Backlash from Black Americans

 

It used to be a kind of “family” secret.  Before Twitter and Facebook, we were able to keep the intra-community ugliness under wraps, more or less, while we shot each other with poison arrows via the grapevine.

Stacey Dash, star of the 90s hit movie, Clueless, announced her support of Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney last Sunday.  The beautiful actress of African American and Mexican descent appears to have been dumbstruck by the negative reaction to her choice by some African Americans on Twitter.

Superstar actor Samuel L. Jackson tweeted:

"Wait, did Stacey Dash Really endorse Romney today?! REALLY????! Is she CRA...........??!"

Non-celebrities weighed in with similar thoughts:

"You're an unemployed black woman endorsing @MittRomney. You're voting against yourself thrice. You poor beautiful idiot," tweeted one critic.

"Wait stacey dash is voting for romney? you get a lil money and you forget that you're black and a woman. two things romney hates," tweeted another.

"Still clueless," quipped another.

You see, there is a large segment of the black community that believes all black people should think, act and believe alike.  Obviously, that belief is held by many African Americans from all social and economic strata.  They don’t care how important you get, how much money you amass or what belief system appeals to you more; if you are black, you support blacks, period.

Stacey Dash has a net worth of $8 million, according to a Forbes list.  She has spent about half of her 46 years living and playing among the Hollywood glitterati.  It is not hard to imagine why fixing the economy would be at the top of her criteria when it comes to choosing the recipient of her presidential vote.

For me, it is hard to imagine that she wouldn’t be equally concerned about social issues.  Stacey wasn’t born with a silver spoon (or foot) in her mouth, hailing as she does from the Bronx.  But, hey, this is America and in America ALL Americans have the right to think and choose whichever way makes them comfortable.  For Stacey, it seems, she’d be more comfortable with Romney for the next four years because she believes he knows how to fix the economy.  It’s not like she didn’t vote for President Obama four years ago.

In a lot of ways, an independent thinker has a rough row to hoe in the black community.  When I decided to marry my WASP, Reagan Republican second husband, I was not oblivious to the snickers, sneers and whispers behind the brown hands of some of my black friends.  I just chose to ignore them, something I learned to do early on in order to survive in a sometimes hostile community.

Just as Kermit the Frog of Muppet fame croons about it “Ain’t Easy Being Green,” it takes a strong set of gonads to go your own way among some African Americans.

Before I started working full-time for a living, I was free to focus my political energies entirely on social justice issues.  After spending a few years working my way up the career and salary ladders, economic issues began to rise on my list of priorities.  Much like everyone else around me, I was eager to retain the things I worked so hard to get. I listened far more carefully to arguments for financial stability and I bristled at the thought of yet another percentage point of tax.

Enter the disparaging term “sell-out.”  The same people who marched and ranted against the Establishment in the name of equal access to opportunity for minorities, now turned on me for getting that access and wanting to keep it.

Yes, I will admit to being suspicious of black conservatives.  I don’t quite understand their priorities.  I wonder if they understand fully their dubious welcome among the conservative base.  Are they delusional?  Or is it that they are hopeful?  Perhaps just selfish.  All such thoughts do cross my mind.

But, doggone it, men and women of all colors and creeds have given their lives and continue to do so in order for Americans to have the right to think for themselves and speak their own personal truths.  Stacey Dash should be able to publicly support anyone she chooses without being attacked. 

Then again, that too is part of what it means to be free.  America, the beautiful.

Euphemisms: who needs them?

 

The other day I got involved in a Facebook exchange about the Presidential campaign in general, which was triggered by a discussion of the October 3, 2012 debate between the President and Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

I asserted that one of the explanations I’ve heard for President Obama’s unimpressive performance that night was that he was frustrated – possibly even angry – by Mitt Romney’s exuberant and repetitive lies.  In fact, I said he was spewing lies.

The person I was “talking” with told me she thought the words “spewing” and “lies” are loaded and designed to “fan the flames” of negative, unproductive rhetoric when used in this way.

It didn’t take much thought on my part to agree that the word “spewing” has definite negative power that evokes an image of someone doing something rather disgusting.  I could have said “telling lies” instead and gotten my point across.  So, I gave her that one.

I remember as a child being taught never to accuse my sister (or anyone else) of “lying.”  I could say she was “fibbing.”  I could say “she is not telling the truth.” I could say she “isn’t telling you the whole story.”  But I could not call her a liar. 

Euphemistically speaking, What the Heck?

So, culturally, there has long been a tendency in America to soften the accusation of misrepresenting the truth with intent to deceive or mislead. Did palliating the accusation change the facts of the matter at hand?  Not one bit. I could have called it roller skating and she still would have been lying.

My Facebook friend went on to explain that calling a high-ranking Mormon such as Romney a liar is as grievous as calling him a drunk.  To which I thought, uh-huh…and?

Mormons do not have a corner on the preference among religions to observe all Ten of the Commandments.  If Barack Obama makes an assertion of something known or believed by him to be untrue with the intent to deceive or mislead the public, he is just as busted in the eyes of God as Romney would be. 

In my own simple set of priorities when it comes to human interaction, the very worse thing a loved one can do is lie to me.  I taught my son as a child that nothing he could do that was wrong could be worse than lying to me about it. 

So, no, I don’t apply the words “lie,” “lies,” “lying,” “lied,” or “liar” lightly at all.

There is no way Mitt Romney could have been mistaken, misinformed or misspeaking when he asserted during that October 3 debate that “he did not plan to cut taxes for the wealthy.”  If he had only said it once, perhaps even I might take into consideration a brief cranial short-circuit and give him the benefit of the doubt.  But he said it more than once – with escalating gusto.

MR. ROMNEY: Let me — let me repeat — let me repeat what I said — (inaudible). I'm not in favor of a $5 trillion tax cut. That's not my plan. My plan is not to put in place any tax cut that will add to the deficit. That's point one. So you may keep referring to it as a $5 trillion tax cut, but that's not my plan.

I don’t care how high in what church Mr. Romney has ascended, that assertion is a lie. 

His supporters want to argue that it is “just a difference in interpretation of numbers” – that Mr. Romney was simply splitting hairs because the $5 trillion figure doesn’t take into account the expected growth in the economy that the cut on tax rates for businesses would ignite. (We are back to trickling down) However, that is NOT what Romney said. 

Let’s say he was being creative with his choice of words.  “My plan is not to put in place any tax cut that will add to the deficit.”  You and I are supposed to parse that statement  ourselves to reach the conclusion that while he IS planning to cut taxes by $5 trillion, he is also planning to close tax loopholes and tax deductions to balance the cuts. When the projected growth in the economy is taken into account, there will be a net zero change to the deficit.  Oh, yeah, and you are also supposed to know of his plan to increase the defense budget by some $2 trillion, so those loopholes and canceled deductions had better be pretty much wiped out.

For a compelling argument as to why the Romney plan is not even almost possible, read this.

The politicians and pundits who find it necessary to substitute nonsense such as “less than truthful," “somewhat untrue,” “fast and loose with the facts” for the word “lie” are simply playing the political game.  Their euphemisms change nothing and buy nothing except favor with the party prevaricators. 

A lie is a lie.

A Photograph for the Ages: American Black history in the flash of a bulb

If you have never been the parent of an African American child, you may not fully understand the impact of this image of President Barack Obama bowing to allow Jacob Philadelphia, then 5, to touch his hair so Jacob could determine if the President's hair felt like his.

First Lady Michelle Obama was a guest on the newly minted Steve Harvey Show, another afternoon talk show hosted by the comedy star and best-selling author.  During their light-hearted conversation about life with the President, Harvey put his image up on the monitors and asked why it is the only photograph that isn't allowed to be moved, while all the others are rotated routinely by White House staff.

I can answer that without even listening to Mrs. Obama's response. 

It is because this image is worth even more than those proverbial 1000 words.  It is a study in history, sociology, psychology, irony and innocence.

The history is the most obvious.  I know of no other time in the history of America when the only person who was NOT black in a photo taken in the Oval Office was the photographer.

No other man of any known measure of African descent has ever called 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C. home. 

Now, the house that was partially built by black slaves who served as skilled carpenters and masons in the stone quarries that supplied the stone for the White House and other government buildings; the house where Thomas Jefferson and his successor James Madison, who held slaves all their lives, didn't stop when they took up residence in Washington.  To have a half-African American now calling the shots in that residence brings the shameful history of slavery in America full circle.

Or does it?

According to a May 2012 article in the New York Times little Jacob and his older brother are the sons of a Carlton Philadelphia of Columbia, MD.  The former U.S. Marine was leaving his tw0-year post on the National Security Council in 2009.  As is customary for departing staffers, Philadelphia requested a family photo with the President. 

Each Philadelphia son was told they could ask the President one question, but they didn't have to tell their parents what their questions would be.

I look at this picture through misty eyes.  Little Jacob is the spitting image of my son Stephen when he was that age.  Even at such a young age -- even with all that assumed innocence -- Jacob seemed to be having trouble believing that someone who had hair just like his closely-cropped curls could actually be the most powerful person in the whole country.   Jacob needed a reality check.  And thus, the bow.

We have not yet come full circle.  Full circle would mean that a child would not be concerned about things such as hair texture and skin color.   He would have had no conversations in his kindergarten class about why his kinky curly hair was somehow less desirable than his classmate’s silky blond locks.  He would not have been "advised" by another child of his differences.  Full circle would mean children would look at skin color and hair texture as simple variations on the plumage of the human species. 

No, we aren't there yet, but we're getting there.  Jacob, now 8, is probably not the only little black child truly believing he has a shot at being the President of the United States or anything else he sets his mind to accomplish.

Why Online Friendships are Real

 

How often have you been tempted to mention one of your online friends to a family member, then thought twice about it for fear of being ridiculed?

Over the three years I have been a frequent blogger, I have had numerous snarky remarks from online readers who insist that the internet is not reality;  that only face-to-face interaction has any validity; that the people with whom we connect online via blogging are only one or two steps away from being imaginary.

And yet, there they are, reading what I write.

Maybe for those who write statements like that, it is true.  For me, it is not and I’m here to tell you why.

The same anonymity that provides an environment which allows mentally unbalanced trolls to lurk in the shadows of a blog site and pounce on just about every writer they read with rude and judgmental zingers, usually ending with an exhortation to “get a life!” – that same sense of privacy gives an outlet for individuals who are suffering all categories of life’s challenges to vent and share and obtain feedback from like-minded people with whom they have established some level of rapport. 

But that’s not reality! say the skeptics and contrarians. 

I say it is.  It is just a different kind of reality and no one can prove to me there is only one kind.  Reality has at its core the matter of perception.  Take a hypochondriac.  Just because there is no medical basis (as far as our still-limited medical sciences are concerned) for a symptom or set of symptoms in a patient, it doesn’t mean that the symptoms are not real to the patient.  Whether they are spawned from physiological or psychological origins, the symptoms are as real to the patient as real can get.

So when a person who has just experienced the death of a child or is muddling through the impending death of a spouse for whom all feelings of love took a hike 15 years ago reaches out to his or her online community for support, the only real difference between that support and what the person could get in, say, group therapy, is the distraction of seeing the faces, bodies, and mannerisms of each other. 

I call those things distractions because they interfere with the receivers ability to concentrate on the messages.  Instead of reading the words offered – without the benefit/disadvantage of nonverbal add-ons like tone of voice, facial expression, possession of physical traits that trigger biases (e.g., some people don’t believe they can get real advice about weight control from an overweight person), – the person needing support gets side-tracked and begins to evaluate the input on the basis of something other than the written word.

I have friends on my blogging spaces about whom I know more than I do my best friend.  Real life friends are sometimes reluctant to share their personal demons for fear I might think less of them.  If the woman I’ve known since we were both in elementary school had problems coping with the death of her mother when my friend was a pre-teen, I don’t know about it.  It is not a discussion she would ever have with anyone.

And the regular readers of my posts know a hell of a lot more about me than my own mother does. 

So, no, I do not concur with the notion that virtual reality in the form of online friendships is bogus.  Do some people embellish the truth?  Probably.  Do some people create bogus personae?  It has been proven to be so.  But it has also been proven to be so with what online detractors call “real acquaintances.” 

Many of the people I interact with on my blogs have reached out at helped online friends offline.  Some have made connections to secure jobs for unemployed and desperate writers or readers.  Some have made extensive trips to meet each other in person.  And currently, a seriously ill writer of extraordinary talent is receiving thousands of dollars in donations to allow him to complete his book before his disease robs him of his gift.

Could someone create an elaborate scam similar to this man’s dilemma in order to dupe unsuspecting softies out of their money?  Of course, but not with the support of scores of stand-up people who have stepped in to vouch for this writer. 

Any person who can be tricked on the internet can likely be tricked in person, too.  It’s not about the venue, it’s about instincts and critical thinking and deductive reasoning.  So, for those who are inclined to ridicule those of us who enjoy the camaraderie of blogging in a community of writers, perhaps a personal inventory of your own instincts, critical thinking skills, and powers of deductive reasoning  is in order.  The rest of us are doing just fine.

Problem-Solving: Not the Time for Debating Blame

 

You’ve seen it on these pages many times.  One of our fellow bloggers who writes almost exclusively about current events or politics attempts to lay out for our consideration a solution to one of the world’s diciest problems.  And soon someone swoops in and wants to rehash the whys, wherefores, and especially, whos that lead to the dilemma in the first place.

I learned early in my career as a manager of people that the one thing that prevents reaching solutions to almost any problem is the human desire to establish blame.  I noticed that no matter how many times we circled the table and allowed team members to speculate about the cause of the problem, we never got any closer to a solution until we focused on “from this day forward.”

Some believe it is not possible to solve a problem without knowing how we got to that point.  I certainly agree, if for no other reason than to avoid making the same mistakes going forward.  But there is a vast difference between a timeline that delineates a chain of events that led to the crisis and circles on an organization chart that point out who on the chart took a misstep.  There is nothing about that activity that does anything more than make the people who aren’t circled feel safe and smug.

The screw-ups, if there are any, can be dealt with at another time, in another place.

In our current Presidential campaigns, instead of telling us what they intend to do starting on January 2, 2013, our candidates insist on talking about what did or didn’t happen during the past three and a half years.  Well, that’s fun for those of us who get off on verbal one-upmanship and blistering TV ads, but it gives voters nothing upon which to base an intelligent vote.

Even if one believes the incumbent President caused every problem the U.S. faces today –which is, of course, ludicrous – shouldn’t our next big decision be based on well-defined and specific action items aimed at economic recovery, improved foreign affairs, public education, the future of the military and the like?  Does it really make sense for those who are supporting Mitt Romney only because he is not Barack Obama to do so without first finding out what Romney plans to do?

Obama has not lived up to the hype, but he has certainly amassed a hell of a lot more experience in the Oval Office than Romney has.  If the train has skipped off the rails, the administration most capable of righting any mistakes made is the one currently in office.  While the challenger, if he should be elected, is undergoing on-the-job training, the enormous pile of problems sitting on POTUS’s desk will be no closer to solution – in fact, they will sit there and proliferate.

If ever there were a time to think about not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, it is now.  The blame for the mountain of problems will be sorted out by the historians of the future.  No doubt their assessments will be an amalgam of multiple administrations over multiple decades.  But in the meantime, it is imperative that our government leaders deal with the elephants on the conference room tables before they become an out-of-control, nation-ending stampede.

No amount of finger-pointing, fabrication of factoids, or vitriol is going to change the predicament of this nation.  What we need from both candidates is real leadership – right now.

50th High School Reunion A Blast

Proviso East High School Pirates, Maywood, Illinois

It felt much like one of the school dances we loved to have.  These were the times when the squares (nerds,) the hoods (hoodlums,) the social climbers, the brains and the jocks mingled relatively unmolested.  What happened outside, after the dance was over, was another story.

When I finally sashayed into the ballroom, they were are seated, eating their salads.  I had completely missed the cocktail hour.  I was informed at the reception table that my friends were frantic with worry, fearing I had broken my word and was a no-show. 

I have always been a known compulsive punctual.  I used to have nightmares about being late for school decades after leaving high school.  I would much rather arrive too early and kill time than be late for anything.

This trip had a two-pronged purpose.  It had been much too long since I had visited my mother, so the expense to travel to Chicago was easier to justify.   I flew into Midway Airport, rented a car for the weekend, and drove south for 45 minutes to Matteson, Illinois, where my mother lives.  My plan was to spend the nights there and drive the 44 miles to the reunion on Saturday evening.  Twenty-eight of those miles would be on the Tri-State Toll Road (I-294,) a roadway I used daily for many years before I left Chicago for California.

I had forgotten about Illinois’ penchant for tearing up their roadways every weekend, blocking two lanes and confusing the already über-confusing toll collection plazas and the exit ramps with orange traffic cones.  To add insult to injury, the far-too-closely spaced toll plazas represented $1.50 each.  Between exiting too soon and having to re-enter the toll road and paying yet another toll –TWICE-- I arrived an hour late and $6 poorer.

When I finally found the hotel there was no valet parking.  Instead I had to park myself in a vast open lot -- in the farthest row from the entrance of the hotel – and walk an unspeakable number of steps in my high heels to find the ballroom.  So, in addition to being embarrassed for being so conspicuous in my tardiness, my feet were killing me and I hadn’t even danced yet.

Then the class clown, damn him, yells out “Ladies and Gentlemen, the late Lezlie H.!”

My friends from majorettes had saved me a seat at their table.  I have kept in touch with them ever since we found each other on Facebook a few years ago.  We seemed to pick up where we left off fifty years ago.  Sure we all looked older and our bodies had changed, but our chatter was easy and endless.  Two of them introduced me to their second husbands.  Their first husbands had also been in our graduating class, but they were not present. One had died. 

The third former baton twirler was still married to her high school sweetheart, John.  The two of them seem to have thrived over the years. They were youthful, glamorous, fit and happy.  It was charming and highly unusual.

My first boyfriend in life was there with his wife.  Teddy and I had been an item in pre-school at age 4.  He had given me a Captain Midnight decoder ring that he had gotten out of a cereal box to seal our union.  All through childhood, we remained close.  In high school we danced the bop every morning in the gym, before the bell to start the day.  And we danced it again to “The Jailhouse Rock,” fifty years later on Saturday night.  It was as familiar as riding a bicycle.

Also at the table were two woman with whom I have tangled politically on Facebook.  They are both ultra-conservative, but one has been restrained in her trolling on my cross-posted blog pieces on politics.  The other has not been restrained and ultimately caused me to un-friend her.  Her insults were beyond the pale. It’s so funny, though. She had nothing much to say to me at all Saturday night.  It could have been because of the fact that, after I greeted her warmly, I kept my back to her the entire time.  I don’t know. Bravado in person just isn’t the same as on Facebook, is it.?

I suspect there were far more right-leaning people at the reunion than we lefties, but no one wanted to get into verbal sparring at such a festive occasion.

Out of the 700 or so graduates in our class of 1962, 92 were deceased.  In attendance were about 150.  Out the Plus 30, the group of students I belonged to who had been selected out of the feeder schools on the basis of IQ and aptitude for an educational experiment, 17 showed up.  Two of them had gotten married to each other ten years ago.  One of them got enough drinks in him to tell me he had had a crush on me the whole time we were in the Plus 30.  I kind of got that idea without his announcement because of the way his arm kept finding its way around what used to be my waist.  I never did meet his wife, who was “around here somewhere.”

One man I didn’t recognize who was still visibly socially awkward walked up to me and said “Weren’t you a class officer?”  I nodded.  “I voted for you.”  So I thanked him profusely and moved on.  Bless his heart.

It was really big fun.  I stayed until after 11 p.m., found my way back to my mother’s house with no problems and spent the rest of the weekend learning things about my mom I never knew before.  It was a kind of oral history.  It is worthy of a book.  I hope I have the chops, because I think I’ll take it on.

Cheers to the Proviso East High School (Maywood, IL) Class of 1962.  Thanks for the memories.

Fifty Years Ago Today…

 

Proviso High School Freshman Class Officers 1958

…I had just arrived on campus, parents in tow, to begin an adventure that no one in my known lineage had experienced.  College.

I have written about some of my escapades during those idyllic four years in the prairies of Wisconsin.  I matriculated at the small liberal arts Ripon College in the small town of the same name that prides itself at being the official Birthplace of the Republican Party.  Go figure.

But this post isn’t about that.  This post is about the four years prior to that beautiful autumn day when I first heard the lovely strains of the bell tower carillon that would keep me on schedule, more or less, for the next few years.

Tomorrow morning I will catch a flight to Chicago to visit my soon-to-be-88-year-old mother…and to attend the 50th high school reunion of the Proviso East H.S. Class of 1962.

High school.  Mine was not the angst-filled horror so many woman of my generation report.  There was angst, though.  Plenty of it, now that I think about it.  But more memorable were the good times, the personal achievements, the great friendships…and the freedom from those gawdawful navy blue gabardine uniform jumpers with the white Peter Pan collars.  Oh how I hated that getup.

High school was the time I really had to come to terms with my mixed heritage. Until then, I had been sheltered and coddled by family and Catholic elementary school nuns who were absolutely fascinated by this social science experiment named Lezlie. None of them had been exposed to “colored” children for very long.  The half-dozen or so of black families who made the sacrifice to afford the tuition had only been allowed to enroll their kids for a few years before my arrival.

But I didn’t fit their model of a black child in almost any way.  We were all well-behaved, at least most of the time.  But not all of us were prepared for the rigors of the brand of education those nuns put down.  I was.  Little goodie two shoes, was I, with impeccable manners and an IQ that literally shocked them.  All of that fun stuff resulted in me being selected for a special high school experiment.

So I walked into that gigantic high school building with a target on my back, although I didn’t know it yet. 

Proviso East is a township high school, with feeder elementary children coming from at least six different towns.  There were 4,000 of us!  And out of that number, thirty (30) new freshman were selected based on IQ and achievement in the lower grades to join an accelerated program that became known as the Plus 30.  Now do you see the target?

Now in this horde of hormones were children from family backgrounds very typical of the Midwest at the time.  I never knew how many “colored kids” there were – people didn’t talk about things like that back then.  But I figure we wouldn’t have filled an entire study hall that seated roughly 40-50 students.

There was a large contingency of Italian Americans who grew up in Melrose Park, Illinois.  There were numerous children with unpronounceable names like Kwiatowski and Ciechanowski.   There were Jewish kids from north Maywood, the white part of the segregated town I was born and raised in.  And there were WASPS like my English/German second husband, who hailed from Forest Park.

I loved being a leader, which seemed to come quite naturally, so within the first month I decided I would run for class secretary.  I really wanted to be president, but this was 1958. Women were either vice-president or secretary, period.  I knew my “place.”  For the time being, that is.

Then it hit.  The heartbreaking, totally unexpected and utterly baffling racial backlash against me.  From the black kids in the class!

Who the hell did I think I was, they asked among themselves?  They didn’t know me because I didn’t attend the public school with them.  What they did know – Maywood was a very small town for a Chicago suburb – was that I was from “that Hurst family.” She’s light, bright and almost white… and we hate her.

Week after week, month after month, year after year, I was “the bitch” the black girls loved to hate.  At least once a week a rumor would make its way to my ears that The Girls would be waiting for me to pass the park on the walk home.  They were going to kick my yella ass.

Thank God the black boys in the class didn’t feel that way.  In fact, they would gather me up at dismissal and escort me home, past the hissing, spewing crowd of girls and home to my Mama.

So I had some decisions to make – after I cried about three rivers of tears after school in the safety of our basement recreation room.  Would I try to endear myself with these mean girls who wasted no time learning how to smoke and drink liquor in the girls rest rooms, or would I make my own way, on my own terms?

Thankfully, I had the ovaries to choose the latter.  I endured the mean-girl wrath as I won that election; became a permanent fixture on the honor roll, in spite of all those “uppity advanced classes” I had to take; became the first black girl to become a drum majorette; and was the first black student to make the National Honor Society (that I know of).

Oh how those girls hated my beige ass.

So, it has been with keen curiosity that I have approached this reunion. I’ve only attended one other – the 10th – and the Mean Black Girls maintained their snarling distance. By then, I found them both funny and just a little bit worthy of pity.  We were close to thirty years old.  I had left high school behind me.  They hadn’t, apparently.

As it turns out, it looks like I will be in a most familiar position this Saturday night.  I might be the only African American woman returning to celebrate our half-century after high school, according to the list of paid participants.  Some of my antagonists are already dead.  Others have moved to other parts of the country, like I did.  The others probably think it is beneath them…or is it above them?

I am looking forward to seeing my real high school friends.  I hope I’ll be able to recognize them!