Recent and Other Relevant Writing

In the past week or so, I've written a few pieces. Also, recent events have made past writing relevant again. So, instead of starting a newsletter like a lot of writers I know and admire, I thought I'd just bring them all together in one place and you can read as you like.

A recurring theme is American ignorance of history writ large. Over at Rare, I wrote about why Black History is important. (Hint: because it's American history.)

Generally speaking, the way America teaches history is deplorable. The watered-down fairy-tale version of our history can be found in our folklore, grade school textbooks, and throughout our media. Race aside for a moment, how we think about war, government, technology, religion, and nearly everything else tends to be framed in false dichotomies and trivial facts without contextualizing how and why events happened, let alone how events were perceived by those who lived through them.
 But in America, despite the best efforts of many, we cannot put race aside. Racism has been omnipresent in American history, but it has been far from static. Slavery and its justifications spawned a particularly awful strain of anti-black racism in America. Racism evolved to seek selfish economic ends and justify punitive unconstitutional laws. It has justified social and economic benefits to some while depriving them to others. It has allowed a tolerance of abuse by both government and private citizens. Racism has broken apart families and even the nation itself.

Relatedly, I wrote here at TBS about FBI director Comey's attempt to view the relationship between law enforcement and black communities historically. (He failed.)

Director Comey, trying to appear magnanimous, said

 “A tragedy of American life…is that young people in “those neighborhoods” too often inherit a legacy of crime and prison. And with that inheritance, they become part of a police officer’s life, and shape the way that officer—whether white or black—sees the world.”

This is circular logic at its most odious. Law enforcement, in its zeal to fight its war on drugs and crime, extracted scores of men from communities and put them into the criminal justice system. This deprived children of fathers and robbed the communities of economic resources. This,in turn, created the young black men that engender cynicism from today’s officers who “often can’t help” it.

While there is much to be said for back-end reforms that help former inmates return to society, the law enforcement executives who go around preaching about how to fix the men and communities they helped break in the first place tests the patience of anyone who recognizes the grotesque unfairness of our so-called justice system. It’s not all law enforcement’s fault, but they are reticent to acknowledge the role they have and continue to play in “those neighborhoods.”

"You're Not Really Black, Right?"

I guess it's time to finally write a version of this I can publish and share as needed. I wrote a post on a similar theme years ago in response to a reflexive, lighthearted but racially tinged facebook comment I wrote when my social media presence was essentially some friends, family, and former schoolmates. I write this disclaimer basically to avoid accusations of 'plagiarizing myself' and just basic principles of honesty, since much of what I write here is copied/adapted from what I've said so many times before, though I've only written about it once. -- JPB

Over the course of my life, I've been questioned about my race. These questions have taken various forms--from mildly curious to unintentionally offensive to bizarrely hilarious--but they've been coming since I was about 9 years old.

For those few readers who may not know what I look like:

I'm 'light-skinneded' and then some

My father was black. My mother was white. As I have said often, I could "pass" for white if I so chose. I am aware that some people don't consider me "black" by their standards, but that's them and not my problem.

That said, I take my race and ethnicity very seriously. I grew up with black family and black friends. No more than four familial generations ago--records indicate I'm 4th familial generation born free--my family was owned by white people in Meridian, Mississippi.

I mean, it was 1880 Mississippi. I don't know how "free" they really were.

My father grew up in the Great Depression in Indiana--a state literally run by the Klan at the time. I have heard stories about how my grandfather, James, would grab his gun and go outside to get all the children in the house because the Klan was about to march up the street they lived on--one of the three streets or so blacks were allowed to live on in Fort Wayne at that time. My father and my family had to endure racism most of us today can hardly fathom--and I grew up acutely aware of this. I knew I had opportunities that my father never had, and I have always been grateful for how much he went through and how much he sacrificed so I and my siblings could become successful people.

The 70s were an awful time for fashion--I mean those shoes! Ugh!--but Pooh is eternal

When I was very young, my father told me, (paraphrasing), "Because of who you are, or what you are [read: black]--you may have a harder time than other [read: white] people. Deal with it, and move on." It was the 1980s and my first school district was still trying to implement desegregation plans--and we were still interchangeably called "Negro,""black," or "Afro-American."

Ironically, my father's insistence on voting on that desegregation plan after our family moved a quarter mile from the school district boundary, unbeknownst to us, caused me to leave my accelerated magnet program for a less advanced, increasingly segregated school system.

The students' race used to be listed next to our names on our attendance sheets in this second school system. Race is most certainly a social construct, but it made enough of a difference to mark each of us as such on every printout every teacher, student, and administrator was given.

Jonathan P Blanks| 7(th grade)| M(ale)| B(lack)

America was much less tolerant just 20-25 years ago than it is today. It was weird, even in the closing years of the 20th century, for a white girl's parent to be okay with their daughter dating me, despite my not being visibly black or holding the stereotypical undesirable traits which may lead one to think reasonably justifies such explicit prejudice.

But that's the thing--racism doesn't make any damned sense.

We, as black people, have different experiences that make us who we are. These differences are related to skin tone, hair, what part of the country we grew up in or whether we lived in the country, the city, or the burbs. There is no singular "black" experience--but almost all of us know racism.

How we deal with that is a part of what makes us black. I've been called an 'exception.' I've been called 'not really black.' But I've been told nigger jokes, and I've heard people say "well, not you, but YOU know." I've had perfect strangers talk about 'niggers' in front of me--even since I've moved to DC (by a former police officer, no less!).

I know they're talking about my father. I know they're talking about my siblings. I know they're talking about my cousins. And make no mistake they are talking about me--whether they know it or not.

Somehow, I'm dorkier than the guys in the Purdue and Starbury jerseys. SMDH

I can't explain the range of emotions that hit when that look comes over their face when I tell them I'm black and they start stammering their way into excuses and lies about what they really meant. No one thinks of themselves as "racist," but it takes a special kind of coward to disown the words that just came out of his mouth for not the first or second time.

I digress.

While my parents were among the first generations in living memory to openly 'miscegenate' absent of government obstacles, I'm hardly the first person who could 'pass for white.' Indeed, James Weldon Johnson wrote a moving book entitled The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man back in the early part of last century. It's moving and heartbreaking...and you come away understanding why some people would deny their heritage and their families to escape the punishment and terror that was black life for so much of our nation's history.

But the pivotal moment when I realized my situation wasn't new--and what I was feeling wasn't either--was when I read Malcolm X's Autobiography for the first time:

"But I will tell you that, without any question, the most bitter anti-white diatribes that I have ever heard have come from "passing" Negroes, living as whites, among whites, exposed every day to what white people say among themselves regarding Negroes -- things that a recognized Negro never would hear."

Like a thunderclap I realized that this resentment I felt--while not "anti-white" per se--was something untold numbers of Americans have felt for years. That my experience was something genuine too--because my authenticity (black, white, or other) was questioned by seemingly everyone in my adolescence--was a seminal moment of my life. I didn't necessarily self-ID as "black" for a number of years afterwards--indeed, I went through a phase during which I was quite hostile to the concept of a distinct black identity--but that book changed my life.

I knew exactly what those people felt...and realized I wasn't alone. That shared experience is the bond of community that a lot of black people feel toward each other. It took me a bit longer to figure it out, but that is why I feel how I feel and why I identify as "black" and not "white," though I never disavow nor do I feel shame about my mother's family or heritage.

I think I've said enough on this subject for public consumption.

Suffice it to say, however, that if I'd be black enough for Malcolm X, I'm pretty sure I'm black enough for you.


bellum medicamenti delenda est

28 Days of Mindless Racial Pandering and Other Trivial Pursuits

It's that time of year: Black History Month is upon us again. It's that one month a year America pretends to care about black people. Woo.


I tried to unsubscribe from the GOP.com mailing list that I've been on for years after one particularly annoying email during the 2008 campaign but, alas, I am still on it. (Sorry, I don't remember what was in the email.) I never read the damned things unless the headline is particularly catching--and today, of course, my morbid curiosity made me open it:

STATEMENT FROM RNC CHAIRMAN MICHAEL STEELE ON BLACK HISTORY MONTH 

[All caps in original. RNC's New Media team apparently has yet to master common internet etiquette.]


Anyway, the banal shout-outs to our forebears is embedded below:





Not to be outdone, Senator Harry Reid penned an op-ed establishing the little known fact that black Americans are indeed Americans just like everybody else. No, really, it's titled:

Sen. Harry Reid: Black history is American history

Thanks, Hank. Perhaps you could elaborate on this obscure fact for us just a little bit more?

While the progress we've made together as a nation is laudable, those of us who've been on the frontlines know that much work still lies ahead of us. Like all communities, the African-American community is concerned with ensuring security and stability for themselves and their families. African-Americans, just like all Americans, want to have a steady job [sic; I think the 33 or so million of us want more than ONE job between us] that they can depend on, stay in their homes, afford quality health care for themselves and their children, have the ability to send their children to the best schools, know that they're safe in their homes and communities and are able to plan for retirement.

How many people on the "frontlines" of civil rights today still refer to "Negro dialect"? Furthermore, his "progressive" thinking has gotten him only so far as to take most of a paragraph to explain that black people are just like everybody else? I'll be the last person to say we're in a post-racial society, but is the above explanation really necessary? 

I want to reiterate what I wrote in an earlier post: I don't think Reid is a racist. I just think he's a putz. 

Reid is just one of many nitwits that will be pandering to black people this month--many of whom will be mistaking trivia for history. (The color of the man who invented the traffic light, though interesting and useful in it's own way, is of considerably less significance than understanding the astonishing figures of wealth represented in and created by the slave labor upon which this country was built.) 30-second soundbite commercials by black celebrities paid for by this or that corporation (::cough, cough:: speech ::cough, cough::) highlighting this or that historical contribution is better than nothing, I suppose, but missing the overall point: The way our history is being taught is sorely lacking substance, in "black" history and almost all other aspects of American and world history. Watered-down historical accounts dominated by names and dates that run together is a piss-poor way of enlightening a young mind as to how our country--and our world--developed. The old adage that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it isn't referring to date memorization.

So, if you want to do something of use for Black History Month, I suggest reading a book or two that takes a serious look at black life in America from either a literary or academic perspective. I'll post suggestions for various types of readings soon...none of which will include Harry Reid.

Last year's post on BHM here.

John Hope Franklin, (1915-2009)

Anyone familiar with "Black Studies" or whatever you want to call it (AA History, AAADS, etc.) knows the name of John Hope Franklin. He literally wrote the book on Black History--'From Slavery to Freedom'--the 8th edition of which is a about two feet away from me on my office desk as I type this. He died today at the age of 94.

He was a gifted scholar and an engaging writer--something difficult to find among historians. Anyone who is dismissive of "Black History" has never read Dr. Franklin's work, and is lesser for it.

The NYT obit here.

Rest in peace.

UPDATE: An excellent tribute by Walter Dellinger, legal juggernaut, in WaPo here.

Oh Yeah, It's Black History Month

I got home last night from work, cooked myself dinner and sat down in front of the television. I flipped through the channels and found Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. talking to Chris Rock on a local PBS station. (Most of us in the DC area have 3 PBS stations) It was a replay of a program I'd been wanting to see for some time called "African American Lives 2." Gates reveals the family histories of black celebrities that had been traced back to the days of slavery, with their impressive post-slavery achievements chronicled. Unfortunately, I only caught the tail end of this episode, but what little I saw was touching and inspiring.

Credits rolled and I started channel surfing again, finding a bio on Marvin Gaye...on WETA, another PBS station. And I thought to myself "Whoa, two black shows on one night! What's the deal?"

Then it dawned on me: it's Black History Month. I'd been so caught up in the Super Bowl and contemplating my pending birthday, I'd totally forgotten. Obviously, I knew it was coming, but February 1st isn't exactly a red-letter day on the calendar marking the beginning of BHM.

Anyone who went to high school with me knows that I have spoken out on BHM before. When I was a junior, I wrote a mean-spirited piece for my high school newspaper that ridiculed the idea of BHM and the watered-down black nationalism that manifests itself as the "Black National Anthem" and the "Black National Flag"-- and I made some very unnecessary comments and comparisons in the process. (For what it's worth, PHHS alumni, I am sorry about that.)

Admittedly, I still feel the same way about the black national anthem and that the black national flag is--well, by definition, they are both indeed--contrived. And, having seen stripper/ass-shaking videos on BET with the "BET celebrates BHM" icon in the corner--a disgusting irony I wanted to slap someone for--I can't say I take Black History Month all that seriously in practice. The idea of it--that is, taking time to explain legitimate contributions to history by black people that have been overlooked to this point--is a good thing. One need not believe in a dastardly conspiracy to keep black achievements out of the history texts to say that the average history curriculum is sorely lacking across the board. And, given that there is a good deal of context left out of what little history books actually address it (The immediate future's narrative will probably look something like: Harriet Tubman-->Abraham Lincoln-->MLK-->Obama), American schools have a great deal to teach about the black experience in America. What we need is Black History, not Black Trivia.

The fact that I'm surprised seeing just two consecutive shows dealing with black people on television stations that cater to a large black population--one of which, might I add, is run by a Historically Black College--is indicative that we still have a problem. It isn't that we should mandate x amount of black or other shows, mind you, but that there nearly must be a reason for two shows in one night is. If you doubt this: imagine living in your own country where you automatically think something is strange if two shows on PBS feature people like you...

Positive role models, especially those in history that demonstrate intelligence, thrift, and/or run against the common perceptions and prejudices reflected in today's persistent black stereotypes are important for a people robbed of any dignified history. The precious few individuals that stand out in the general texts can be wiped away with the "exception" tag that gets thrown at successful blacks in spite of true and numerous stories of thriving and successful black towns made up of teachers, tradesmen, authors, and businessmen--briefly, and within certain limitations--well-before the Civil Rights movement. The mental picture of blacks in the semi-distant past is more often illiterate, uncivilized, and incapable of doing for him or herself without the assistance of white people, as if black people have just only recently been able to develop enough intelligence to subsist and live on our own. This, indeed, has become self-sustaining and self-propagating myth as generations of black children are taught to game the system and reject education.

So yes, in spite of its flaws, I support Black History Month--and I very much look forward to a day when I won't be able to tell it's February simply by seeing two channels' programming on my television.