God Give Me Strength

Prayer and spirituality go hand in hand. With just about any popular religion there are a standard set of prayers for just about every occasion. Are you about to eat? You’d better thank god for the many blessings. Are you about to sleep? You’d better ask god your soul to keep. Are you about to come together to discuss community business? Better say a word of convocation. Are you about to play a football game? Better ask god for victory. Is a family member about to have surgery? Better say a prayer for their safe return. Humans are quick to bust out with a prayer for just about anything and everything that happens in our life.

The way a lot of people tell their story, prayer was the only thing they had in certain desperate situations. How many of us have prayed to pass a test that we may have been ill prepared for in school? How many soldiers have prayed in their foxhole? God, if you help me get this car started I promise to go to church this weekend. Many times prayer is all we’ve got. And then you have people who will credit their success in a particular situation to prayer. God is good and we have to give him all the glory. Halleluiah! God hears all and knows all and he knows what we need. Let us bow our head! God, help me finish this post! Have mercy on me and give me the strength to convey an intelligent message. Have mercy on me!

Prayer has its purpose. It’s very helpful in getting someone the self confidence or the self assurance to help us in our personal endeavors. There is nothing more uplifting than believing the all mighty has got your back when you’re running down a football field with the ball and there are eleven big ass players on the other team who believe god has got their back in their effort to stop you in your tracks.  God please don’t let them catch me.

But then the players on the other team are saying their prayers too.  God give us the strength to catch that bastard!

And if the other players are lucky enough to catch the little bastard and flatten him into the turf, they’ll want to say a prayer that they didn’t kill the guy.  How many times have we heard the announcer encourage the crowd to pray for a player knocked unconscious?  Ladies and gentlemen the defense just stopped that running back. Uh, oh! It doesn’t look like he’s getting up. Let’s bow our heads in a word of prayer.

And at the end of the game, when the team didn’t win they’ll have another prayer.  Oh god, why didn’t we score that touchdown? But the answer to that is easy.  God works in mysterious ways.

Are you angry at god? Let him have it with double barrels. God! Why the hell didn’t you do what I told you to? Are you even listening to me? I specifically asked that you do something for me and you didn’t. What was the point of all that prayer? God works in mysterious ways. It wasn’t god’s will. It is kind of complicated. You would understand if it was god’s will. Since you don’t understand you must not be praying enough. Just send me your tithes and I’ll handle all that prayer for you from my church funded Gulfstream IV with hand stitched ostrich leather seats at thirty five thousand feet.

But the reality is that it is really very simple. God and prayer go together like oil and water. With a little work and a little effort you could get a combination that can work. God will be more than ready to listen to you when you are ready to listen to him. But don’t be fooled into thinking that every time you open your mouth god is waiting at your beck and call. God is a very busy entity. Stop and think how busy the creator of the universe must be if the universe is as large as what we think it is. Last time I heard the known universe is something like several quadrillion light years east and west by a quadrillion light years north and south and another bazillion light years up and down. That’s a lot of galactic real estate that needs to be managed. And he’s ready to stop what he’s doing a megazillion light years away to listen to what one of us have to say.

God, thank you for the meal we are about to eat. I can imagine god’s response now. You stopped me from forming a new galaxy with a cluster of black holes at its nucleus, with a billion solar systems waiting to be born to tell me thanks for dinner? Didn’t you thank me yesterday? Didn’t you thank me this morning? Am I going to have to stop and listen to you every time you eat? If that’s the case maybe you need to stop eating! I’m busy. I don’t mean to be rude but I’m trying to do something over hear. If you truly have something to say I’ll be more than happy to listen. But until then, could you do me a favor and show a little more discretion with the prayer line? It would be very much appreciated. Now, where was I?

More often than not what happens in our lives is a product of human choices, human actions, and series of random events driven by environments and circumstances. God stood above the football field and helped one team defeat the other? Not very likely. More probable is that the oblong football took a favorable jump for one team, an unfavorable jump for the other. God stood over the people trying to cross the bridge on their long walk to Montgomery, Alabama when the police attacked with dogs and fire hoses? Not very likely. The dogs attacked, people saw the dogs attack, and developed sympathy for people who were just trying to demonstrate their resolve for equality in the face of white oppression. God stood over your shoulder and magically imbued the ill prepared test taker with knowledge he or she should have studied for? Not likely. Probably explains why they’re flunking the class.

God isn’t waiting to hear our prayers. If you want to have a conversation with god then learn to be still and clear your mind and learn to listen. It takes a lot more than falling to your knees, saying a few rote words, and going through the traditional motions of prayer. God shouldn’t be taken for granted so easily. Learn to respect who he is and your relationship to him. Humans are not god’s equal and he’s not sitting around waiting for you to give him something to do. I pray that you understand what I’m trying to say.  God, did you hear that?

Our Very Own Golden Calf

To say that the untimely death of Michael Jackson not quite two weeks ago has impacted the world is an understatement.  As I write this, Mr. Jackson’s public funeral is being held in Los Angeles’ Staples Center.  I just heard a clip of Stevie Wonder singing his tribute to the King of Pop.  Another clip had a sample of the eulogy given by Reverend Al Sharpton.  A quick glimpse of the news on the internet showed a headline of Michael Jackson’s tribute with a gospel choir opening the service.

Hundreds of pictures of the event have already been posted.  Millions of people all over the world applied for tickets to the event even though there was scant chance that many would be able to attend even if they had won the lottery known as the Michael Jackson funeral.  Hundreds, maybe thousands, of people traveled to Los Angeles from around the world without a ticket to the memorial just for the privilege to be denied access to Staples Center.  One woman interviewed on television said she spent three thousand dollars to buy a last minute ticket from the United Kingdom to pay her respects and to gain closure.  So many people took the death of Michael Jackson to heart.  This event is truly unprecedented.

This is my third Michael Jackson themed article since his demise.  Unlike the vast majority of people who have written about Michael, my writings have not been all that kind.  Most people who respond to my articles reprimand me for being so harsh with a man who appears to have done everything imaginable, and some things beyond most people’s imagination, to put his blackness behind him and become a bona fide member of the racially generic dominant community.  I didn’t forget the bleaching of his blackness before he died and I’m not going to forget it just because he died.  Mr. Jackson was a strange and complex figure and his death will not change that.  At least it doesn’t change anything for me.

Mr. Jackson’s death has catapulted him into people’s hearts in a way and on a scale that is hard to imagine.  No one will ever enjoy such love and such worship for a long, long time if ever.  You can compare the impact of his death to the death of Elvis Presley or you can compare his death to the passing of Rudy Valentino or to the death of anyone else to determine who had the bigger impact to the people of his or her time.  Who is bigger and who is greater is moot.  It really is an argument of apples and oranges as to who is the greatest star.  Today is the day that many of us want to celebrate this man’s life.

I was listening to National Public Radio and heard that Michael Jackson was being buried in a golden casket.  The allusion was much too stark to simply let it go by without saying anything.  I searched the internet for a picture of the casket and found it within seconds.  I saw Michael Jackson’s golden casket and all I can think of was the golden calf from the book of Exodus.

According to the Old Testament, right after the greatest manifestations of the power of the Supreme Being, some of the people needed decided that what they needed was something shiny and expensive to hang their worship on.  The people gave of their selves, gave up their gold, so they could help build the golden calf.  And once they were done, the shiny golden calf sat on an altar for all the people to see and celebrate.  I’m sure if you ask some of the people why they did it they could have said that they needed some kind of closure from the past as well.

When most of us learned that story back in Sunday school, we probably thought we’d never do anything remotely similar.  We would never worship idols in such a way that we lose perspective of our sense of spirituality and our sense of community, our relationship with each other.  However, if today’s events are any indication, many of us appear quite capable of repeating the story.  Many of us appear happy to give of our wealth in an effort to help create the greatest spectacle of a tribute possible to give a man.

Once the memorial is done we will come one step closer to putting this unpleasant affair behind us.  It might take a week, it might take a month, but eventually, Michael Jackson will fall back into the cobwebs of our conscious and the vast majority of us will go back to the lives we led before he died.  It will take time but all of us will move on to find another idol to worship.  We will always have this time to look back on and shake our heads in amazement at the fact that for a few days the global collective took a moment to worship Michael Jackson in unison.

How Not To Play Basketball by Sarah Palin

Death happens in sets of threes.  And political careers of Republican conservative politicians appear to be no exception.  First we have Nevada Senator John Ensign’s admission of an extramarital affair that turned into something out of a soap opera, with the senator’s aides accusing the husband of his former mistress of extortion by demanding a substantial cash payout.  In order to end his nightmare, Mr. Ensign laid his adultery on the table for the world to see.

Second, we have South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford who figuratively and courageously told his constituents to go to hell as he boldly went by his lonesome where no politician has ever gone before, at least while in office and without his entourage, to have a tryst with his mistress way, way, way south of the border in Argentina over the Father’s Day weekend.

And now we have our third.  On the eve of Independence Day, traditionally a time when media attention is at a low point, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, with no fanfare, no pre-prepared remarks, and not much of an audience to witness the event, made an announcement that she would be stepping down as governor.  The lipstick wearing doppelganger for a pit bull is calling it quits after just thirty two months in office.  And ever since the Republican National Convention when the Republican nominee Alaska Senator John McCain shrewdly bypassed all the politically qualified candidates to the wind and went with his gut to select the charismatic thriller from Wasilla to be his vice presidential running mate, Ms. Palin’s attention has been on anything but being governor.

To be fair, the past year has not been kind to Ms. Palin and her family.  When she skyrocketed onto the national political stage, it was quickly made painfully obvious that Ms. Palin was not ready for the national spotlight.  While it should be noted that no one is immune from making gaffs, Ms. Palin became a walking talking gaff machine.  All attempts to keep her from media scrutiny backfired.  The only thing she was allowed to say was her convention speech with the well worn and overused line that lipstick was the only distinguishing characteristic between a pit bull and a hockey mom.  And when she did manage to break communication silence, the results were less than stellar.  The interviews with CBS’s Katie Couric and ABC’s Charlie Gibson were not her shining moments of intellect or political sophistication,  And Saturday Night Live comedian Tina Fey used Ms. Palin’s public appearances as inspiration for some of the best comedy on that show in years.

After the election, Ms. Palin’s appears in the news under headlines more suitable for the attention hounds of Hollywood than for a politician of vision.  Ms. Palin has allowed herself to fall into heated public battles with Levi Johnston, the father of her grandson, and with late night television comedian David Letterman who crossed the line with a less than entertaining joke mocking her daughter’s appetite for sex.  Ms. Palin has accepted two high profile speaking engagements only to bail out and then, on the flip side, she’s passed on Republican dinner invitations only to agree to appear at the last minute but refusing to take a high profile role by declining to give a speech.  Even her creator Mr. McCain refuses to give her any thing resembling a political endorsement these days.  And Ms. Palin has confessed to becoming increasingly unhappy with the unflattering media scrutiny regarding her battles with her state legislature and all of the ethics complaints filed against her.

Now all of this, and much, much more, would drive anyone to want a timeout to lick their wounds.  But politicians, especially the kind that want the national attention of a national office, don’t want to just ride off into the sunset and fade away from existence.

But the timing of Ms. Palin’s retirement announcement only leads to more suspicion.  To announce the step down on the Friday before the Independence Day holiday weekend will simply lead to more scrutiny.  It leaves her with less than three years as governor on her resume which is not a very strong argument to run for any national political office.  This shoots a huge hole in all of her talk about looking like a pit bull.  She doesn’t have the tenacity to run Alaska, how in the world will she convince the people that she has the resolve to run the presidency?  It is interesting that the Alaskan governor quits her job free of scandal and while she was still extremely popular in Republican circles.  But South Carolina Mark Sanford, neck deep in scandal and more revolting than Michael Vick, at least for the moment, decides it’s in the best interest of his constituents that he stays in office.  Go figure!

During the press conference Ms. Palin used another metaphor and presented herself as a point guard exhausted by the full court press attacking her on the national level.  Ms. Palin said that she has driven through a full court press, protecting the ball, keeping her head up because she needs to keep her eye on the basket, and now finds it necessary to pass the ball so that her team can win.  Ms. Palin admitted that some are going to question the timing.  But after much prayer and consideration she said she asked the people who meant the most to her, her kids.  She posed the question whether or not she should be a positive influence and fight for all our children’s futures from outside the governor’s office?  She said it was four yeses and one hell yeah.  That one probably came from Bristol tired of being an easy lightning rod for her mother’s controversies.

If the basket in her analogy is indeed a life outside of government then Ms. Palin would probably have a much easier time than staying on as governor.  There is little doubt that her charisma and charm could work wonders as a fund raiser or as a political lobbyist.  But if her plan was to for a higher profile political office then her strategy leaves much to be desired.  A good basketball player knows when to pass the ball, but they never simply quit in the middle of the game.

Happy Birthday America!

We may be far from perfect.  But once we make the choice to treat all people fairly and evenly we will have a more perfect union.  Today we’re one step closer to ending the disparity.

The Fifth Of July Can’t Come Fast Enough

Today is Fourth of July eve.  And the holiday cannot come and go fast enough for me.  Last night, some yahoo of deviant character was lighting, firing, and popping fireworks a little before midnight.  If it was just the one night spent trying to keep people from sleeping that would literally be one thing.  But some of my neighbors have been so inconsiderate that they have been lighting firecrackers for the past month.  I am really beginning to loathe fireworks.

Unfortunately, I have to admit that I was one of those deviants so long ago when I was a kid.  I wouldn’t think anything of lighting a firecracker while neighbors were trying to sleep.  The only reason I didn’t do it was that I knew that a couple of those people trying to sleep were my parents.  And it didn’t matter if they were there or not.  If any neighbors saw me lighting fireworks in the middle of the night, they were sure to call my parents the next day to complain and demand some retribution.  And then mom or dad or both would light my ass as if I was a firecracker.

Now that I’m so much older and most, not all but most, of my deviant behavior has been exorcised from my character, I briefly thought last night that I could call the police.  The police patrols have been extra heavy as of late and I can only assume it’s because people are complaining about firecrackers.  One time, a patrol car came around and the delinquents scattered.  The police parked right at an intersection where there was the most activity.  They stayed there for a few minutes and then left.  Not fifteen minutes later it sounded like a Chinese New Year there were so many pops.  It was as if somebody was trying to say, I’m still here bitches!

So I’ve given up on calling the police.  Besides, our cops have much more important things to do than to chase firecracker wielding idiots.  So I silently wished somebody would just blow their fingers off.  They’d go to the hospital for a hot minute.  But as soon as they got home they’d realize they had another perfectly good hand and would soon be out there again taking the same risk, not learning a damn thing.

So the Fourth can’t come fast enough for me.  I imagine some of my neighbors will light their fireworks in a climatic crescendo of noisy mini explosions.  The air in the neighborhood will be thick with gunpowder and smoke.  The half hearted hope that somebody gets injured will be replaced with the really serious hope that no one gets injured and damage to property will be kept to an absolute minimum.  My mom’s dog will be brought inside a nervous wreck from all the noise and not understanding that there is no real danger.

Come the anti-climax of Sunday the fifth things will die down considerably.  Hopefully, the firecracker venders will be long gone and my neighbors won’t be able to replenish their supplies.  And definitely by Monday or maybe as late as Tuesday the neighborhood will be dry, at least until the next holiday.  Next week can’t come fast enough.

Variety Helps Build Balance

National Public Radio was doing an article on gangs.  Nothing generated by insidious activity in the news.  It wasn’t even about the black community.  It was about West Side Story, the classic gang warfare musical about the Jets and the Sharks featuring choreographed rumbles.  The setting is late fifties New York City and the ethnic clash of cultures is between the white New Yorkers Anglos and immigrant Puerto Ricans.  A new version of the play was being released.  And in an attempt to assure authenticity of the half decade old story, an actual former member of a gang was consulted for his opinion.

Forgive me but the details are sketchy and I’m not about to double and triple guess my memory.  The article aired weeks ago and it had all but faded from memory until I heard Stephen Corbert of the Corbert Report on the Comedy Channel make the claim that Supreme Court nomine Sonia Sotomayor, who was born in the Bronx, may have been a Shark.  If she was a gang member, she was in diapers.

The former gang member wanted to clear up a big misconception about gangs.  I know when I watched the television version of West Side Story featuring Natalie Wood and Rita Moreno, I thought that gangs were about nothing but violence and it was virtually guaranteed that the members were sociopaths bent on chaos and trouble.  But not everyone in a gang is about that.  There are gang members who would not hesitate to resort to violence.  But there are other members who wouldn’t hurt a fly.  Also, I have to admit that I thought that the more empathetic members would be disrespected by the less sympathetic members.  Even gangs understand the concept that it takes a variety of talent to make a community.  At least the gangs back in his day had balance.  Gangs now seem to be out of balance with members who only think of violence.  But then again, I’m not in a gang and I’m only basing my opinion on observations.  Kind of like what I did back in the day watching West Side Story for the first time.

I was reminded of the concept of variety at work.  I work in an environment where all of my coworkers have medical services background in a patient care setting.  My work experience is primarily in the petro chemical field and my specialty is database development and maintenance.  Everyone on my team understands and interprets healthcare lingo like ducks understand water.  I’m the only on the team who hears this gibberish as gibberish.  They start talking and all I can think of are those computer monitors from the Matrix with the ghostly green characters that fall along the screen.  The people readily admit that I was hired for my computer development skills.  The fact that I don’t know medical terms has been a hindrance to my ability to get the job done.  In many respects I feel inept when things go awry and information systems have to be reinstated as soon as possible.

However, my supervisor assured me that despite my lack of medical knowledge I was indeed a valued member of the team.  I look at data and know exactly how to coax information out of our various database applications.  I can write processes to mine through data dumps and summarize information in an hour while others might take as long as three days.  I may not be on the frontline tackling problems that come to our team.  But when somebody is analyzing information and they need a quick application to help them figure out what’s going on, my value to my team becomes crystal clear.

All of this reminds me of the need for complete balance in our community settings whether it is a gang trying to protect its turf from another gang or a job trying to protect its turf better known as market share.  But one community that consistently suffers from not being able to retain a variety of members and talents and is constantly out of balance is the traditionally black neighborhood where people who are able to do better and make something of their life are expected to abandon their surroundings at their first opportunity.

If you were to look at my urban black neighborhood the last thing you would think of is professional people as part of this community.  We have a tendency to think that the standard behavior of people in this area is one of hopelessness or helplessness or downright nastiness and so many of us will pull up steaks in search of greener pastures.  That’s easy enough to do.  It takes real work to roll up the sleeves and make a stand as part of the traditional black neighborhood.  Schools are crumbling and churches are drying up while liquor stores are popping up like a rampant virus and vacancies abound.  Balance has been thrown out the window and what is left is skewed so heavily into the negative that this black neighborhood’s survival is questionable.

Eventually, more people will recognize the fact that there is a ton of raw opportunity here.  People looking for urban homesteads will come into this neighborhood, buy houses and buildings and land for pennies compared to property in other areas, and will transform the place.  Eventually, more people will come to understand their role in restoring a neighborhood community.  It takes all types to keep a community going.

Who Am I To Judge A Weirdo?

The internet has been abuzz ever since the news that Michael Jackson died hit public ears.  A guy at work told me that hours after it was announced that Mr. Jackson had died, Google went down from all the internet traffic.  Supposedly, shortly after that Wikipedia crashed from its own internet siege from the global community.  My associate said it was unfathomable that a single death would have generated such interest other than maybe the assassination of America’s first black president, heaven forbid.

I had to agree with him.  I told him that the death of Princess Diana comes closest but is probably a distant runner up.  No leader of the black community would draw such concern.  Not the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. or Malcolm X.  Not even the death of the man known as Jesus Christ would garner the world’s attention.  At the time of his death, Jesus was a criminal and most people had the attitude good riddance.  So along with his record breaking album Thriller, it might just as well be a long time before anyone topples the King of Pop for most internet traffic.

To say that the global community feels the loss of Mr. Jackson is a woeful understatement.  So many people are pouring their hearts out in tribute and respect to Michael.  Ninety nine percent of the things being said and written are filled with such positivity and love, it’s hard to remember that just last week Mr. Jackson had fallen off of most people’s conscious thoughts.  Most people didn’t give a thought about buying a Michael Jackson album or downloading a Michael Jackson song.  He went from a virtual zero to legendary hero status in the stroke of a heartbeat.

Up until last week, most people would call Michael Jackson a weirdo.  Yes the man had a history of musical greatness and as a boy displayed a talent to sing and dance far, far beyond his years.  But of late, Michael just got weird.  And now people remember him as nothing but a misunderstood saint.

Personally, I have no problem looking at Michael Jackson through the same lens of understanding today as I had last week.  I thought dude was strange last week.  I think dude was strange this week.  I have no doubt that I will remember dude as weird next week, next month, and next year.  If somehow I wound up in Michael Jackson’s will, probably penciled in over his father’s name, I would be more than happy to accept what Mike may have left me.  But I’ll accept it with the understanding that my benefactor was indeed a strange cuss.  I believe it would be somewhat hypocritical for me to change my opinion simply because the man is dead.

A handful of times I have asked others whether or not Michael Jackson was weird, a few people avoided the question with the punt, who am I to judge?  And then right after these people duck casting an opinion on that weirdo the King of Pop, they realize that they do have a pair after all and will chastise me for openly expressing my opinion.  Why do people feel that they don’t have the right to judge one person but then turnaround and will have no reservations about casting judgment on another?  What makes Michael Teflon and me Gorilla glue?

I think some people have a hard time coming to terms with criticizing what they love.  We collectively appreciate Michael Jackson so much and mourn his lost that we can’t imagine tolerating any negative thoughts we may have had about him in the past.  Some of us feel like we are ungrateful hypocrites to say anything bad about him.  So instead of stepping forward and calling weird for what it is, many of us would rather duplicate the behavior of the yes-men and other enablers who allowed Mr. Jackson to become the ever exaggerated caricature of his self.

I know if I did some of the weird crap that Michael Jackson did, I would hope people who really cared about me would step forward and say something like, quit being such a weirdo.  That way, maybe I would stop being weird and in fact, I might straighten up and fly right.  Who knows?  If someone had stepped forward and told Michael Jackson that he needed to stop being so weird we might have him around today.

Instead of looking the other way and dodging question with false words of humility like, who am I to judge, we could step to the plate and call things the way we see it.  We all have an opinion.  Most of us have no problem speaking up against the things we don’t like.  If more of us took the time to speak up more often we might be able to stop the train wrecks that are happening around us.  Your favorite celebrity is acting like a nut?  Call them a nut.  They might stop if more of us did it.  It shouldn’t be considered judging.  It should be considered a form of constructive criticism given with love and appreciation.

It’s too late for Michael Jackson.  Yes it’s true that some people may have called him out, but not nearly enough.  He died a weirdo.  Even in death some people have problems coming to terms with his weirdness.  Not me.  He was a weirdo then, he was a weirdo now.  Judge me all you want for being unfair to Mr. Jackson.  But weird is weird and I’m not afraid to say it.

Quick Notes 200907

July 8, 2009
Dog Days of Summer

The dog days of summer.

July 7, 2009
Franken Sworn In

The junior senator from Minnesota gets sworn in today!

July 6, 2009
Michael Jackson Lottery

Over 1.6 million Michael Jackson fans competed for less than nine thousand seats at the Michael Jackson memorial to be held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The way people act you’d think that the King of Pop was going to get up and perform. Thriller was just a video people!!!

July 5, 2009
Marion Berry Arrested Again

Former Washington, DC Mayor Marion Barry was arrested after a woman flagged down an officer and complained that Mr. Barry was stalking her. Is that all it takes? Anybody other drivers who looks at me the wrong way on my way to work tomorrow better watch out!

July 4, 2009
Palin Resigns

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin resigns on the eve of Independence Day. What gives?

July 3, 2009
Debbie Rowe

Did anybody think Debbie Rowe wouldn’t show up after Michael Jackson’s death?

July 1, 2009
California Issues IOUs

Citing the state legislature’s failure to pass a budget plan, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announces that he is declaring a fiscal emergency to address California’s deficit. The state will be issuing IOUs to its creditors. I wonder how likely would the state be to accept an IOUs from people paying taxes or paying for licenses and such.

Firefighters Stoke The Fires Of Disparity

Here in America, where white privilege is the status quo, where the white community is well represented in any and every given set of opportunities, we have made the public choice to ignore racial disparity.  The Supreme Court ruled that white firefighters in New Haven, Connecticut were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision endorsed in a lower court.  This latest ruling on employment practices with respect to racial disparity will make it considerably more difficult to prove discrimination because of the condition that it must be intentional.  Accidental racial discrimination is okay.

In a split decision the highest court decided that the city of New Haven was wrong to scrap a promotion exam simply because no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to receive promotions based on the results.  The city said that it had acted to avoid a lawsuit from minorities.  However, on behalf of the majority of five justices, Anthony Kennedy wrote that fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer’s reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions.  Mr. Kennedy was joined by John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence “wouldn’t spit on the black community if it was on fire” Thomas.

On behalf of the minority of opposing justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that the white firefighters had no vested right to promotion nor have any other non white person received promotions in preference to them.  Ms. Ginsburg wrote that the court should have assessed the starkly disparate results of the exams against the historical and ongoing inequality in the New Haven fire department.  As of 2003, she said, only one of the city’s twenty one fire captains was black.  Justices David Souter, Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens signed onto the dissent.  Ms. Ginsburg predicted that the court’s ruling will not have staying power.  Unfortunately, it should be pretty obvious that racial discrimination has a lot more staying power than Ms. Ginsburg gives it credit for.

Karen Torre, the attorney for the white firefighters, said that the ruling is a sign that individual achievement should not take a back seat to race or ethnicity and employers cannot bow to politics and pressure and lobbying by special interest groups or act to achieve racial quotas.  White firefighter Frank Ricci said the ruling proved that if you work hard, you can succeed in America.  I find the implication that black firefighters don’t work hard like their white counterparts a first class example of the typical racial rhetoric that justifies the perpetual second class status of the black community.

As Ms. Ginsburg said we should not be so quick to discard the historic context of what our system built on a foundation of race preference that for centuries have benefited the white community has wrought.  In an attempt to appear utterly race neutral we are ready to ignore the past and the current thinking that somehow if we simply stay the course the racial divide will heal itself.  But when given a prime opportunity to see that a hands-off approach is not working, that a system of opportunity based on the one consideration of a test score, will exempt black people from qualifying, we chose to support racially skewed systems that favor white privilege.

Essentially, Mr. Kennedy wrote that fear of the future, that the city of New Haven could be sued over the fact that no black candidate qualified for promotion, is not reason enough to throw out the test.  But then Mr. Kennedy and his cohorts in the majority make a ruling that is based on fear of the future.  The white firefighters feared the fact that they could lose their advantage in a promotion system that could have been more statistically racially neutral.

The talk that this ruling proves that hard work leads to success in America is nothing but talk.  There is no proof that the white firefighters worked any harder than the black ones other than a numerically higher result on a test.  If someone was to give a test on Chicago trivia I’m pretty sure no one would say that a Chicagoan doing better than a Houstonian is proof that people in Chicago work harder.  There are other factors that should be taken into consideration that are simply forgotten for the sake of expediency.

But one thing this ruling does prove is that we as a national community are willing to disregard the historical context of race discrimination on an entire community in order to protect the advantage of individuals in the white community.  Many people claim that they want to see an end to racial discrimination.  However, the day that our gross condition of disparity along racial lines becomes statistically insignificant won’t happen as long as we continue to protect instances of gross racial disparity.

Sour Grapes

People who read this blog on a regular basis know that I don’t particularly care for a lot of high profile black people in our midst.  More often than not the high profile black celebrities that have found economic success are too absorbed with finding even more economic success than with finding a connection to the lesser fortunate black community.  It is my observation that black people who have developed a name worth recognizing or who have accumulated a little wealth under their belt become more obsessed with the protection of the wealth rather than the protection of the traditional black community.  Maybe this sounds like sour grapes and can be summarized, or minimized, as little more than jealousy.  But there is a social component that gets lost with such a dismissive attitude.

At the moment, despite the economy, I have an excellent job.  I have healthcare.  I’m able to save a major portion of my paycheck.  In the past year or so we’ve managed to save enough money saved to buy the family a used minivan with cash and a multifamily house, albeit a fixer upper.  We have exercised personal responsibility and have managed to earn a small slice of the American pie.  So why should I care about other people in the black community who don’t have it as well as I do?

I like to think that my concern for the black community comes from having a social conscious despite being in an America where we are constantly being programmed to protect our version of capitalism at any and all costs.  In order to minimize any responsibility for the condition of the black community we constantly berate black people for not having the wherewithal to lift themselves out of whatever supposedly led to our lack of individual opportunity in a social system rooted in institutionalized racial discrimination on a scale that impacts a major portion of the black community.  It is popular rhetoric that black people need to get an education, but even well educated black people have difficulty finding jobs compared to our white counterparts.  It is a modern cliché to say that black people need to work ourselves out of our situation.  But on the flipside of that coin black people have more difficulty finding employment than our white counterparts.

It is easy to dismiss the call to bring attention to these facts as nothing but sour grapes.  It is easy to ignore the plight of the black community just as it is easy to ignore the plight of anyone who is in need of help.  When we divorce ourselves of any responsibility for the next guy it is easy to say “get a job” to the unemployed, “get off the street” to the homeless, “suck it up” to the depressed, “pick yourself up by your bootstrap” to anyone who may need help, or “show some personal responsibility” to anyone when we don’t have a lick of empathy.

We have been taught that some of the greatest heroes in world history are people who went out of their way to show compassion for their fellowman.  Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas,  Mahatma Gandhi, Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, the man known as Jesus the Christ, Mohammed, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers, Oskar Schindler, and many, many, more.  And consequently some of the greatest evils of the world have been people who have absolutely no compassion for others.  Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Baby Doc, Poulpot, Jim Jones, Saddam Hussein, Jeffrey Dahmer, Timothy McVeigh, J. Edgar Hoover, Benedict Arnold, and their like.  And yet, with respect to the black community, the dominant community could not display any less compassion and still consider themselves human.

Often times it’s questionable whether we show more compassion for a single speckle breasted hooked toed owl or the entire black community.  When it was speculated that dog food manufacturers in China were responsible for the deaths of so many Fidos and Spots, people here in America wanted to go to war.  When Michael Vick was accused of killing dogs in the dog pound in back of his house people wanted to give him the death penalty.  However, when boot camp guards kill black children for not running we find the entire affair understandable and the guards are without fault.  Say what you will but it should be obvious that a lot of people don’t want to give black people the kind of compassion we have for a loser dog.

This all might sound like nothing but sour grapes.  But unfortunately, it also sounds like life for the black community.  If more people had more compassion for black people they might be able to tell the difference between the two.