goodbye

I've done a bit of this before, African American Studies. I feel like these classes always end on a sort of humanistic high. At the end we all feel like things are going to be different- this time we're going to fix it all. Let's just stay like this. High on the ending feeling, the beginning feeling. Let's all love each other. Let's all love everything.

hm

The clouds were this patchwork canopy, low, and moving quickly southeast, covering the entire sky and all light blue under the blazing moonlight. And when the moon was between clouds, it was this solid white beaming down, and when the clouds passed over it, it would dim a bit and there would be this prismatic halo all around with red on the outside, brightening to white on the inside.

The clouds and the air were moving all around, and the way the clouds were, it seemed like the entire sky was moving, and the motion of the earth under my feet was something to feel instead of imagine. There were these bare black trees behind me, swaying in the wind, branches rubbing and slapping against eachother like toneless wind chimes.

For a while after that I just kind of leaned and stared up and blinked very slowly, and felt like there was this ineffable romance in me and that I had all these intimacies to share but that noone in the world could understand.

The Cosby Show

In some ways, I think the Cosby Show definitely ignored the racism that existed at the time, somewhat playing into the hands of racists whose ideas of blacks are that they should simply "get over it" and "work hard" and all of their problems will be solved. On the other hand, this positive, almost utopian image seems to have been necessary for the eventual rise of other, more realistic portrayals of African Americans within our society. The Fresh Prince and eventually The Wire are definitely a departure from the premise of the original show, but if the progression is stereotype -> unrealistic idealized version -> eventual adoption of realistic portrayals, then I think the goal has nearly been achieved.

Like I said

I've done a bit of this before, African American Studies. I feel like these classes always end on a sort of humanistic high. At the end we all feel like things are going to be different- this time we're going to fix it all. Let's just stay like this. High on the ending feeling, the beginning feeling. Let's all love each other. Let's all love everything.

The scope of my ambitions can never be contained with words. Nor can my actions ever catch it.

Thinking of all the time I wasted, I go crazy. I've only got forward to look. Backwards is always just so.

Time passed is opportunity wasted. Every decision is the denial of choice. Every action is the annhilation of the freedom to act. Ticking clocks chase tapping shoes along the path toward the future where something looms, and despite all my ambitions it seems far far away.

So far away.

 

Sometimes I wish I could thrust myself forward in time. Fast forward, or rewind. Undo and do everything. Live a perfect life. What does that mean? Didn't it take every action and inaction to make me into myself? Do I prefer it this way? Who would survive the rearranging of my life; it would not be me.

I had a friend request. It was from someone named Deirdre. It wasn't anyone I ever knew and I denied it. But it made me laugh or just smile. Some sick joke or coincidence. Just like everything it's a roll of the dice every moment. You can only position your chips. Sometimes you are only the spectator. Sometimes you can't even see the whole game. Are we pressing for knowledge? Are we just trying to get to the other end of the craps table? It's all the same random chance there as it is here.

Hah. Screw the cynicism and the obtuse conjectural bullcrap. What I mean is this: I want everything in the world, and now I have to go get it.

despair You'll try, harder and harder, to make yourself happy. Yet food will have no taste, touch will have no sensation, there will be no warmth or any sort of feeling. The only feeling that seems real is hate. Everything. You. If you try hard enough, the despair will all turn to anger. You get angry at every failed remedy, and everything else. But mostly, you won't feel anything. And the worst is the lack of direction. As though if you just knew the way out, you could grope your way in that direction through the dark. But instead, you just sit. You're doing something that should make you happy. You're tired. Your body sags all around you. It's as though you're not even alive. "Depressive realism is the proposition that people with depression have a more accurate view of reality." -Wikipedia "We are no longer the same, you wiser but not sadder, and I sadder but not wiser, for wiser I could hardly become without grave personal inconvenience, whereas sorrow is a thing you can keep adding to all your life long, is it not, like a stamp or an egg collection, without feeling very much the worse for it, is it not." - Samuel Beckett "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -Charles Darwin Eventually, you give up. In letting go you free yourself to truly despair. In despair you embrace the only feelings that have been real to you. Your hate, turned inward, becomes something more, and compounds itself. You fall. You move down into the earth. You despair, and yet, as soon as it is acknowledged, truly known and truly believed, it becomes ridiculous. You smile. You laugh. You think, 'what was all the fuss about?' If only I believed it.

Cannabis

Some 8 billion dollars is spent yearly on domestic enforcement of marijuana's illegality. 2 billion dollars is the estimated uptake that a tax on marijuana would make the state of california. The state is estimated to produce 14 billion dollars worth of the drug annually.

There are rampant problems with the American police force, and the problems surrounding prison overcrowding are well-documented.

The reasons behind all of this are that the system is determined to enforce laws that appeal to the moral sense of a handful of Americans but is not in the legitimate interests of America or Americans.

The southern border.

The drug war is an abject failure, and it's hurting African Americans and Mexicans far more than middle class white americans. In Mexico, drug traffickers bring American guns back into Mexico and are the murder rate along the border is up to several people per day. Much like the prohibition of alcohol lead to powerful and extremely hardy mafia families, the prohibition of cannabis has lead to the creation of extremely well-armed and well-organized drug cartels.

Some 95% of the guns used by these cartels in mexico have been linked to the united states, and obviously around 100% of their funding comes from the US. This influx of illegal money has corrupted officials as high as the cabinet level in the mexican government, and police chiefs country wide are either corrupt or in extreme danger.

On Katrina

http://www.snopes.com/katrina/photos/looters.asp

I think this basically says all that is necessary about Katrina and African Americans. While I think it is unrealistic to expect massive amounts of community-level organization in preparation for disasters that may or may not ever happen, I think it's important for people to participate at these levels.

And anyway, I think it's possible that this may more accurately depict Katrina for most Americans: http://www.snopes.com/katrina/photos/disaster.asp

African american-ness

Before reading this chapter, I thought this debate was just a pointless semantic exercise that was not really worth addressing. Now that I have a bit more perspective, I can see that there is definitely more to it. The point of self-naming and racial identification is empowerment, and names have a historical link to oppression as well. I'm reminded of Roots...

For the most part, I think any questions about Barack's heritage are bullshit brought up to stir rancor or try attempt to satisfy the media's constant thirst for controversy. It seems to me that a news anchor who spends fifty percent of their time covering celebrities and the other half violent crimes is not likely to be talking about a person's African American heritage in order to explicate the intricacies of identity with the two identities implied.

The "Obama Watch"

Though it is painful to see how superficial and nitpicking most of the coverage of the Obamas as a family has been, I think the obvious conclusion, that they are functional and loving and normal, is something that much of america needs to see. I've talked earlier about how the simple example of a black political family not fulfilling any negative stereotypes and really succeeding is something that will make the country less racist just because the image is now ingrained into the public consciousness. I also think Obama's victory in the 2012 election is all but assured because this image will stick in peoples minds. Despite all the talk on the AM dial and in email forwards about the antichrist or secret muslim leanings, Obama will gain simply because these wild accusations will hold even less water than they did before.

Meanwhile, on the opposite end of the spectrum among blacks who did vote for Obama and among people who can now look up to his family as role models, I think it is absolutely groundbreaking that there is now -finally- a positive black public figure that did not come out of sports or entertainment.

The White Mainstream

An unfortunate relic of our evolutionary past is our propensity to characterize and type every person we see. People are pattern-seeking, and stereotypes were a useful tool for the nomadic people of the plains. They hadn't the time to really get to know the animal before they decided it was dangerous or edible. Suspicion is an instinct that was selected through evolution and is ingrained within people.

The White Mainstream is a series of goals that most white parents attempt to instill in their children. Suburban lifestyle, middle-class existence.

Myself

I'm a 23 year-old english major with authority issues, anxiety issues, and I am in this class to pick up an ECCE requirement. I've actually had a previous African American studies class called African American Women's literature. My career goals are actually in the medical field, so my coursework is split between chemistry and english, which actually works out much better for me as I am an extremely slow and deliberate writer who has a lot of problems hitting deadlines and producing.

I'm applying for medical school next april, fulfilling a dream that started a few years back when I dropped out of SIUE. I attended college after my high school graduation, but I never really got a real direction and should have probably never gone. I attended under many false assumptions, including the assumption that I would "find" a direction, and it wasn't until I had worked and lived on my own that I realized that college requires  commitment and the thing that you find isn't direction but the ability to work and live in spite of that lack. Life's a sandbox, as they say.

More on Obama's win

Nate Silver, an esteemed baseball statistician turned esteemed political statistician has done a ton of work on the 2008 election results. He recently did a presentation at TED where he talked about racism in the election. While he himself actually predicted that racism would be a non-factor in the election (whether he simply discounted the magnitude of its effect or had some other reasoning is unclear) he has also done retrospective analysis on exit polling data. His analysis took into account voters who actually told pollsters that race did factor into their decision  not to vote for Barack Obama, and his conclusion was that racism is predictable and treatable-in his words "solvable" just like any other problem.

In addition, in his conclusion he talks about Obama becoming even more electable in 2012 because the simple presence of an African-American president whose election did not destroy the country should make people less racist. Naturally he won't have the numbers to back it up for a few years.

www.fivethirtyeight.com

Electoral Politics and Party Identity and Ingroup Morality

Moral Foundation theory deals with inborn centers of morality in order to find commonalities between people of different cultures. There are five delineated areas of morality highlighted by this analysis and they are Harm/Care, Fairness/Reciprocity, In-group/loyalty, Authority/respect, and Purity/sanctity. These are universal, however what is found in research is that different cultures value them with different magnitudes. So, for instance (and this is a made up example), Japanese culture values loyalty most highly, whereas the culture of the United States values harm most highly, so people within the two are likely to behave differently overall.

In actuality, most cultures value Harm and Fairness highest above all others. An analysis of these traits was done on the two political parties in the US, and it found that while both parties value harm and fairness highly, democrats give much lower values to authority, in-group loyalty, and purity. This is consistent with the idea that democrats are more diverse, and that they are more socially liberal.

Other analyses have been done that find interesting results such as a split among democrats between Clinton and Obama that correlates to emphasis on loyalty=Clinton, whereas emphasis on fairness=Obama.

While either party can be seen as ascending or descending in relevance at any time, it seems quite unlikely that the democrats are more likely to fracture than the republicans.