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Archive for 2008

Obama at Altgeld Gardens

Posted in 1980s, America, obama on Tue Apr 22nd 2008| 6 Comments »

Barack Obama was at Altgeld Gardens from 1985 to 1988. It was where he first became a community organizer.

If you see Obama’s life as following the pattern of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (think about it), then Altgeld Gardens was the Island of Misfit Toys.

Altgeld Gardens was a place without gardens, a low-rise housing estate that stands near the southern edge of Chicago, on the banks of the poisoned Calumet River. When it was built in the 1940s for black soldiers returning from the war, there was plenty of work in the nearby steel mills. But by the time Obama got there 40 years later the steel mills were all closed. There were street gangs and most lived in poverty. It was solidly black.

Across the street was a huge sewage plant. The parallel was not lost on Obama.

Obama got his degree at Columbia University in 1983. He told everyone he would become a community organizer and wrote to anyone who might help him. No luck. So he worked for two years in New York. For a while he even worked for Ralph Nader in Harlem

At last in 1985 someone answered one of his letters. Obama packed his belongings in his car and headed for Chicago. Not so much as a do-gooder, but in hopes of making sense of who he was.

When he got there Obama noticed that blacks talked quite a bit about what was wrong. They even had some good-sounding ideas, like black nationalism and self-esteem. But he also saw that an idea meant nothing unless it was backed by large numbers of people working together to put it into action.

So Obama’s challenge was to get poor blacks together in large enough numbers behind an issue so that the city would have to do something. The grass roots thing.

The man who brought him to Chicago was white. He saw poor blacks as poor but not as black. Maybe that was good in a way, but Obama saw that the people in Altgeld were not just fighting against poverty, they were also fighting the poison that whites had filled their minds with that made them hate their own blackness.

Whites blamed blacks for their own poverty. Blacks knew what a self-serving lie that was, but a part of them believed it: that when things went wrong it was because they were black, that deep down they were no good, just like white people said.

Obama was able to get work for some and worked to get the city to remove asbestos from Altgeld. It changed him. It showed what he could do. But it also showed him that he needed to rise in the power machine to to make the changes that would truly help Altgeld. So in 1988 he left to get his law degree at Harvard.

Some people even then believed he would one day become president.

See also:

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gangsta rap

Posted in 1990s, 2000s, America, gangsta rap, hip hop, music on Mon Apr 21st 2008| 35 Comments »

Gangsta rap (1986- ) is the main form of hip hop music listened to by white Americans, who buy most of it. It is the sort of hip hop done by acts like Ice T, NWA, Ice Cube, Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z and Eminem. It is famous for holding women and the law in low regard.

Gangsta rap is a white form of hip hop. Sure, the performers are nearly all black, but who is the audience? Follow the money. It is not music by blacks for blacks, but by blacks for whites.

When it comes to race, America has changed hugely since 1950. So maybe whites at last can enjoy black music in and of itself and not in some form that has been changed for them.

But if whites are suddenly so colour-blind, then why does gangsta rap play to the worst images that whites have about blacks – as violent and oversexed? Is it because they are true? Is this what KRS-One meant when he said the essence of rap is to interpret the consciousness of the people? Or is it just what white people like to buy and hear?

Look at the cover of Snoop Dogg’s “Doggystyle” (1993), the album that made his name. It has a naked black woman sticking her head in a doghouse. This is just how white men have seen black women for hundreds of years: as animals, as faceless sex objects, as something to rape. It looks like something straight out of the Jim Crow museum. The minstrel show is back in town.

Gangsta rap did not create racism, but it has become its well-paid handmaiden. Helping white people everywhere feel good about themselves. And putting pictures in everyone’s heads about black people that will be there for a long, long time.

But what about all those songs about violence against the police? Surely they at least are “black”.

Blacks in cities have no great love for the police, it is true, but songs about killing them is not natural to black America. Music is something that comes from churches and clubs where such themes would be out of place. But they are not out of place for a 13-year-old white boy sitting in his room, hating how he has to listen to his parents, his teachers and the law. It is as old as rock music.

The themes common to gangsta rap – women as sex objects, drugs and violence – come from rock music by way of the Beastie Boys, not from black music.

The general sound and feeling of gangsta rap is so close to rock music that Jay-Z and Linkin Park, a rock band, could do a song together. It sounded surprisingly natural. Ice T, one of the founders of gangsta rap, even had a heavy metal rock band, Body Count.

Not all of gangsta rap is a coon show, of course. Tupac Shakur is an example. But too much of it is – and the rest of hip hop is not completely innocent either.

See also:

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Dennis Edwards & Siedah Garrett: Don’t Look Any Further

Posted in 1980s, 1984, America, Dennis Edwards, lyrics, music, r & b, Siedah Garrett, songs, videos on Mon Apr 21st 2008| 7 Comments »

Remarks:

This went to #2 on the American R&B charts in 1984. What a great (but cheesy) video.

Lyrics:

Whoa, oh, well well well well well
Ohhh,hmmmm

Someone to count on
In a world of change
Here I am, stop where you’re standin’

What you need is a lover
A man to take over
Oh girl, don’t look any further

Strange, when you think of the chances
That we’d both be in a state of mind
Too cool to be careless
Lookin’ for the right thing
Oh baby, don’t look any further

Tonight
Tonight, we’re gonna taste a little, paradise
Rock you all night long, baby
All night long
Daylight
Daylight
I’ll still be lookin’ in your ebony eyes
And we’ll go on and on and on

day-o day-o, mombajee ai-o, well
Don’t look any further
day-o day-o, mombajee ai-o, well
Don’t look any further

Someone to count on
In a world of changin’
Here I am, stop where you’re standin’

What you need is a lover
You need a lover
To love you all over
Love me all over
Oh baby, don’t you look any further, further

Don’t look any further

Don’t look any further

Tonight
Tonight, we’re gonna taste a little, paradise
Rock you all night long
Rock you all night long
Daylight
Daylight
I’ll still be lookin’ in your ebony eyes
And we’ll go on and on and on

day-o day-o, mombajee ai-o, say it
Don’t look any further
day-o day-o, mombajee ai-o, well
Don’t look any further, don’t you ever look

day-o day-o, mombajee ai-o,
Don’t look any further, further
day-o day-o, mombajee ai-o,
Don’t look any further, further

day-o day-o, mombajee ai-o,
Don’t look any further

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Alison Hinds: Roll it Gal

Posted in 2000s, 2005, alison hinds, barbados, lyrics, music, soca, songs, videos, West Indies on Mon Apr 21st 2008| 2 Comments »

Roll
Roll it gal, roll it gal
Roll
Control it gal, roll it gal
Roll
Roll it gal, roll it gal
Roll
Control it gal, roll it gal

When dem fly up in yuh face gal
Mek dem know dem place
Numba 1 inna di race gal
Could neva replace
Independent and ya strong gal
And you set di pace
Fit and healthy living long gal

Free yaself gal, you got class and you got pride
Come together cuz we strong and unified

Roll
Roll it gal, roll it gal
Roll
Control it gal, roll it gal
Roll
Roll it gal, roll it gal
Roll
Control it gal, roll it gal

When dem start to talk and chat gal
Let dem run dem mout
You believe in fadda God gal
He will run dem out
Strength and wisdom you must have gal
Try to seek them out
Liberate yaself and live gal

Thank the father that youve grown and still alive
If you feel me ladies, roll its time to rise

Roll
Roll it gal, roll it gal
Roll
Control it gal, roll it gal
Roll
Roll it gal, roll it gal
Roll
Control it gal, roll it gal

Go to school gal, and get ya degree
Nurture and tek care of ya pickney
Gal ya work hard to mek ya money
Roll it gal, roll it gal
If ya know ya smart and ya sexy
Neva let dem abuse ya body
Show it off gal and let di world see
Roll it gal, roll it gal

Roll
Roll it gal, roll it gal
Roll
Control it gal, roll it gal
Roll
Roll it gal, roll it gal
Roll
Control it gal, roll it gal

Roll, roll it
Roll, roll it, roll it

Roll, roll it
Roll, roll it gal

Free yaself gal, you got class and you got pride
Come together cuz we strong and unified

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Garbage: Stupid Girl

Posted in 1990s, 1996, America, garbage, lyrics, music, rock, scottish, shirley manson, songs, videos on Mon Apr 21st 2008| 4 Comments »

You pretend you’re high
You pretend you’re bored
You pretend you’re anything
Just to be adored
And what you need
Is what you get

Dont believe in fear
Dont believe in faith
Dont believe in anything
That you can’t break

You stupid girl
You stupid girl
All you had you wasted
All you had you wasted

What drives you on what drives you on
Can drive you mad can drive you mad
A million lies to sell yourself
Is all you ever had

Dont believe in love
Dont believe in hate
Dont believe in anything
That you cant waste

You stupid girl
You stupid girl
Cant believe you fake it
Cant believe you fake it

Dont believe in fear
Dont believe in pain
Dont believe in anyone
That you can’t tame

You stupid girl
You stupid girl
All you had you wasted
All you had you wasted

You stupid girl
You stupid girl
Cant believe you fake it
Cant believe you fake it

You stupid girl
You stupid girl
Cant believe you fake it
Cant believe you fake it

You stupid girl

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White American music

Posted in 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, America, gangsta rap, music, rock, White America, white people on Sat Apr 19th 2008| 594 Comments »

White American music currently comes in four main forms: rock, country, pop and, I would argue, gangsta rap.

The glory days of White American music were from about the 1940s to the 1990s. Hip hop and especially the Internet is killing off what is left of it among white performers.

White Americans, because of their wealth and numbers, have had a huge effect on world music. But in a sense most of what they listened to in the late 1900s was a British form of black American music. Of the top 20 best-selling albums in America, 15 come from Britain.

To a large degree White American music is watered-down black music. The swing music of the 1940s came from jazz, while rock and pop came from rhythm and blues (R & B) and gangsta rap from hip hop. Some of its top performers, like Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley, Janis Joplin, Madonna and Snoop Dogg, modelled themselves directly on black performers. (Snoop Dogg is black, but his blackness is as studied as the others’, a black in blackface.)

Disco aside, before the 1990s it was rare for whites in America to listen mainly to black music. Which is curious because it was right there at the end of the radio dial the whole time. But whites in Britain did listen to it, enough of them, which is why there have been repeated British invasions. The British would copy black music, change it a bit, and then become huge hits in White America.

In the middle 1960s rock was still a white form of black music, but then in the late 1960s The Who and other bands started to change rock into something very different.

Some things to keep in mind about White American music:

  • The melody or tune is far more important than the beat.
  • The words do not matter that much.
  • Music is largely a private experience. It is something that comes from a machine, like an iPod or a record player, not from churches and dance clubs.
  • For the most part it is not meant to make you dance or move your soul. It is more like the wallpaper of your life.
  • Apart from anger, there seems to be little deep feeling in it.

Rock sounds terrible to the untrained ear, like the noise a machine might make. You have to listen to it for a while before you can begin to understand it and enjoy it.

Gangsta rap seems to be a form of White American music. Of all the forms of hip hop it is closest to rock and sells the best, mainly to whites. Its videos and words tend to play to the worst stereotypes whites have about blacks, like the old minstrel shows. It is no more a form of black music than were the coon songs of the 1890s.

See also:

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The hearts of white people

Posted in America, race, white people on Fri Apr 18th 2008| 54 Comments »

Blacks and whites are born with the very same hearts: the human hearts that God gave them. The same love, the same hate, the same sin, the same virtue.

I know that might seem like stretch to some. It does to me sometimes too. It does to my wife. One night years ago she argued about it with her mother and me.

My wife said that while black people are good by nature, apart from a few bad apples, white people were the opposite: evil by nature, apart from a few good apples.

Both me and her mother disagreed right away and for the same reason: the Bible says all men are sinful by nature: the fallen nature of man that comes from Adam, which makes sense of so much – even if it is not in the science books.

If you read the Bible and the Greeks you know that human nature is constant and universal. It is the same in all countries and all ages. Men act just the same now as they did in the time of Moses – or Machiavelli or Mobutu.

Another book that shaped my understanding of people, white or otherwise, is the one Thucydides wrote about the war between Athens and Sparta. It not only shows that men were the same then as now, but also how power made men blind and turned their hearts to stone.

So when my wife pointed to all the evil white men have done, all the red men they killed for their land and all the black men put in chains to work that land – and all the stuff they are still doing even now – I told her it had nothing to do with being white: it had everything to do with power.

Power makes white people the way they are. It is how they can believe their own lies: who will tell them they are wrong and be believed? It is why they do not know what it feels like to be black: they never had to walk in those shoes. Only a few of them, by accident, know what their power looks like at the other end.

If history had turned out a little differently, if Africa had been the first to have guns and ocean-going ships, then it would be black men killing red men. And the slave forts would not be in Cabinda, Mina and Quiloa but in London, Lisbon and Antwerp.

But then, my wife asked, why were all the serial killers and mass murderers white? This was when Jeffrey Dahmer was still fresh in our minds. Both me and her mother said it was just a matter of time before there would be black ones too.

And sure enough, one night two months later a black man named Colin Ferguson got on a train heading east out of New York and started shooting people dead one by one. He even came from the very same town as my wife.

See also:

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There is absolutely nothing wrong with being black

Posted in 2000s, America, biracial, blackness, Cablinasia, race on Thu Apr 17th 2008| 46 Comments »

We are not throw away people…

– Shark-fu.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with being black. Nothing!

That sounds like something a four-year-old would say, something too simple and true to be worth saying, like “the sky is blue”. But in America in 2008 it is worth saying. Because too many people, both black and white, do not believe it, not deep down, not where it counts. Their heads might (sort of) believe it, but not their hearts.

This morning on the bus I was reading Obama’s “Dreams from My Father”. In 1985, when he was working at Altgeld Gardens, he met Mary. She was one of the few whites who lived in nearby West Pullman, a poor, black part of Chicago. She had two daughters:

And I knew that the father was absent, although Mary never mentioned him. Only in bits and pieces, over the course of many months, would I learn that she had grown up in a small Indiana town, part of a big, working-class Irish family. Somehow she had met a black man there; they had dated secretly, were married; her family refused to speak to her again, and the newlyweds moved to West Pullman, where they bought a small house. Then the man left, and Mary found herself beached in a world she knew little of, without anything but the house and the two manila-hued daughters, unable to return to the world she had known.

For some reason after I read that I started crying. On the bus! Like I am simple or something, like I have no idea how the world works. But I could not help myself. I had to write this just to calm myself down.

What upset me was not that the father left, not that Mary was cut off and stuck in a world she knew little of, but that the two little girls could never go back to Indiana, that their own flesh and blood would never accept them because of the colour of their skin.

God made black people to be every bit as good as white people. He did not make black people with some secret crack inside. They are not some kind of mistake he made on the way to making white people.

I am not saying black people are perfect, but they are every bit as human and loving – and hating – as whites. They were born with the very same brains and the very same hearts (yes, hearts too). And their lives are every bit as valuable – even if the president and the police and the news reporters do not see it.

It is a lie, one of the cruelest, sickest, most twisted lies I have ever heard, to say that black people are somehow not as good as white people. It is a sick lie white people came up with to cover their sick crimes.

See also:

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blackosphere

Posted in 2000s, America, race on Wed Apr 16th 2008| 6 Comments »

The blackosphere is the black part of the blogosphere. It is made up of those blogs that are written and read mainly by blacks, American or otherwise. Francis L. Holland, a one-time black blogger at the Daily Kos, came up with the term. The white part he called the whitosphere.

In 2006 there were maybe 800,000 black blogs that updated at least once a week, enough to support a steady readership. About one blog in nine is black. Blacks online are more likely to blog than whites.

Just as America’s cities, towns, schools and churches are largely divided by race, so is its blogosphere! Among those who read blogs, blacks mainly read black blogs – which they find to be more interesting – while white Americans read almost nothing but white blogs.

According to Holland and others, white Americans are mostly not interested in what blacks say and think. Most do not care, while some just want to pick a fight. And even when they are interested, they often find it hard to accept or understand what blacks are saying. Because of what it says about themselves as whites (not pretty). Because the black experience that it comes from is not one they share.

Black bloggers among themselves can say the truth straight out – there is no need to sugar-coat it. But with whites it seems you need to be more careful if you want to be heard at all.

According to Jack and Jill Politics, examples of black blogs that pitch their message in a way that whites will hear and understand but still have some bite are African American Political Pundit, Angry Black Bitch, Skeptical Brotha and Black Agenda Report.

One of the wonderful things about blogs is that you can get news and opinion that you would never find on television or in the newspapers. While it is a great thing for whites it is even a greater thing for blacks: very few of those television networks and newspapers are owned or run by blacks. The news and opinion they pump out is as white as its missing women. Of, for and by white people.

Blogs give blacks a worldwide public square they never had before. One where they can express themselves freely.

In 2007 some black bloggers saw the power of this, those like the Field Negro, Asabagna, Prometheus 6 and the Republic of T. They banded together to form what is known as the AfroSpear. Over a hundred blogs have joined. They want to use this public square to further the interests of blacks everywhere.

AfroSpear along with liked-minded blogs are known as the Afrosphere or blackroots (the black grassroots on the Internet). They helped to free Shaquanda Cotton and get over 10,000 people to come to Jena to protest.

Most Afrosphere bloggers are left-leaning. There is another part of the blackosphere that is on the right, with blogs like Booker Rising. But most black blogs, like blogs anywhere, are much more private in their concerns.

See also:

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drapetomania

Posted in 1800s, America, mental illness, race, the good old days, white people on Mon Apr 14th 2008| 10 Comments »

Drapetomania (1851), also called draptomania, is a sickness of the mind that makes you want to run away. It affects only black people. It was especially common in the American South in the early 1800s. It does not seem to affect whites.

Although planters and overseers noticed that blacks often got the urge to run away, the condition did not have a name till Dr Samuel Cartwright gave it one in 1851. He delivered a paper on the newly named disease before the Medical Association of Louisiana. It was later written up in “Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race”.

Dr Cartwright was an American doctor who taught at the University of Louisiana. He was a widely respected expert on yellow fever, cholera and diseases that affect blacks.

Here is what he knew about drapetomania:

  • Causes: Masters who are too cruel or too kind to their slaves. If a master did not see to his slaves’ physical needs or, at the other extreme, he went against God’s will and tried to make blacks anything more than “the submissive knee-bender”, as they were meant to be for all time, then blacks will come down with this disease.
  • How to prevent it: When a master attends to his slaves’ physical needs for food, warmth and safety, then “the negro is spell-bound, and cannot run away.” Making slaves bend the knee also went a long way to preventing an outbreak.
  • Signs of onset: Those coming down with the disease become “sulky and dissatisfied”.
  • Cure: Whipping the devil out of a patient is enough for most. For more extreme cases, cut off toes.

Cartwright’s work on drapetomania has since been widely discredited.

It is now widely believed that only blacks got the disease because only they were held as slaves. Their urge to run away was not a disease at all but a very healthy and human desire for freedom.

Some say drapetomania is a piece of scientific racism: plain old racism dressed up to look like science.

Cartwright would not have seen it that way. To him blacks being slaves was part of the natural order, the way God meant it to be. It said so in the Bible. So when a black slave wanted to run away, something was wrong. It was unnatural. And, being a doctor, he saw it as a disease.

We can laugh at Dr Cartwright but that kind of blindness to racism still goes on: you know, American society is fine the way it is, it is just those blacks who have something wrong with them.

The word comes from Greek: drapeto for runaway slave and mania for madness. The madness that runaway slaves suffer from.

In the film “CSA: Confederate States of America” (2004) it appears in an ad as “draptomania”, which is easier to say. Most people who know about drapetomania these days, know it from that film, so on the Internet you will often see it written that way.

See also:

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Sade: Feel No Pain

Posted in 1990s, 1992, Britain, lyrics, music, r & b, Sade, songs, videos on Mon Apr 14th 2008| 4 Comments »

Mamma been laid off
Pappa been laid off
My brother’s been laid off
For more than two years now
Ooh can’t get a job
Billy can’t get a job
Ooh they gotta listen to the blues
Help them to strive
Help them to move on
Help them to have some future
Help them to live long
Help them to live life
Help them to smile
Don’t let them stay home and listen to the blues

Pappa been laid off
Mamma been laid off
Billy can’t get a job
For too long too long
Don’t let them lose
We gotta give them a chance
It’s gonna come back on everyone
If you don’t make them dance
Don’t let them stay home and listen to the blues

There’s nothing sacred (why why why))
breathing hatred
We have to face it (why why why)
No one can take it
And feel no pain

One day we’re gonna wake up
And the ghetto’s all around
All over my friend
Have you ever seen a man break down

Do you know how that feels
To walk the streets with your head held high
Why, why, why
Oh Lord, have mercy
Did you ever see a man break down

There’s nothing sacred
Breathing hatred
We have to face it
No one can take it (how can they take that much)
And feel no pain

Ooh did you ever see a man break down

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Razah: Rain

Posted in 2000s, 2008, America, lyrics, music, r & b, Razah, songs, videos on Sun Apr 13th 2008| Leave a Comment »

Raindrops keep fallin’ on my head
But i think i can see it’s just
Hidin’ the tears from my face
Since you’ve been gone
I’m so out of place
And i need you here babe

Lord, give me a sign
Show me the light
Cause this love i have to fight
Shes on my mind
All the time
To stay afloat i’ll try

Let the rain fall down
Take me away
Cause i don’t wanna be without you
Girl i can’t sleep
Without you here
So let the rain take me away

My emotions girl
Are running wild
I feel like a little child
I need your smile
To brighten up my life

I need to look deep in your eyes

I wanna know if this is real
Cause this can’t be happening to me
Pinch me please
Tell me it’s a dream
Cause i don’t wanna feel like this

Let the rain fall down
Take me away
Cause i don’t wanna be without you
Girl i can’t sleep
Without you here
So let the rain take me away

When you left
You took my heart from me
You mean the world to me

Let the rain fall down
Take me away
Cause i don’t wanna be without you
Girl i can’t sleep
Without you here
So let the rain take me away

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Obama at Columbia

Posted in America on Sat Apr 12th 2008| 10 Comments »

Barack Obama was at Columbia University (1981-1983) in New York for two years. He came there from Occidental College in Los Angeles. He got a degree in political science at Columbia and spent another year in the city working before going to Altgeld Gardens in Chicago.

Coming to New York allowed Obama to start all over again. He became a new person. He was now Barack, not Barry.

It seems he took everything Regina told him at Occidental to heart: he left his drinking and bitterness behind, he applied himself to his studies and was bent on making the world a better place. Even the terrible scale of New York’s troubles did not make him lose hope.

From his own account he worked hard and kept to himself. He said he was like a monk. Few remember him. Those who do say he seemed older than his years, somewhat laid back but in control.

He kept a journal in those days, yet he says little about Columbia beyond what he saw written in its public toilets. It seems a bit strange after telling us so much about Occidental. Maybe it did not help to advance his story in “Dreams from My Father”, yet even now he says little about it.

What he does tell us about those years is mainly about New York and the time his mother and sister came to visit.

He went with them to see “Black Orpheus” (1959), a corny film with great music set in Brazil that tells an old Greek love story with black people. His mother loved it when it first came out and wanted to see it again. Obama could not sit through it: it pictured blacks as simple, happy people, as if they were little more than children.

He turned to look at his mother’s face in the faint blue light of the film and saw how she loved its simple picture of blacks. He wondered if this was why she married a black man. How sad. He was at that age when he could begin to see his parents as ordinary people, faults and all.

But Obama had his own storybook picture of blacks. When he went to Harlem, world-famous as it was, it did not live up to the picture he had of it. It was far worse than he imagined.

In 1982 he wanted to travel to Kenya to to see his father. The only time he can remember seeing his father before was when he came to Hawaii one Christmas when Obama was ten. He gave him a basketball. His father turned out not to be the bigger-than-life character of his mother’s stories.

A friend of his had gone to Kenya and spoke highly of the experience: he said Africa is to blacks what Israel is to Jews: going there gave you a deeper sense of who you are. You had to go.

But just before Obama was about to leave for Africa, his father was killed in a car accident. He did not go.

See also:

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Blogs to check out

Posted in blogs on Fri Apr 11th 2008| 11 Comments »

People who like this blog also tend to like these:

How I know this: these are the blogs that most commonly appear in blogrolls with me.

The Angry Black Woman has appeared with me four times, the Field Negro three time and the others twice. Does that make me Abagond, the Angry Field Negro?

I already knew about some of these and you can see them in my blogroll, but the others I have yet to go through myself.

This is based on the 11 blogs I know of that have me in their blogrolls. There are probably some others. Since they like me, you might like them too (some of these I just found out about myself):

I am not in the blogroll of this next blog, but it has linked to me and is very good, easily one of the ten best blogs I have ever seen on the Internet:

Ann and I have written about some of the very same things, so I know how deep and good her posts are.

Enjoy!

See also:

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Obama at Occidental College

Posted in America on Fri Apr 11th 2008| 75 Comments »

After high school in Hawaii, Barack Obama went to Occidental College (1979-1981), a good liberal arts college in Los Angeles. You saw it in the film “Clueless” (1995). He was there two years and then went to Columbia University in New York.

He said he was still drinking and doing drugs, just going through the motions. But then again getting into Columbia could not have been easy. It is one of the top universities in the country.

The blacks at Occidental largely kept to themselves. Obama said it was not because they disliked whites or felt uncomfortable with them, it was just easier that way. With other blacks the whole race thing did not rear its ugly head. But, as it was, they wound up talking about the whole race thing anyway.

There were blacks who mixed with whites. They were mostly middle-class blacks. They thought that if they dressed well, spoke proper English and avoided other blacks that whites would see them as “individuals” and not, say, “niggers”.

Obama could not completely condemn them: he saw parts of himself in them. He was black and middle-class too. In fact, he was doing the very same thing – the only difference was that he came from Hawaii where there were hardly any blacks, so he was trying to fit in with blacks, not whites. But it was the same sad act.

But then one day he met Regina.

She accepted Obama the way he was. He did not have to put on an act for her. She was one of the first to call him Barack instead of Barry. She said Barack was a beautiful name.

She helped him to see the good and honest part of himself and got him to build on that. The look in her eyes told him to push beyond the bitterness: the world is unfair, sure, but people were counting on him to make it better.

Regina was from the South Side of Chicago. She had a rootedness in the black world that Obama could only dream of. Obama was a black American but he had nowhere in black America to call home. He was not from the South Side or Compton or Harlem or West Philly or the South or anywhere like that. But one day he would make the South Side his home and put down roots.

In the second year at Occidental he took part in the divestment campaign: to get Occidental to pull its money out of companies that did business in South Africa. Mandela was still in prison and South Africa was under nakedly white rule.

Obama noticed that people started listening to his opinions, that his words mattered. They asked him to give a speech. He did. It was short and it was simple but it was from the heart. It struck something in people that made them want to hear. Even the Frisbee players stopped throwing their Frisbees and stood and heard.

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