Category Archives: Messaging

speaking of real talk…

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Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy

While it seems like ages ago (as we’re all transfixed on natural disasters and the revolutions in the Middle East) I haven’t stopped thinking about the State of the Union Address:

What’s more, we are the first nation to be founded for the sake of an idea -– the idea that each of us deserves the chance to shape our own destiny… The future is ours to win. But to get there, we can’t just stand still. As Robert Kennedy told us, “The future is not a gift. It is an achievement.” Sustaining the American Dream has never been about standing pat. It has required each generation to sacrifice, and struggle, and meet the demands of a new age. And now it’s our turn. We know what it takes to compete for the jobs and industries of our time. We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world. We have to make America the best place on Earth to do business. We need to take responsibility for our deficit and reform our government. That’s how our people will prosper. That’s how we’ll win the future. And tonight, I’d like to talk about how we get there. The first step in winning the future is encouraging American innovation. None of us can predict with certainty what the next big industry will be or where the new jobs will come from. Thirty years ago, we couldn’t know that something called the Internet would lead to an economic revolution. What we can do — what America does better than anyone else — is spark the creativity and imagination of our people. We’re the nation that put cars in driveways and computers in offices; the nation of Edison and the Wright brothers; of Google and Facebook. In America, innovation doesn’t just change our lives. It is how we make our living.

The tone of the speech was mature, thoughtful, absent of detailed description of policy initiatives, but a clear lecture of Real Talk. In many ways, I felt like this conversation is about two years late. Sure, better late than never…

And not to sound too arrogant or self promoting, but some of the themes Obama covered reminded me of a blog post I wrote nearly two years ago. Some background: I used to work in one industry and now I am doggedly trying to secure sound employment in another. This is a personal choice, privileged in some ways yet, dare I say, brutally difficult.

I also feel it’s premature to declare the recession over. Yes, the Dow is trading at 12,000, a high we last saw in June 2008, but job growth/creation has not matched that enthusiasm. 9.4% unemployment still holds, and if we count the ‘underemployed’, those with a smattering of temporary, part time and freelance jobs, more than likely uninsured, that rate doubles. If you’re a woman or man of color, god help you. The private sector may be hiring, but it remains unclear what those jobs are. There are some of us in this economy grinding to find work in our respective fields with nil to marginal success. Some of those jobs were eliminated and if we’re to be honest here, those jobs aren’t going to come back. Some of us will have to retrain, learn new skills to be competitive with a generation of new jobs that are hyper-specific to trade and skill. Continue reading →

radio silence.

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I think I’m burned out from the news. Too much salt, not enough sweet.

I’m trying to catch up yet find myself sinking deep into a malaise, my eyes flood with too much information. It’s difficult for me to focus on a single item long enough to concentrate. I read somewhere that the internet is ruining our brains. Maybe that’s true. I can’t even remember where I read that. Could’ve been a blog, or a newspaper. I honestly don’t know. I think the midterms put me in a funk. For every forward progression I think we make in civil society, there are dogged forces that pull us back. This may be contributing to my malaise.

For me, I know that when I’m overwhelmed by bad news, I seek solace in art. There’s an urgent need to be in a sublime space, the quiet, the understood relationship between you as viewer and the artist. So this past weekend I checked out Wangechi Mutu’s latest work at gallery in Chelsea. Peeped a view of the Copley exhibit. For three weeks, I had been immersed in reading, editing, coding Union Station Magazine’s latest issue and our new blog. While I was doing that I listened to music over the internet, alternating between Pinna Storm’s October Playlist (h/t Shani!) and Kanye’s Runaway. I bobbled up to the surface to read postmortems on the elections, the Maddow/Stewart showdown, and Bush being …well a victim. But I returned to my inner space, which is to say, I really appreciate Ye’s latest effort (more on that later). He won me over with a brilliant appropriation Bon Iver’s Woods. And going up in the woods is what this girl from Wisconsin really feels like doing. As the world spins, I really need to maintain my center.

scattered thoughts on moderation and restoring sanity.

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I had every intention of going to DC for the Rally to Restore Sanity. The spectacle and clarion call, the gathering of moderates was seductive. However, in typical moderate fashion, I didn’t figure out a plan to get there. By the time I realized I should have booked a bus ticket on MegaBus or Bolt, they were already sold out.

So instead, I spent my Saturday restoring sanity on the home front. I cleaned my bedroom. I cleaned the bathroom. I vacuumed. I groomed my cat. I folded laundry. I organized the stack of ungraded papers for my review. I took a walk around the neighborhood. I bought a latte. I did most of this in relative silence. I refrained from checking my twitterfeed for updates of value and snark regarding the day’s events. I peaked once. Kid Rock performed? (Dude, like seriously?)

There were shows I’m missing. A happy hour I would’ve liked to have gone to. At the very least, I would’ve loved to rub elbows with the young progressives and shared in their sideways glance, witty banter and commentary about a comedian who’s righteous indignation against the tide of batshit crazy in our political discourse has manifested itself in a not so cleverly disguised get out the vote rally on the Washington Mall. Instead, I’m here in Brooklyn. Unable to check into foursquare to unlock uber swarm badges to acknowledge that I exist among the crowd of young(ish) moderate voices in American politics. I’m fine with this. Continue reading →

‘who is this america dem speak of today?’

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‘Either I’m nobody, or I’m a nation.’ - Derek Walcott

My partner in crime and literati madness, Lynne, and I continued this conversation about America, American identity, narratives, and plurality over the weekend. I summarized my recent post for her at our stomping ground while we were planning the next issue of our literary journal. We both remarked how we willfully ignored the kerfuffle or hullabaloo of Glen Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally in DC over the weekend. A rally so blatant in its effort to re-write the narrative of post-civil rights America to serve some nameless corporate and political interest that it turns stomachs, rolls eyes. Whatever. That spectacle, compounded by the nativism and islamophobia washing over many parts of the country over the Park 51 cultural center, juxtaposed against the intensity of the anti-immigration debate in Arizona and California, exacerbates the polarization. We shared our fury over two separate events of assault and vandalism directed at our Muslim Americans; I told her how some believe that this backlash was a delayed reaction to September 11th. We also talked about how we were worried after the towers fell that we would see this behavior in our community and didn’t. We remarked how our mongrel society in the County of Kings asserts our right to exist. Then, I brought her up to speed on the #frazenfreude, the crowning of author Jonathan Franzen as the Great American Novelist of our time, and it’s subsequent fallout/criticism from women authors (Jodi Piccoult, Jennifer Weiner, progenitors of the much maligned chick lit) and the Paris Review’s Lorin Stein’s thoughtful response over on Ta-Nehisi Coates’ blog on the Atlantic.

It’s impossible for me to not look at these things in relation to each other. The narrative of the American experience is undergoing some deep structural work. It’s good to see this debate out there in ether, warts and all. We’re all looking at this in different ways. Continue reading →

“What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?”

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A school district in Indiana has decided to ban Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon.

Students at Franklin Central High School had to return an award-winning but controversial novel halfway through reading it Wednesday after complaints surfaced about its appropriateness.

District administrators say Toni Morrison’s “Song of Solomon” is being reviewed after it was pulled from two classrooms, and a decision on it is expected by Monday. A Franklin Township School Board member has vowed to keep it out of students’ hands.

“I was about as appalled as I’ve ever been in my life,” said board member Scott Veerkamp. “I wouldn’t want to expose my children to that garbage.”

Veerkamp said he and fellow board member Randall Bland received complaints about the book. Veerkamp then asked district administrators to pull it, which triggered a formal review.

“I couldn’t even sleep last night when I read some of the excerpts,” he said, adding that descriptive sex scenes, profanity, demeaning language and suicide were some of the material he found offensive.

Ok, that last part might be a bit of hyperbole. And this isn’t the first time that the Pulitzer Prize winning author had been subject to the scrutiny of school board members. In 2009, Song of Solomon was removed from the curriculum of a Maryland school district but later restored by a narrow school board vote.

The subject of banning books from schools and libraries often stirs alarm in me. And certainly, it’s valid for parents to question the content of some works of art in terms of ‘appropriateness’ for children. However, I have to wonder a little about this district and how ‘insular’ they are. Continue reading →

the black tea partier…

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At last year’s Tax Day Rally in New Dorp, Staten Island, I did in fact, meet ONE black Tea Party supporter. I’m not sure if he’s still kickin’ it with them today. He was a curious oddity to me. I don’t remember his name, but I do remember that he was a Cuban immigrant, naturalized American. And after a year of vitriol and obfuscation, I wonder if he is still aligned with this movement. A movement that at its heart invalidates his right to claim America as his home.

UPDATE:
So I got this comment on my rather benign commentary:

This man integrated, joined America – as proven by his being a Tea Partier – and no other Tea Party supporter would gainsay his status as a right and proper American.

Get over your racism and your hatred of all things White and all things truly American and maybe, just maybe, you’ll earn the same privilege.

I won’t hold my breath though.

I can accept critique, but if this commenter were a regular reader of this blog, he’d recognize that my supposed hatred of ‘all things White’ is unfounded. I mean, seriously, who blogs about Procul Harum, Foo Fighters, and Bartleby, the Scrivener??? I don’t even need to unpack all the things wrong with that premise. Perhaps I do? I don’t know. Continue reading →

lost in translation.

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Warning: This is an extremely meta post.

In response to a recent NYT article in which I was quoted, a very clever reader I assume, googled me, found my Facebook profile and proceeded to send me the following message:

Speak for yourself. Asian and Indian men are raised pretty much by doctors and engineers, and doctors and engineers only. They get married relatively young, don’t cheat, don’t even look at other women, do more household chores than anyone and everyone, and expect their women to be equal (if not greater) partners who achieve at a similarly high level.

There are a lot of things problematic about this statement. One, I AM speaking for myself. Two, that generalization is sort of racist.

I feel like I grabbed the third rail of some conflict I’m not sure how to define. The Pew Report is interesting, however, as a culture, our response to its findings is fascinating. And not in a good way. At all. Some people are downright Catty McBitchy.

Others are misogynistic:

This is a disastrous trend. Can anyone name one society in history that has been dominated by women and which has prospered and survived. I can’t.

Others are comedians:

Big buff dude, who is for some reason shirtless in a library (who may also be carrying an axe in order to appear lumberjack manly): Hey babe, are you done with the microfiche?
Syreeta (turning slowly, flicking her hair, pushing her glasses down to the tip of her nose): Why yes, yes I am? Say, you wouldn’t happen to have a passport handy now would you?

Others just think I’m bitter:

‘I read the article in the Times that you were quoted in and looked you up online. Were You quoted correctly? “With men of any ethnic group, it’s a little intimidating for them to encounter smart women.”
Really? All men? All ethnic groups? The stereotypes that you generate are worse than the stereotypes than men generate about women, but you went to Sarah Lawrence, so I know that you are a bitter, angry, unbalanced and unpleasant young lady who will spend most of her life contriving ugly things to do and say about men (how’s that for a stereotype?)’

Um, WOW.  And regardless of whether or not I was quoted correctly, or because I went to one school over another and that says how I feel about everything is also a bit ridiculous. I also love the internet for encouraging some seriously bold assaults from people who wouldn’t dare say any of this to my face. Many of whom are women. Seriously. I’ve had more women assault me with vapid commentary about what they *think* I meant rather than engage me seriously about the conversation. People were angry, cynical, bitchy, frustrated, bitter or assumed that I and my lot are. *kanye shrug*

Continue reading →

there’s a party at the crossroads…

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A few months back this earworm invaded my mental mind and prompted me to post it as a stub. Today, it’s my writing prompt as I re-read Pygmalion and think about the code/switch.

For the uninitiated, here is a sampling of X-Clan’s tome to the complexity of black identity in the black and white imagination:

Let me tell you about blackness,
Grits and cornbread how can you act this?
I exist on a plane, where the jar is my brain, I’m livin’ to retrieve
cells,
Antenae my stick, picture bigger, made of liquor, figure,
The pull of the trigger goes zoom not boom,
Not a bunch of sissies, but saviors braver,
The red, black, and green,
It’s just so much more than red, black, and green,
You ask what I mean, but yet the sundial shades on lights and dreams,
Watch too late, oops, upside your head!
You drop through abyss like lead,
Where you goin’, what’s your speed, what’s your pleasure, what’s your
need,
Trees to branches, roots to seeds, forwards, backwards many
degrees,
Questions answers, what’s the sum?
We have come.

Continue reading →

‘post-racial’ hubris.

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Someone sent me a link to yet another piece of writing admonishing Tiger Woods and its inevitable knee jerk comparison to liberal disappointment with Obama.

Le grand sigh. I think my greatest complaint stems from the following paragraph:

Both men are of mixed race. Yet the majority of the country, including black Americans, sees them as black. That’s not a bad thing. Except when such men of intelligence and talent, men who have such influence and power, can’t help but succumb to the age old twins of greed and power. Although each has risen from ordinary beginnings to be at the top of their field but now things don’t look so good for either of them. Woods income is as tied to endorsements as it is to his talent. And Obama is so caught up in party donations and the power that those who donate have, he can’t allow himself or his party to do anything to thwart those donations. If Woods had been smart he would have kept his head down, played golf and taken care of his beautiful family instead of publicly destroying them. If Obama had enacted campaign reform as the first order of business real change could well have happened. But money and fame go to the head and any other result seems to be a fairy tale, a dream, an impossibility. Somehow money corrupts the moral compass, whether for one’s self or one’s party.

Let’s be clear: Woods is an athlete, not a world leader. And believe me, I’m no shill for Obama, but his job is a little different from an athlete who’s amazing, innate talent earned him the right to be a cog in corporate beast. The author’s presumption lumps Woods and Obama into some black monolith. Dowd did the same thing with Desiree Rogers and Woods in a vapid column last week.

Post racial America seems to lack discernment. And anyone who’s paying attention to the struggle for health care reform knows that the blame is shared, mired in the intrigues among insurance/pharmaceutical corporations, lobbyists, AND Members of Congress.

Health care reform is not the same as the Green.

UPDATE:

Actually, language and logic is what really bristles. ‘If Woods had been smart he would have kept his head down, played golf…’ The sentence seems innocuous except that in our complicated racial history, a white person suggesting that a black person self-identified or otherwise, should ‘keep their head down’ is a flash point to language from the segregation era. It’s just bad diction here. Certainly, the immediate turnoff when we compare marital transgressions to perceived failings in leadership to pass legislation begins with, ‘Both men are of mixed race…’ Yikes. And? So? I don’t presume that this author is racist, but the language and logic speak to a problem some of us are sensitive to when engaging white liberals. A blissful unawareness of the racist attitudes embedded in the language. It’s like that time when Joe Biden said Obama was ‘clean and articulate’ and the New York Times wrote an op-ed to explain to everyone why that’s a non-starter with Black America.

Bartleby.

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I read Bartleby, the Scrivener in the eleventh grade. It was required reading for IB English I at my high school.

For the uninitiated, Bartleby was a scrivener, a writer, if you will, who worked for a real estate lawyer. Our modern tongues would define his position as ‘administrative assistant’, or ‘paralegal.’ And while the narrator of the story itself suggests that Bartleby offered no indication of any emotion to his circumstance, I’d submit that underneath the veil of ambivalence, Bartleby hated his job. Bartleby was bored out of his mind. Bartleby only offers a very controlled and passive response to all the directives issued by the boss, ‘I prefer not to.’ We watch this détente between boss and employee unfold over a period of time, and the slow degeneration of Bartleby, the office relocates and Bartleby, the everyman working in the offices of a boom economy, condemned to banal tasks of recording mortgages, deeds for would-be moguls, all the while passively resisting any work that demanded more of his mental mind.  The story concludes with the discovery that Bartleby lived in the old offices and died bereft.

Yeah. Continue reading →