Not enough Michelles to go around

Offering immediate reactions (and connections) here to Obama's better half giving AC360 an "exclusive" interview.

He may not win the nomination, but she gets my proverbial vote.

And here's why: she's setting what seems to be a woefully rare example to two daughters what it takes to keep a black man happy, and in check.

Dare I say, Michelle Obama is today's Coretta.

How many strong, capable, collected and calculating black women like her will be out there for my son to choose from when his time to choose comes?

Only divine providence could have turned the humbly-born Michelle Robinson into a regal candidate to become First Lady.

Down here on the ground, where I live, there's no evidence of a smart black princes refinery in operation.

I suspect the "talent" pool will be shallow when the II decides it's time to settle down with one woman. No doubt, that's why I take such interest and observing and encouraging the girls his age in my god-blessed inner circle.

No doubt their daddies are sizing up the II's potential at every opportunity, as well. As a jet-setting romance novelist and custom jeweler said to me yesterday over a getting reacquainted lunch gushed to me after a glimpse of his picture, "He's going to have his pick."

But "his pick" of what?

Over lunch, I got schooled on the "Jacks and Jills" society of well-off black kids in big cities who were groomed to be solid middle-class (at least) citizens who got good grades, good jobs and paired off to start families during the '50s, '60s, '70s and '80s.

Is that a tradition that needs rekindling?

If it isn't, I fear that the majority of 40-something men like me will wind up with grandchildren who don't proudly bear the same last name and wouldn't recognize them if they bumped into them on the street.

What if standards of decency and abstinence decline further than they have already.

When it comes to finding a Michelle generations from now, the pickings could be mighty slim.

Jeremiah Wright, meet James Earl Ray

hello. is this thing on?

In my mind, Obama'a former pastor and MLK's convicted murderer will go down in history the same way: as dream-killers.

A sniper shot King down in Memphis while he was rallying trash collectors for their civil rights. The self-righteous and opportunistic Rev. Wright shot down Barac's Presidential aspirations with his lengthy sideshow at a meeting of Detroit's NAACP faithful this Sunday night. CNN showed it live and replayed it over and over. In its entirety.

If not for Wright's presence there, that event wouldn't have drawn flies. Sadly, times and publicity-starved personalities conspired, once again, to sabotage a people's campaign.

Thanks, Rev. Anthony, for luring Jeremiah to Judas's pulpit.

Thanks, Rev. Wright, for making it easy for me to answer the question, "Why didn't Obama win" when my young, idealistic son inevitably asks.

You and your pitiful grab for the spotlight. 

What did your song and dance achieve, other than serving the oppositions' aims? What did you really have to get off your chest that couldn't wait?

What did your bombastic display of misplaced emotion do to uplift anyone but yourself?Worthy beliefs die tonight because you needed attention.

Satisfied?

 

Hoop Dreams

I'm sitting here watching CNN's exultant reports on the Pennsylvania primary (they say Hillary's winning) and I'm coming to grips with the harsh truth that winning this nomination probably won't be a slam dunk for Obama.

This isn't to say he can't score on some sort of allez-oop, fade-away jumper or left-handed layup or buzzer-beating tip-in. 

Pardon the sports analogies. But they apply here.

Barack himself has spoken publicly about how playing basketball helped him connect to his blackness as a juvenile growing up on the isolating Hawaiian islands. And I'm trying to grasp the significance of my 4-year-old's insistence on bringing one of his basketball's every time we visit the neighborhood playing, which is often over-run with black babies who are scarcely supervised in their play and often outnumber the mamas who brought them there by 4-to-1. 

Tonight after school, the only other "apparent" black father of one (some) of the lil rascals on our playground was outnumbered by at least 20-to-1. My son dribbled around intrepidly on the periphery until the black-to-white ratio thinnned out. He sensed the right time to engage the remaining crowd.

On top of that, he insisted on an extra 15 minutes of shootaround in the backyard before dinner. He's grown so good at running jumpers since Christmas that he's pleading for me to raise the rim, which he ably knuckles, higher.

Hillary's victory speech is winding down now. She says 100 mayors in Pa. endorsed her.

Well, now wonder she won. I wouldn't set foot outside of the Pittsburgh airport mall (except for a smoke) into the Quaker state sunshine if you paid me. What for?

She just said something. "Will we take back the White House?"

Draw your own conclusions.

(Man, does that "sister" who wears pink and that bleached backswept natural and spouts scripts from the conservative side irk me?)

Obama's up to bat next.

Ouch. Even worse: mixed sports analogies.

I'm biased. So whatever he has to say, in losing, will be persuasive and encouraging.

I'm just thinking long term... what do I tell my boy if the math-tested rightful candidate to face McCain doesn't win?

So far, they haven't kept score at his kiddie soccer or T-ball games?

How do I explain how to deal when you feel cheated?

 

Gangsta Pull-Ups

Late shift again. Home in time, thank goodness, for my "Boondocks" fix.

Didn't laugh as much as normal.

The whole episode centered around gay rappers who are in the closet, and yet still idolized by little black boys because their mixed signals are irresistibly impossible to decipher.

It made me itch because I can't firmly draw the line yet when it comes to my 4-year-old's exposure to rap.  

He and I don't listen to it in the car. I feel bad when we just listen to a few snippets of the Steve Harvey show during the drive to pre-K because the hosts' diction is so ig'nant most times.

Mommy forbids rap of almost any sort here at the crib. "Welcome to Jamrock's" about the only exception; and then, that's when I'm out working in the yard.

My guilty pleasure is that night, every two or three months, when me and my ol' ass (almost 45) college roomie and I hit the streets for a couple hours. He bumps hip-hop constantly. He looked at  me like a fool the last time out and asked me, seriously, if I realized it was constantly available on the radio. 

Yes. And no.

It doesn't occur to me to tune into it on the daily.

But I notice how appealing the boy finds it. He's got these mad beat box skillz; origin unknown. And he's fixated on some web clips of his favorite NBA player; which include the sort of rap accompaniment we can only listen to (while mommy's cooking) with our headphones on. 

I like how he imitates the athletic exploits on our backyard court; but I don't want him to embrace Ludacris's lyrics to "Act A Fool".

Are boys better off in homes where rap (in its sorry, present form) is banned entirely? Or would you rather find a way to share rap's virtues (lacking as they are now) with your son; to keep things in perspective?

My dad drilled grilled groups like The Spinners, The O'Jays, Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes and Earth, Wind and Fire into my dome just by playing them. Not by force-feeding them.

I'll take any entree into that little boy's ear I can get. I'm just glad he know "jazz" when he hears it.

 

Insert rhrthmic clapping here...

Routinely, I rush home from my Monday 3-to-midnight shift to shake the world off and muffle my giggles at the latest episode of "The Boondocks".

What had me laughing the most at it tonight wasn't any one of the three warped portrayals of a mythical slave named Catcher (Catcha?) Freeman.

I'm still chuckling about the crude song that playing through the show's closing credits.

It went something like (sung acapella, mournful, gravely)

"clap clap clap clap
get our black asses out a' heeeeeeeeere!!

clap clap clap
won't get our black asses out a' heeeeeeere!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

clap clap clap
we sick of these shacklessssss!!!!!!!
we sick of these crackersssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

clap
just get our black asses outta hereeeeeeeee!!!!!!

Not sure I got the exact wording right. But you get the gist.

And what a profoundly simple and sarcasstic parody of those ol' Negro spirituals (which I treasure) and their plaintiff honesty.

All that our ancestors asked for themselves and their babies was freedom.

Singing simple songs _ when learnic to read lyrics was punishable by death _ helped them get over.

That sitcom got me thinking,. Again.

The average Black boy's concept of what slavery might/must have been like has to be so skewed nowadays it's absurd. Right?

You don't see any news of Black achievement (outside of sports or record sales) from as far back as three days ago being widely broadcast anywherer? Do you?

Asking a kid to wrap his head fully around the whole "slavery" concept won't be easy.

So what's the right way to say, 'Look. This is how they treat us," without coming off beaten, bowed or bitter?

Do you pick the scabs or let them be?

He's either going to be being taught thoroughly and thoughtfully about it, or he's not.

And if we're not properly impressing what slavery "means" on these 7th, 8th and 9th generations removed from its horrific lessons, will the 10th generation "remember" them at all?

Pause here. Go listen to Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley's "Confrontation" from his profound newest disc. Hone in on the declarations by Marcus Garvey mixed in.

That guy had a way with words.


I only bring all that up because there's going to come a time when I have to speak frankly, frequently about slavery with my son. The questions will come out of NOWHERE.

They'll make me wonder things I hadn't fully grasped myself.

Here's the comic irony: all three cartoon interpretations of the mythical slave-freer's center around a house negro who could care less about the field folk ('cept for that high=yalla temptress Jasmine Dupree) and could think of nothing more than having his "Massa" help him get his screenplay produced.

And here I am, spouting off simply for the sake of spurring conversation. That and trying to inspire more writing and filming and conversing about improving our sons' prospects.

Then again: maybe the ones who relied heavily on sad spirituals to get by deserve an echo.