect with it spiritually.

however, i do not know which tribe intersected my family. considering my maternal great-grandmother's ancestry, it was probably the rappahannock.

i also grew up with the implication that even if we could find out about that side of the family, it didn't really matter. they probably wouldn't want to acknowledge us anyway.

the same story over and over again.

interesting how everyone's trying to one-up themselves on the ladder of white supremacy or fight for the scraps from massa's table, forgetting that we all came from africa.

black folks, no matter where we are found, are the most concrete evidence of that.

(i am africa man, original)

it's hurtful that some indians would shun us, considering our shared struggles and history. when we knew who the enemy truly was, we helped each other.

it can be difficult to see how eager folks are to distance themselves from us.

we're not indian enough
we're not spanish enough
we're not white enough
and, now, we're not even african enough.

unbreakable
broken too easily...

the list goes on.

but, in the end?
we survived the whitefolks the best way(s) we knew how. just like you.
we lost many in the struggle. just like you.
and we're still losing them. just like you.

it just so happens that it was that much harder for us to blend in or pass or be accepted as civilized.

for the strength of our genes, we've paid some heavy costs.

regardless, i'm going to hold my head up high, 'cause we don't need any more hate, inferiority complexes, or half assed, fetishistic love.

up, you mighty race...

the jeffersons

no, not weezy and george.

tom and sally.

did they love each other? really?

i think ms. gordon-reed does a good job of breaking it down so it can forever be broke.

get over it, whitefolk. jefferson was a product of his times.

unitarian or not, brilliant framer or not, he was still a rich white man who owned folks, and didn't think all that highly of 'em, either.

and sally, well, i suppose she did the best she could with what she had. as the last paragraphs note:

Judging Hemings’s feelings about Jefferson proves more difficult, because she exercised no legal power over him. While she did abandon her plan to stay in France and then came home to live and have children with him, Hemings may well have had second thoughts about leaving her large and intensely connected family back home. Several of their great-grandchildren explain that Hemings returned to America because Jefferson “loved her dearly,” as if that meant something to her. Upon their return, Hemings’s relatives, both enslaved and free, behaved as if Jefferson was an in-law of sorts. After he died in 1826, Hemings left Monticello with several of Jefferson’s personal items, including pairs of his glasses, an inkwell, and shoe buckles, which she gave to her children as mementos.

While marriage is generally taken as a proof of love between a given man and woman, the quality of the relationship between couples who are not married, or cannot marry because of legal restrictions, may be better than that of men and women whose unions are recognized by law.

The most that can be said is that Hemings and Jefferson lived together over many years and had seven children, four of whom lived to adulthood. Jefferson kept his promises to Hemings, and their offspring got a four-decade head start on emancipation, making the most of it by leading prosperous and stable lives. That, I think, is about as much as one can expect from love in the context of life during American slavery.

on: "gay" marriage

this is one of those things i thought about speaking on, but felt like it was being bandied about in so many ways in so many places, why bother?

but, lemme sum it up so it's outta my head.

your state issues your marriage license, not any church.

no license (from the state), and you're not married. plain & simple.

according to the 14th amendment of the u.s. constitution, everyone in the u.s. has equal protection under the law. this had to be added because of the (ahem) problem posed by having a bunch of free black folk around after the civil war.

therefore, if we truly have separation of church and state, as noted by another one of those pesky constitutional amendments--the first one, in fact--the issue of "gay" marriage isn't an issue at all.

any two consenting adults--whatever that means in your state--should be allowed to enter into a state-recognized contract of marriage if they so choose.

period.
end of story.

whether or not your religious/spiritual institution will perform the ceremony that joins you in the eyes of the god of your understanding is for them to decide, and very few people are arguing that.

but to the judge and the irs, it ought to all be the same.

i don't see the problem.*

thank you and good night.


*of course, i didn't even start in on all the moral/social/spiritual stuff. i decided to keep it short & sweet. in any case, i think the only way to stop this mess dead in its tracks is to remind people that we do, in fact, HAVE a constitution. that seems to have gotten lost in the sauce about 5-7 yrs ago. that document IS the law of the land, and unless and until that's changed--let's hope we haven't gone that insane--we're essentially fiddling while rome's burning. angry at gay marriage when you can't buy food or keep a house? get the fk outta here...

what's natural, what isn't, the ownership of african tradition, and other related obscurities

i want to speak to my african traditional religion (atr) folks for a minute.

for the most part, i don't know who reads this thing. there could be a few of y'all out there, and i hope you comment, because i think it's high time that a dialogue is started--among priests and aborishas (i.e., non-priesthood level practitioners/shrine-keepers) alike.

several months ago i met a priest and her family who are doing the work to unify yoruba practitioners and other atr folks. they have already traveled to several countries to observe various diasporan practices and plan to use our common beliefs to strengthen our people and our communities. they essentially wish to illuminate the fact that the lanugages we speak and the names for the orisa only differ as a factor of, as i like to say, when you got off the boat. the source is the same. their philosophy branches out to the understanding that, at our core, we are all africans, there is only one god(dess)/creator entity, and we all ought to be striving towards wholeness and unity.

there was no mention as to whether or not the people they are seeking to unify should pass a paper bag test, nor was there mention around who they should be sleeping with.

typically, when i meet continental atr priests--at least in the yoruba tradition-- their first concerns are iwa pele (character) and knowledge. in other words, are these people who are truly living up to the standards and dictates of their ori, ifa, and the orisa, or are they power mongering? were they trained properly? do they know the proper rituals, prayers, etc.? their level of ase and understanding doesn't rest on their heterosexuality or degree of "blackness"--phenotypical or otherwise. it's about living right.

diasporan atr folks can be quite different. there are plenty who think any white american priest is an interloper or culture vulture. the views on homosexuality are varied. some are ok with it, as long as they choose black partners. others are vehemently against it, claiming it's unnatural and that none of our ancestors were ever gbltq until they were exposed to the culture and depravity of europeans.

there are a few things wrong with this.

because of our unique history in the united states, it can be easy to forget that there are some whitefolks who are "blacker" than african americans (see: passing). hence, it is certainly possible that some white americans were born with ties to african spiritual lineages and could be charged to do some ancestral "clean up", so to speak.

in my ile, the importance of egbe is acknowledged along with ori, ancestors (egun/egungun) and the orisa. your egbe consists of friends from previous lives, e.g., adopted family members, former spouses, close family friends, etc. all those of good character who walk with us in the spirit world are acknowledged.

who is anyone to tell me that i cannot pray or make offerings of gratitude to a white person who may have helped one of my blood ancestors to freedom? what about the relationships forged in the era when just about every poor person wanting to come to america was condemned to indentured servitude?

we do not always know everything about who walks with us. the spirit is what lives on, not the societal attitudes and contradictions.

now, that's not to say that there aren't pimps and players out there. there are. but they cross all kinds of ethnic and cultural lines. there are plenty of black priests who, in the name of uplifting folks, are perpetuating the same westernized dichotomies, patriarchy, -isms, and psychological menace that whitefolks have thrown upon us. and it's a problem on the continent, too.

as far as the homosexuality issue, i ask: how can we know?

we in the diaspora are now several generations removed from africa. even in brazil, where africans were imported into the late 19th century, you'd probably have to look back to a great-great grandparent or further to find someone from the continent.

since african history is oral and tribe/clan-based, how can we say that there were no gbltq people or communities, particularly when clear gender roles dominated so much of african life. males and females had different puberty rites and, often, separate living quarters for much of their lives.

along with that, several orisa are known to be androgynous "gender benders". even clearly "masculine" and "feminine" spirits often have attributes and paths where they are considered of the opposite gender.

if we follow the logic of the spirituality, if someone is born with the ase of one of these orisa, how can we say it's "unnatural" that they grow into a glbtq identity?

riddle me that, y'all.

honoring the red

as soon as fall nears--i.e., from september, peaking around thanksgiving, and winding down at the winter solstice--i become increasingly aware of my native american ancestors. i think because of the half-truths and flat out lies surrounding thanksgiving combined with all the cultural misappropriation.

i also begin to feel mournful as the weather turns cold, but recognize that it is not my sadness. i guess this comes from losing so many to the winter marches west during the forced migrations.

at any rate, it occurred to me to place something for them on my egun altar for thanksgiving--or, as many indigenous people refer to it, the day of mourning: some beautiful indian corn i got at the farmer's market, cornmeal, and tobacco (which i keep for my ancestors anyway since so many of them smoked).

they have touched me in dreams and waking visions. a woman taught me a "heartsong". when i almost forgot it, she came and taught me again. i have remembered it ever since.

i used to have dreams of a shaman dressed in a flannel shirt and overalls who would do readings for me.

in another dream, a group of men i somehow recognized as "cousins" invited me into their circle to drum with them. i politely refused, thinking i'd be intruding, but they insisted. i did not drum with them, but, upon waking, i immediately wished i had. i thought, "they were family...". to this day, my desire to own a drum hasn't left me.

this morning i offered their gifts with a prayer close to this one:

to my ancestors who walked this land before me, i give thanks. many of us do not know your names or your faces, but we know your blood runs through our veins. we thank you.

please do not be mournful: be joyous! come and teach us, let us learn from you about caring for the earth and honoring you. come into our dreams so we may learn your ways. we love you.

i thank you for your guidance and the work you do in my life. may you continue to be a force of goodness and strength.

ase.

the very particular way the wind whistled past my ears as i walked back home signaled their acceptance.

they have so much to teach us, and many of them think they have been forgotten. but just as many native people are going back to the ways of their ancestors, so are we.

we remember
we remember
we remember...

maferefun egungun

the african burial ground is now a national monument. give thanks.

call me cynical...

well, i had a really good blog idea waking up from some dreams this morning, but it escapes me now...

so i guess i'll go off a conversation i had with honey yesterday...

i'm wondering if being an american is something of a myth--at least for everyone except for wasp-y mayflower descendants.

in 1776, my ancestors were either still in africa or still slaves.

in 1920 when white women earned the right to vote, my ancestors were still left out.

just when my ppl were being freed, hawaiians were coming under fire.

the great movement west will always be remembered as a time of mourning for native americans.

and, for the record, mexicans are only crossing the borders that crossed them first.

i could go on.

i understand that i am american by virtue of being born here. i am culturally and linguistically american.

but then again, my culture is different. and so's my language--particularly when i'm off work. the history of my people in this nation is a blink of the eye compared to their history across the ocean.

many others could say the same.

and unlike the irish, italians, and other europeans who were demonized when they first arrived, blending in was never an option for my folks.

so...were we ever really a melting pot?
is our shared history a cultural myth?
what really unites us as "americans" aside from the accident of our births?

i'm beginning to think that the things the media & other culture-makers say unite us as "americans" are really things that unite us as human beings--things that would give pause to any group of sentient, dissimilar human beings sharing space.

like most ppl of color, i'm always aware of the undercurrent of second opinions when "uniting" events occur (read: wars, 9/11, etc.). we know that things tend to affect "us" differently than they do everyone else.*

i think that the racial, socioeconomic, and class barriers we see today will only begin to erode once americans begin to view their history/histories holistically.

we have to be totally honest about the fact that different groups have developed at different times & in different spheres of influence. maybe then we can begin to live up to the ideals that were set down on paper 300+ years ago.

however, as long as we only see and understand history in footnotes and snippets, we'll continue to think that--since 1776--this has simply been one nation, indivisible, with liberty & justice for all.



*never forget that the media had no problem calling hundreds of ppl "refugees" for several days after hurricane katrina.