Rants: State of Emergency
Monday, March 2, 2009 at 2:16PMThe State of the Black Union concluded in Los Angeles this weekend after the input of various scholars, activists, political leaders and pundits, mixed with the fear of the recession (or depression if you're just talking about black people. Economically things have been nightmarish for African Americans for some time) with the optimism of President Barack Obama's election.
Founded by author/journalist Tavis Smiley, this was the 10th year for the event where 6,000 people attended panels, networked and discussed the state of the race.
The funny thing about the state of the race: it's bad.
Depending on where you live it is either horrific or merely annoying, but bad. Yet the other funny thing about black America is that if you've been hearing a car alarm blare at you for more than 100 hundred years, do you start to not even notice that it's there? Do you begin to think that your maladies are just realities? Do you accept the status quo?
All my life I've watched black people "settle." And when I mean settle, I mean it in many, many forms. Some "settle" for the mediocrity. Some settle for the poverty or violence of their neighborhoods (or the neighborhoods they left and now tut-tut as if fixing the old neighborhood was all the matter of Robert Preston showing up with 76 trombones to blow all the gangbangers away). Some settle for the fact that marriage, stability, peacefulness, happiness, good health, mental stability and intelligence is the property of others, not us, not for you. Things that should be natural rights become "something white folks do."
Things that are ordinary to some (like finding kindness and compassion towards one another and our children) are luxuries they cannot afford. A beat down will fix all. Or simply stoicism. Women don't need men and the men agree to mixed to disastrous results. (Who abandoned who first depends on who you ask.) The children grow up thinking it is "love," real and true, if they want to do it without a condom. And even though you were raised in the 'burbs you still feel this pressing need to keep something, anything "real," even if it is to the point of absurdity.
There is an alarm blaring, but can you hear it? Can anyone hear it over the cacophony of "get money?" (Cash, clothes and hoes is all a you-know-what-knows, to paraphrase.) It's the one lesson we did learn from being kept out of the purest part of our country's capitalism for so long. The used and abused would become the proprietors. Masters of our own ideological plantations. That individual desire to die with the most toys. We learned that part fastest and very well. And it was understandable. We got a late start on building institutional wealth in our communities. Both my parents came from nothing. My sisters and I are first generation out of the fields.
But some people see money as the solution to everything. Money helps. But as someone who grew up in those pristine suburbs with the manicured lawns and the pretty, little ranch homes, the alarm was still blaring there. Only instead of the fear that your child would die from drugs or crime or random acts of violence, there was a different set of problems, built out of contempt and an overall laissez faire attitude. A sense of "we made it," so stop.
My mother did not trust the public school system to educate me properly. That doesn't mean I didn't go to public school. I went my entire childhood attending taxpayer funded schools. She simply chose to fight with my school district everyday, declaring war on the public school system until my sisters and I got the education she was paying for via taxes. This was a luxury many black parents could not afford. Many of my peers' mothers had to work. I was lucky. Mine didn't. But then many of my peers also had the latest of name-brand clothes and newest and nicest of everything.
That was the trade off. My mother could have worked and I could have worn Nikes instead of whatever knock-offs Payless was selling and my teachers could have continued to be negligent in educating me OR she could show up to visit the school, volunteer in class, go the conferences, fight for the curriculum and make sure I was on track for college back in elementary school, make me her full time job, and I could just gain some "character points" from having the "wrong clothes" all the time.
I wore a lot of wrong clothes, but there were never any surprises for me on the "you're going to college" front.
Many of my peers were a different story. While many did succeed, there were a great many who were trapped in the system, labeled early on as being learning disabled when nothing was really wrong with them (all black boys are apparently menacing and terrifying, even at six, to the public school system). Or there were those who's parents simply thought their children would find college by osmosis, not talking to them about it until junior year when they would learn their kid took none of the right classes, fit none of the qualifications and despite being 17 years old, could only read on a fourth grade level.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if black children going to one of the best public schools in the state of Missouri (which I did, the Hazelwood School District during the 1980s and 90s) are doing just as bad as black kids going to the "bad," poorer school in the city the black middle class moved from, there is a problem.
And I won't bother to re-depress anyone with the abysmal marriage rate amongst African Americans within my age range. Or how I sometimes get the side-eye when people learn I have no children, as if I knew some magic "don't get pregnant" trick other than birth control and abstinence.
When getting knocked up on accident is just an "oh well," something is wrong.
But it's so normal. So no one thinks of it. You throw the baby shower for the fifteen-year-old. You accept that you have no desire or intention to marry the guy who got you pregnant at 25.
Maybe you move in together. Maybe you don't. Maybe you like each other. Maybe you both think you can do better so you're waiting on that perfect, magical person to marry, but until then, you have this kid to raise.
And doesn't every couple hit each other and call each other offensive names? That's normal, right? It's normal to respond to disagreements with the one's you "love" through violence and control. What's the big deal? She probably deserved to get hit because she started it. Or maybe she's such an incredibly "strong black woman" that instead of being a victim like her mother was, she's going to go toe-to-toe with her abuser, or be an abusive person before THEY can be the abusive person.
Because that's normal. Right?
Only it's not. None of it is normal.
It's not normal to take your loneliness or depression that you won't get treated for (because we all know, mental illness is obviously a white person thing) and channel it into Big Macs. And it's not normal for sarcasm, anger, cynicism and derision to be the ONLY acceptable emotions black people can express in public. It's not OK if you've never hugged your daughter ... or son. And if a beat down is your answer to every situation, don't be surprised if your kid grows up believe that too is the way to deal with all life's issues -- humiliation and violence.
And then we can all curl up next to our money, horrible significant others or bottle of liquor depending on our relationship/economic status and tell it to make us feel good. Announce that "Jesus saves," tell folks near death to "go pray on it," and sit on our hands thinking we're just great people.
Which brings us back to Tavis Smiley's State of the Black Union event ... sponsored by ExxonMobile (The revolution must be financed!)
This event where esteemed people of intellect and great thought and caring and insight sat around and talked for hours upon hours is one that Smiley has made his pièce de résistance. The mantle upon which the ego is at rest.
Talk is good. We need to talk. I write. That's how I deal with my angst. That's great. Cathartic. But now what? As a non-activist, semi-satirical, former journalist/blogger my goal is to look at something and try to find a different interpretation.
(It's what I do as an "artist.")
But I got nothing.
I got nothing but the same old same old. We sat and talked and Smiley has a book to sell about holding the president and the government accountable to the black community and it's great that we sat and talked, but now what? The NAACP is pushing to boycott the New York Post over Chimpgate. Glorious. Now what?
More and more I feel like people are fighting ghosts.
It's not that racism isn't real. It is real. It's a problem. But we often act like it's the only problem we know how to wrangle. Someone yells "nigger" in a crowded (or not so crowded) room and we have Al Sharpton on speed dial. But let "Tyronne" flunk out of high school while living in the basement of his mom and dad's Tony suburb, knock up his girlfriend and lumber through life fighting with her and his new girlfriend on the side, who works but is miserable because she doesn't love herself while Rome burns to a tasty, chicken-fried crisp and we shrug. That was on Tyronne. Or the women. Or the parents. If they all only believed in Christ more or blah, blah, blah. We can't handle the personal even if the personal is an epidemic and touches nearly every black person we know.
Case in point: the repeated sentiment I noticed from those who attended the event or watched the proceedings on C-SPAN:
I would have gotten more out of a bit less discussion of historical context and more time spent presenting specific strategies and tactics that each and every motivated person watching the symposium could consider while working to make our country better. What should and 'Accountable' campaign look like? Technology was barely mentioned. Why not a dedicated 'SOBU Accountable' website with step-by-step, or should I say, click-by-click instructions about how to contact your congressman with a standard letter covering what needs to be said? Or a dedicated SOBU 2009 social networking site where members could share ideas about moving forward with 'Accountable' and share their personal experiences of what's working and what's not.
(Source: AOL/Black Voices)
Barack Obama's campaign created the new model for organizing and campaigning to effect change in America. The haters on this board need to STFU and put the model to good use. Speechifying and pontificating ain't gonna get it. They need to hit the streets and start working to organize the people instead of sitting on their asses yelling at them. -- eclecticbrotha
Perhaps Tavis isn't the best messenger, but his question needed to be asked, if not only directed at Obama's Administration but to all Americans as well. Nobody on the national level is really talking directly about poverty - Edwards tried in the primaries but he couldn't deliver the message. Instead we're to assume that when elected officials talk about saving the working/middle class that poor folk are a part of that conversation.
Not exactly.
Academic conversations, Ivy League and otherwise, are one thing (albeit important), but direct action/advocacy work and enacting legislation with the devastatingly poor in mind is a whole other thing...
That said, I think that by Obama inviting Ty’Sheoma Bethea to his SOTU speech was effective. Keep the conversation going though - let's not be afraid to use words like "poverty" and "working poor" in the mainstream. -- Friday025(Comments source: Jack & Jill Politics)
Everyone is frustrated and tired and angry, but everyone is always frustrated, tired and angry. That's been the general consensus since we got off the boat.
Some people are waiting for a hero to come and lead us to the next phase, to the "promise land."
News flash: They ain't coming.
The problems have evolved. Sadly, the people doing the most talking have not. It's going to take a little more fortitude and a lot more self-determination to break through this present corporately-sponsored malaise. Brought to you by a pack of Kools, BET and "apathy," I present to you the Post-Civil Rights Era, full of opportunities knocking, but no one going in. Books are great if the people you're trying to reach actually read. But the work of a Paperback Prophet is never done, so Smiley leaves his conference prepared to go on the road to sell his book "Accountable" across the nation.
You don't have to be Martin Luther King, Jr. You don't have to be Jesus, lay up on a cross and die save black people. Even during the Civil Rights Movement not everyone was cut out to march. For instance, my father. King (and others) in the non-violence movement were pretty explicit that if you couldn't get hit without hitting back you need not apply to cross that bridge with them. My father, temper raw as ever, will lay a person out. He would have spent his 20s getting fitted for a noose rather than finishing college.
My mother made her impact by not settling on just making sure I had a good education, but lobbying on behalf of countless black kids in our district. When we had the black history month programs and Martin Luther King Day programs and learned African history and got our extracurricular activities in elementary school I wasn't sitting in a class alone. Everyone benefited from what she, and many other, black parents did by refusing to shut up, by getting involved and demanding results from their school.
To this day she's the "wandering mentor," adopting the stray teens she meets working in K-Mart and Walgreens, giving them newspaper clippings of encouragement and hugs and telling them to not be ashamed of going to community college first, that the most important thing isn't to quit.
As an adult, I volunteered with kids, telling them how college (if you want it) is available, but you have to start planning NOW. And that you can't allow voices of defeat, of those who have bought into a mythology of blackness based on stereotype and ugliness keep you from your better path. For a lot of kids it was just nice to see another brown face and know that being smart and going to college and loving one another and being open and affectionate are not just something white folks do.
And you don't know how much it annoys me when I hear black children say this about things, things that should be normal, like marriage, as if it were something for only Ross and Rachel, Malibu Barbie and her Malibu Ken. But OF COURSE it's mythology to you when you don't know it, can't see it, can't touch it, can't taste it, haven't experienced it, never hear about it except during sweeps week on network television on the CW.
That's why the Obamas easily captured so many blacks' imaginations. Suddenly black people with degrees and jobs who marry and are successful and have children aren't myths, they aren't unicorns. They're real. And suddenly, they were everywhere. Wow. Little faces everywhere of successful black people. Where had these people been, one wondered? Had they been hidden in plain sight all along?
Yes! Yes, they were! They were always there. But how could you notice them when you're too busy ignoring that alarm blaring in the background? STATE OF EMERGENCY! It screams with nothing but bad, bad news. When all your energy is spent on looking down, because ... STATE OF EMERGENCY! You're too afraid to look up and see the problems, the big, scary, impossible looking problems.
Of course, you find yourself collecting pictures of Michelle Obama and looking up adoringly at the president. Someone, and I don't know who (maybe a parent, teacher or society), told you that this wasn't for you and now you're just learning that it is and it is wonderful. So, pardon you, if your mind was blown and the opportunities that were there, yet not there because you didn't know, are now real to you. That you now, in the most wonderful and Disney and clichéd way, finally "believe."
But now that you have gotten a good look at the potential. Now that you can hear the knocking over the blaring. Now that you've gotten a good earful of the speech. Now that you've gotten your latest inoculation of scholars and politicians and activists and paperback prophets talking about your present state of emergency LOOK UP!
For God's sake, look up.
The world is bigger than you. It's time to start acting that way.
Reader Comments (55)
Excellent piece!! I agree that talking is good and I agree that this is a good vehical, but after watching my third one it was like..okay so everyone got on stage said the obvious now what. There needs to be a day or two or three of getting ideas on the table to act on. zit should star out on the first day "here we are now from last year" and the following days should be here is where we are going with these plans and here is how we are going to play it forward...how hard is that?! Year after year its the same thing no one leaves with ideas they are going to put to work...and Tavis wonders why the President hasn't showed up yet. $5 says if and when he does its going to be "Now what...what is the game plan?" and the usual ego tripin blow hards are not going to like it....the following year they won't have anything to scream and hollar about if they actually did something. I ca't stand to watch anymore.
Um...will there be an 11th year? This event always seems to be a conclave for LA bammas and their spiritual leaders like Danny Bakewell. No one joined in Tavis's anti-Obama hateration, yet no one talked about specifics of the stimulus either (how the House Dems flipped the script and created the directed pork which took money away from true sustained infrastructure repair, building nw jobs and new technologies). To show I'm not utterly bitter about that, NOR did they talk about how black/minoroiy firms, banks, local govts-sponsored nonprofits...hell even writers, artisits, engineers, teachers...could help take the lead in showing Barack (or banks, asset managers, etc. in the case of TARP money) how/where to spend it.
Nope. Just the usual suspects, posturing and punditizing.
Snob, what are we to do?
FYI--new stuff on my blog about famed "father of modern comic strips and comic books" George Herriman. (he's a bro, apparently). Walt Disney ripped him off.
@ Chris
Of course there will be an 11th year! Coca Cola will probably still have enough money to sponsor SOMETHING after the Dow drops to 1940 levels.
Personally, I think we should heed the unearthed Elvis insta-classic, "A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action." In St. Louis there are lots of charitable, political and social organizations people can join who need help, money or volunteers (or all three). Or they can go freelance like my mom and adopt strangers. (Or freelance like one of my best friend the mountain-climbing, postulate and take homeless people out to the Chinese buffet at random.)
You have to find your own way to serve that best suits your talents. I can write and I can talk and I'm a good listener. I'm also quite charming in person, so I try to use those skills in the real world and, sometimes, online. But I'm not necessarily a leader (at least not yet ... maybe when I grow up). But I'm always willing to work with good people who have good ideas.
But, for me, it's best to work with kids and folks people have "given up on." Your homeless. Your ex-cons. Your battered and abused women. Basically, the people who need it most. The kids can be saved. They just need to know someone gives a shit, then need some guidance, love, structure and motivation. As for the so-called "lost causes," they need someone who can navigate the system better than them to get them where they need to go to get help. We can't all catch a break and grab the mike when the O-man comes to town and shout-out our homelessness and crappy, dead-end jobs at Mickey Dees.
But I share your frustration. I could barely watch. I mostly amused myself with text messages from my friend the black history scholar who enjoys mocking other scholars who attend Tavis' giant ego stroke.
I think many black children fall victim to the peer pressure. They should, however, stop fearing isolation or the ridicule of others. The crowd isn't going to save anybody. On the TV discussion they were talking about how Obama spent much his time in college alone, studying and planning his future. The herd mentality runs rampant in the black community, perhaps because there was always safety in numbers in the past. But it's counterproductive now. Nice piece.
@ dukedraven
That's very true. I was a loner most of my childhood and it wasn't by choice. I'm an extrovert. It was MURDER being a friendly, outgoing nerd girl who no one wanted to kick it with. It didn't stop me from participating in things at school, but ... I didn't really have "friends" until junior year. College was a VAST improvement. Suddenly it was a GOOD thing I was smart and people wanted me as their friend and in their sororities and such. Much better. World finally made sense to me.
What a beautifully written piece. Watch out...you never know where it might end up. I'm sharing this link with very Thoughtful Snob I know, including those who are in a position to Do Something once we light the fire under their hind-parts (again).
Like the other posters, I giggled to myself as Mr. Smiley flailed miserably each time a member of his esteemed panel refused to take (or pass) the ice-cold pitcher of 'haterade' he served up incessantly. As a result, one wonders whether quite a few of the usual suspects on the panel will be invited back, due to their amusing departures from the Smiley Strategy. It was still mostly entertaining to watch. My entire day was made watching Lani Guinier smile that 'he's such a blathering IDJIT' smile before she addressed another thinly veiled attempt to simultaneously stroke his own ego, sell his book, and hate on the President and his supporters in the same sentence.
For the record, you do inspire change via your writing, Snob. We hope to tell you this in person, one day soon.
In my opinion the Tavis Smiley's of the Black community are the true Uncle Tom's of the current era. Why? Because, taking Exxon Mobile dollars to verbally masturbate over the state of Black America for 10 years with zero results, whilst that same community goes to hell, makes Nero's fiddling seem like a socially responsible response to Rome burning. At least the fiddling might have entertained the firefighters; there's nothing entertaining about witnessing the bloated egos on display at that conference.
Another more pertinent question needs to asked about the paucity of REAL black leadership in the community. How did people with no track record for achieving a single verifiable benefit for their people become the defacto leaders. If I was a conspiracy theorist I would be asking who really funds these people and what is their real agenda. 'By their fruits shall thee know them' said Jesus, and these fake leaders getting fat of their people's suffering are showing how rotten their fruit truely are.
There are some that feel that these people sold out long ago and are paid to ensure that no further progress takes place for blacks. I feel it's more probable that the prevalent sense of hopelessness and powerlessness in the community has penetrated all the way through to the highest levels of black leadership and they are simply intellectually mirroring the destitution at street level in the worst black neighbourhoods.
Where to go from here? Well I think you are right Snob, in that Obama has articulated and demonstrated a way out for the black community. His emphasis on community work, volunteerism and practical action is the way forward. Backed by the power of his image and personal exhorations, and hopefully an educational and economic lifeline over the next few years could well pull the black community back from the brink.
So it's about time now for Tavis and his ilk to shut up shop.
Bravo, Snob. Bravo. You are so right that it hurts, but it feels great to not be alone regarding all of your comments. I have always said to friends and family that we spend to much time on the scoldng each other on the dumb, superifical stuff and not enough time on the substantive issues that we all face. Yes, I too grew up in the "burbs" and we hear the siren loudly too. Thank you again.
Bravo, Snob. Bravo. You are so right that it hurts, but it feels great to not be alone regarding all of your comments. I have always said to friends and family that we spend too much time on the scoldng each other on the dumb, superifical stuff and not enough time on the substantive issues that we all face. Yes, I too grew up in the "burbs" and we hear the siren loudly too. Thank you again.
Snob, this was wonderful. Thank you.
Good take on the State.
BalckSnob, Great post. I've never seen SOBU.
I was the last in my family to come out of the fields, so I know how crucial education is for Black children. I was the first in my family to attend college. My daughters attended college I can't afford to sit around and listen to Tavis and anybody else solve my problems. Today I mentor Black teenage girls. Pay it forward!
I appreciated your call to action.
Snob-chick:
Would you mind if I use your post in a lecture (one of my journalism classes at G'town)? Looking at evolution from old newspaper columnist in the Alsop mold (and Hedda Hopper hahaha) to folk like you. Also, I might base a character in a new novel (St <Martin's press release '10) on you. You've inspired me. lol. Unfortunately I only get to touch on these issues on my blog once a week.
Oh, and we have our faculty reception for Tavis on Wednesday. I'm under no obligation to hold my fucking tongue. Maybe I'll break the ice by askign him if he's going to have Rihanna and Chris Brown on his show...
@ Chris
Knock yourself out, my friend! And if you need to know more about me, you have my email address.
Good luck with Tavis and his book schlepping. I honestly wouldn't know what to say to the man other than "Do you know TJ Holmes? And if so, can you tell him I said, 'Hi?'"
Danielle,
Great post. I am curious though. Where were the black glbt people at the SOBU?
@ BLKSeaGoat
Didn't you hear? Gay black people are like a myth or something. Like unicorns and Poseidon. That's on my list of "things only white people can have or be." Sorry. Forgot to put that on there.
Seriously, tho. SOBU is about Tavis and no one else.
LOL... Thanks for the reference post. I guess I have an answer to one of the questions I asked in my own post.
What do these black intellectuals do for black colleges? Malvaux was like the only there whose job it is to educate black young folk.
And how is that they never mention the gays. I see so many young black gay boys and girls these days and many black folks spent 40 million dollars to see a man in the dress last week and we act like black gays don't exists.
And I thought it was just me who thought that black suburban kids were not much smarter than hood kids. I went to a HS that was 99% black and latino in the hood. I spent my entire k-12 in urban majority black/latino public schools. When I went to college I met all these black surburban kids that had the same SAT scores and even lower than me. I guess if you want black kids to have good public education in the north, you gotta go rural. That way you kids have a good education and will not have anyone to be hood with.
I think I remember you saying that Invisible Man was a very influential book for you. Either way I think you have a very Ellisonian tone.
@ halfmoon
Thank you. "Invisible Man" is actually one of my two favorite novels. (The other is "Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man.") That, and I love the work of authors from the turn of the century to the 1940s and 50s.
If we can't grasp what is happening in this country and America does a soviet style spending suicide, how do you think the civil rights movement will be told in a post american world? How will the struggle for equality in the richest, most successful and abundant country in the history of the world be framed by people who only know of America from a history book?
When I read your post all I kept asking myself what if I had found this in a time capsule 20 years from now? How relevant would it feel? I'm saying all this because I'm just not sure this is the best time to dwell on race.I am by no means making light of the civil rights movement. But I am saying that if we can't see ourselves as one and only one union now, we never will.
Excellent piece
Black Americans (because I detest the term "African American") act as if the world revolves around US. We need to get over ourselves and fix the world.
Keep lighting that fire I got your back
Hey Danielle.
I really respect all that you do and have done to add your enlightened opinions to the AfroSphere. You offer such a fresh take (21rst Century) on what's really going on with black folk. I can't comment often; but I wish the best for you and I hope you land a deal of all deals. Whatever it is that you're doing finish that book and become a Paperback Prophet.
As for being black. That's enough for my plate. May sound selfish but working on myself works for me. I'm of the mind and heart that there are way too many people telling others how to live and what to do with their lives and way to little people doing the necessary introspective work to truly become wonderful human beings. There are way too many people who are "unwell" giving out advice. There are lots of "folks" out here helping when they're really hiding from themselves.
Ghandi says "Be the Change you want to see in the world." I applaud TSOTBU panels for they make me proud. But too many of us sit on our laurels waiting for others to tell us what to do. Between paying the bills, earning a living, building a career, maintaining relationships, investing in family time, eating healthy meals, working out, meditation, and staying away from negativity, I don't see how people even have the time for anything else.
All the best.
Anon.
Why do I get the impression that all black folks do is "hate" on the alleged "hatin'" that Tavis is doing? Seriously, what's wrong with holding our elected officials accountable--black or white? He's been on this soap box since his talk show on BET, this is nothing new. Have we elevated Obama to the point of MLK and Jesus where one can't criticize without being called a heretic?
Moreover, are not those that complain and criticize the State of the Black Union doing the EXACT same thing they're accusing the various panelists of doing? And are we not demanding perfection from intellectuals who never claimed to have the panacea for societal ills?
I'd also question the majority of critics--ALL critics--just how vigilant are they past national venues such as the SOTBU? How many people actually go on Tavis' website and read where he's holding town hall meetings and what he's actually saying in those meetings and what information and self-help is being disseminated? Who actually listens to Al Sharpton's talk show and actually is aware of the myriad of small towns that he goes to where the news media doesn't decide to follow him? Many times I've heard on his show where he tells callers to hold on the line so he can get them in contact with the proper people in their region.
Above all....who's actually read the books written by ANY of the panelists: Michael Eric Dyson, Cornel West, Tricia Rose, Lani Guinier, Randall Robinson, Jawanza Kunjufu just to name a handful--and actually taken to heart what was said.
As far as I see it, black folk doing nothing but complaining about other folk complaining--sounds like hatin to me!
Great commentary Danielle. I have stated pretty much the same in previous years (although I couldn't quite do it as good as you have). I don't even bother posting about the SOTBU event anymore... it's not even on the radar. We are basically in a Depression (both in mind and in the economy)....so there are definitely more important things to be concerned with. The event itself appears to be more about Tavis as a brand.... it seems to be part of his business strategy more than anything else. He's riding the 1960's as far as it will take him. I still like his commentary and think he's a positive image for young folks... but it's time for him to update his message. His position on Obama is annoying as well... that definitely doesn't help him (even though I don't like many aspects of Obama's policies). Tavis is in allegiance with many of those "Old Guard" Civil Rights Inc. figures who opposed Obama so strongly in the Primary....and I think a lot of the issue with Obama is personal. Perhaps there's some envy there.
And I have to agree w/ comments 4 & 5 above. I was always teased in grade school and Middle school (even into High School) mostly by Black students...just because I showed an interest in school work. That's a serious disease in the so called "Black Culture". But i'm more of an introvert...so being a loner wasn't that big of a deal...except when I had to skip proms, dances...etc...and had no dating opportunities. (although...the lack of money, a car, being in Europe and being in a small TX town pretty much sealed my fate as far as dating and a social life were concerned). At my TX high school... if you weren't a football player...a varsity basketball player...a goon or thug....weren't one of the rich kids, and if you didn't have a car...that meant that you had no woman.