Blog Incognito

Following is an abridged review of my book by Dr. Larry Ross, Professor of Anthropology:

Take One, Please… An Abridged Anthropological Review of Incognito: An American Odyssey of Race and Self-Discovery, Authored by Michael Sidney Fosberg

Michael Fosberg’s Incognito is an outstanding personal ethnographic narrative; it is written with great humility, and it thoroughly elucidates America’s identity struggles of the last two centuries. Every human is born into a culture that is already going on, when you get there, so others actually decide your identity. This well-documented account, of both sides of his family’s successful escape from enslavement in the Old World (Armenia) and the New World (America) simultaneously, is indeed groundbreaking, by any measure: it presents a form of sociocultural dualism that has never been exposed.

As Fosberg explains, he was socialized as one of the “Starving Armenians,” those who survived the Turkish genocide during World War I, migrated to America, and made good against all odds. Fosberg’s Armenian maternal grandfather, Garabed Pilibosian, was probably the most influential male role model (in his conscious) of his early learning experience (originally Garabed Misakian, when he was enslaved by a Turkish family in Armenia as a child, before he escaped to Aleppo, Syria where there was an orphanage for Armenian children; then Garabed fled to Paris, France before making his way to America. Pilibosian became Garabed’s ‘made-up’ surname, of unknown origin, in America. The affable Garabed established a very successful cleaners in the Karcher Hotel, along with his Armenian wife Rachel, in Waukegan, IL, thereby averting his family’s starvation). Fosberg recalls that:

“Grandma would be in the kitchen ordering around her ‘girls’ who had no choice but to assist, while the men would watch sports, play cards, or engage in a rousing round of backgammon on grandpa’s beautiful, ancient, handmade, inlaid, dark wood board. As the aromas from the kitchen crept into the family room, our salivary glands would swell with anticipation. Delicate cheese and meat pastries covered the cardamon, and sesame, a soup of fragrant peppery broth with extra lean meatballs stuffed with nuts and garlic, lemon saturated grape leaves rolled around a meat/nut/rice combination, sumptuous flaky breads, a steak tartare-like dish, and our favorite, a kind of Armenian pizza, a pungent spicy ground lamb on crisp dough. And that was just for starters!”[1]

Armenians were declared to be legally “White” by the United States Supreme Court shortly after the turn of the century, while other immigrants (e.g. Indians, Japanese, Africans, and Mexicans) were denied “Whiteness” and they continue to suffer the consequences. The major confounding variable of American life, for people without “Whiteness”, continues to be “Race” above all others: why is this? “Race” is the definitive predictor of one’s life chances in America, with ‘some’ statistically insignificant variation.

Incognito provides a profound, non-fiction Culture Construct (see Dr. Robert Lowie) which peels back the layers that under gird America’s sociocultural constants, in an experiential way that could not have been anticipated: this is because Fosberg’s identity had been projected as Armenian and “White” well into his adult life, however he serendipitously found out that his biological father is actually classified as “Black” in America’s “Racial” system (i.e. the Office of Management and Budget Statistical Directive 15; this is why you have to check those boxes).

Fosberg’s biological father and mother were divorced when he was two-years-old, due to economic and sociocultural factors (i.e. her “White” parents did not want “Race” mixing, and they wanted all ties with Fosberg’s biological father severed; this occurred when his mother Adrienne Pilibosian of Waukegan High School Class of ’53 remarried, and her new tall, blond, Swedish husband John Kenneth Fosberg of Waukegan High School legally adopted Michael Fosberg, who was also born with blonde hair). In this, a picture is truly worth a thousand words, because when you look at the pictures in the book, one can only surmise the epitome of “Whiteness” in an American Suburban Bucolic Utopia (Suburban Bucolic was coined by the Artist Steve Miscensik of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History; personal communication).

However, this vivid illusion falls apart, due to the weight of numerous disturbing undercurrents; Adrienne Pilibosian’s secrets from her college days in 1957 emerge, when Fosberg decides to investigate his biological father’s whereabouts after he learns that Adrienne is divorcing her second husband (after 25 years of marriage and two more children), who Michael Fosberg has known as his “father” since the age of two. The divorce was a shocker without any previous notification, and Fosberg’s world is upended; his rage toward his mother is initially vicious, however a friend intercedes and helps Fosberg to understand what his mother must have sacrificed for him, all of those years: a “White” girl having a child by a “Black” man in 1957, a time of absolute racial segregation in America (e.g. The Little Rock Nine). In conjunction, Fosberg’s blonde English girlfriend, and artist named Jo expresses anxiety over the loss of her biological father at the age of three (accidental death from electrocution), and how she had so many questions for him that can never be asked, or resolved.

This launches Fosberg on an ambitious quest to ‘find himself’ that leads him into a sociocultural purgatory, and he courageously treads where no man has ever gone; after he makes contact with his biological father by looking him up in the Detroit, MI telephone book by name (provided by his mother after about 30 years, although she did ‘mention’ his name once in the past), the truth surpasses all fictional possibilities! No one could make this up, because it simply ‘should not happen’, in America, where Identification is fixed and rigid: Take One, Please…

Also, Adrienne Pilibosian neglected to mention that Fosberg’s biological father was “Black,” preferring to tell young Michael that she thought that he “had some Indian” in his ancestry… Thus, Michael Fosberg grew up believing that he had a trace of “Indian” (i.e. Native American) “blood” and the rest was pretty much from the “Starving Armenians”: it was vague… A phone call to Detroit changed all of that when Fosberg’s biological father told him that he was “Black,” which was yet another shocker, and that he had been expecting to hear from him sooner; his father also told him that he worked at The Ford Motor Company, that he was married, that he had a mistress and another son, and that he was the target of an FBI investigation for Bribery (finally convicted and given a one-year prison sentence).

Thus, Fosberg found that he had another half-brother love-child who was “Jewish” and “Black” living in a suburban Detroit hideaway, funded by his biological father. Also, Fosberg’s biological father’s wife Sue was going to divorce him when the FBI completed its work… Sue rejected Fosberg and his efforts to establish a relationship with his biological father as well, so it seemed that the quest to ‘find himself’ actually led him to a hornet’s nest of high drama! However, his fraternal grandparents embraced him warmly, and through them he was able to be reunited with the distinguished side of his biological “Black” father’s family, John Sidney Woods, after about 30 years.

Actually, the “Black” side of Fosberg’s family can more accurately be described as legendary: his great-great grandfather Talton Woods (they have his discharge certificate) was a soldier in the “all-Black” Massachusetts 54^th Infantry Regiment featured in the film Glory, starring Denzel Washington, that made the suicidal frontal attack on Fort Wagner during the Civil War: “Next to that was a picture of a tall as strapping black man in a baseball uniform in full pitching windup. It was her father, Charles “Lefty” Robinson, my grandmother said. Framed on the wall next to the photo was a player’s contract dated July 7, 1924, from the St. Louis Stars of the National Association of Colored Professional Baseball Clubs.”[2] There is a picture in the book of “Lefty” and his team, the Mohawks, in Jefferson City, Missouri. Fosberg met his aunt in Jefferson City, MO and found out about the distinguished career of his uncle, Dr. Charles E. Anderson:

He had been one of the country’s foremost experts in meteorological research. He had received an undergraduate degree in Chemistry, along with being class president, from the historically black Lincoln University [founded by the Civil War’s 62^nd & 65^th Colored Infantry Regiments], a master’s degree in Meteorology from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. from M. I. T. in 1960. He had been a weather officer and captain in the U.S. Air Force for the famed Tuskegee Airmen and had experienced, my aunt said, “unbelievable horrible, terrible” racial hardships. For a while he worked for Douglas Aircraft, then he was recruited by the University of Wisconsin as a Professor of Meteorology, Associate Dean of the Graduate School, an organizer and Chairman of the Afro-American Studies Department. He ended his teaching career in the Department of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences at North Carolina State University.[3]

Fosberg’s uncle Paul, who also lives in Jefferson City, MO agrees to show him the ‘historic sites’ of the family in Mexico, New London, and Hannibal, MO, and an even higher level of revelations, regarding the “Black” family’s experience, is recalled:

“He tells me his father’s mother was Mary Morrison Robinson. Her father Arthur Morrison, had refused to raise Mary because she was fathered by a white landowner’s son and a black woman, his wife, Jenetta Morrison. ‘We used to tease my grandmother all the time, we’d say Gran Morris, when was ya born?’ An’ she’d say, ’49. An’ we’d say, ‘When?’ an’ she’d say ‘I tol’ ya ‘49’! She was born in 1849 before the Emancipation Proclamation. She was born into slavery Pike…or was it Rawls County, Missoura?”[4]

In an effort to make even more intimate discoveries, Fosberg asks his uncle Paul about what growing up was like for him, after he was born in New London, MO:

“Uncle Paul, what was it like back then with separate bathrooms and drinking fountains and all that? ‘Hell!’  he gruffs. ‘What difference does it all make?  If you can take a shit where ever’body else does? You can go behind a guy and that leaves of bad odor? Don’t make no difference if he’s black or white, it stinks!  The fact that you kin go in the front door…’ He laughs heartily. ‘That don’t make…jus’ as long as you can git in the house, go in the back door…’ His voice trails off as I see he notices something along the side of the road. ‘Now right down in there somewheres there’s a tree, my father used to point out to us, on the way to Colombia, where they hung the Negroes, very close to the road. An’ the tree last time I saw it didn’t have no foliage. They lynched a black man, hung ‘im to this tree. That tree’, he says emphatically, ‘right over there in that field.’”[5]

In this way, Fosberg discovers the painful tragedies and spectacular triumphs over adversity, of his fraternal and maternal lineages, after living the bulk of his life as a “White” man in suburbia.

Things fall apart with Fosberg’s English girlfriend when her repressed rage over the early loss of her father, her molestation by her stepfather in childhood and her mother’s disregard for it: her mother was as cold as ice toward her, and Jo faked illnesses to get attention from her mother… It didn’t work, and Jo’s stern ego protection may have transformed the development her personality; it became harsh, and she was challenged by one of their wealthy patrons while at dinner, on a job with Fosberg. Essentially, they said, ‘What went wrong in your childhood, and what are you still angry about’? which hit the nail on the head… The fact that Fosberg did not come to her defense led to quarrels, and the eventual demise of their partnership. On the rebound, Fosberg becomes engaged to a beautiful woman named Victoria, whose mother is “Black” and her father “Irish” thinking that this will solve his problem, in some way, and make him authentically “Black” somehow; she is warmly embraced by the “Black” side of his family at a holiday gathering, “Blacks” in California now accept Fosberg as ‘one of them’ when he is with her, and it creates a Kum-Ba-Ya moment… However, she has her own issues, becomes distant, and the relationship collapses: but it all seemed like a good idea, at the time, in Fosberg’s quest to find himself. (This is a ‘hint’ that you can’t have both, for the same price, in America, but the point was made absolutely clear to him by his siblings.)

In order to ‘close the circle’, regarding the “White” side of his family’s reaction to the suppressed revelations about Fosberg’s ancestry, he meets with his half-sister Lora and half-brother Christopher, in Chicago (they share Fosberg’s Armenian mother, but have a Swedish father, so they are identified as fully “White” in the America’s “Race” categorization scheme). His sister Lora is brutally honest, though perfectly tactful and insightful. Lora tells her half-brother:

“I remember you telling me and feeling kind of shocked.  I was very surprised to see how much you looked like your father.  I remember [mom] telling me she thought it would be really hard on you as a child to go through life knowing that information and that you’d feel isolated and left out.  I think she felt her decision not to tell you was a good one because you never felt isolated and left out because you were black.  She didn’t have a responsibility to tell you.  When you finally asked her, she had a hard time with that, but she eventually did tell you.  I think she has a lot of guilt about her history.  But it’s her stuff; she did it, she lived it, she suffered in hell for it.  I don’t know this, but my feeling is she probably doesn’t really want to get into it because she’s probably like, ‘Let bygones be bygones, my God!  I was just a kid! at the time’. She wants to be able to give you what you want to know even though she doesn’t want to talk about it at all. She already paid her dues for it.  And I hope you won’t force her to tell you things she doesn’t want to. Race doesn’t mean anything to me.  But I don’t think that you’ll ever know what it means to be black.  You’ll never be able to feel the racism that is out there.  You’re only going to have the good parts of being black not the bad parts…  ‘cause you’re just not black enough.”[6]

Fosberg’s half-brother Christopher, who had moved to London for a job trading commodities, tells Michael that he should question his unconditional acceptance of his biological father, and that he should have unconditional acceptance for his adoptive father who raised him in their family, John Fosberg, instead:

“I think it probably hurts his feelings that, well, first of all, do and Dad are really different.  You’ve never been super close.  I think I’m probably closer to Dad than any of us ‘cause I can relate to him the most.  I think the correct approach to the whole thing, and I’m not saying you doing it wrong, but because of what you’re doing and because you are searching out a new family, Dad needs to be reassured.  So that it doesn’t feel like, ‘Thanks for bring me up but I got the blood over here and blood is thicker than whatever.’  Know what I mean? I think that a father is a kind of sacred thing.  You know what I mean?  It’s something that everybody needs, and obviously you can’t get away without having one, but if you’ve got it, you’re a really, really lucky person. It can only help you in life and it’s something you should hold really dear to you.  And I think that I can’t relate to having two.”[7]

A face-to-face meeting with John Fosberg, his adoptive father who has remarried and relocated comfortably, leads to a whole new level of mutual awareness and acceptance; a semblance of a father and son bond, that never existed before emerges, and they are able to offer explanations for some of their past misinterpretations of events. John explains that, “The only indication your mother ever gave me about your heritage is one time she said she thought you might have a little Indian in you, and I just kind of shrugged my shoulders like, ‘so what’? I know you got into that minority thing at some point in your life, about having Indian in you.”[8] Based on what his mother had told him, Fosberg had been checking the “Indian” box on applications to universities: it appears that he was not the only person that his mother had told the Indian trope… John is grateful to Adrienne however, and he asserts that “She gave me a terrific education in becoming more liberal, more considerate, becoming more appreciative of the situation. From every aspect she gave me a great education without ever telling me why.”[9] John in turn passed this awareness on to his bigoted Swedish mother, in anticipation of Fosberg’s upcoming wedding to a “Black” woman, stating that “Before you and the revelation of your heritage, she was unbelievably out of the Old World. Great lady, good honest woman, but wants to come up with arguments for discrimination, I don’t know how else to say it. Doesn’t even know what she’s arguing about, that she’s arguing for discrimination; she’ll tell you she’s not.”[10]

Still closing the circle, Fosberg ventures back to Boston to investigate his origins. There he meets some of his illustrious relatives, then moves on to Martha’s Vineyard to meet his second cousin Cheryl, who exclaims:

“You don’t come to the Vineyard and not visit the Inkwell, baby!” The Inkwell…the infamous Inkwell has been the number one vacation spot for African American families for decades, and it’s the beach immortalized in the 1994 Hollywood movie with the same name. As we step from the car after scoring a choice spot up front, the beach unfolds in front of me. It is packed with every shade of black person you can imagine. It looks like Soul Train meets MTV…people dancing, laughing, joking, struttin’ their stuff. “Hey Skip, I want to meet my cousin Michael. Michael Fosberg, Henry Louis Gates, Jr.”[11]

This event at Martha’s Vineyard causes Fosberg to further question his identity: Was he “Black”, was he “White”, how would he have fit, in this world at Martha’s Vineyard had he been socialized as “Black”? For decades, he had been immersed in an ever present Armenian identity that became supplemented, with a Swedish identity.

“In the end, I was not raised black.  I didn’t live through the black experience, was not a target of racism, was not singled out because of the color of my skin, and was not spurned or called names.  Does that make me any less a black man?  Do you have to have that experience to be black?  All my life I wore a disguise, a mask of identity.  Incognito is defined in the dictionary as an adverb meaning ‘with the real identity concealed…with one’s identity hidden or unknown’.  So what am I now?  Who am I?  Which box have I been checking off on applications, or in the 2010 Census? How about AAA. African-American-Armenian. Is there a box for that?”[12]

While America’s “Race” system wants people to pick one, “Michael Sidney Pilibosian Woods Fosberg” provides strong suggestive evidence that it would be impossible for anyone to actually do so, with any scientific accuracy. Anthropological research has concluded that it is the group that decides who is a member, not the individual (e.g. the University of Maine’s Dr. Paul B. Roscoe’s The Perils of Positivism in Cultural Anthropology, and his citation from R.F. Ellen); thus the question of whether Fosberg will fit into his family’s Armenian side, adoptive Swedish side, or African American side revolves around each group’s presumed identity: this is what he would have to fit into, on their terms, but either ‘exclusive’ identity would be a misrepresentation.

In reality, this is the case for all Homo sapiens sapiens as explained by the American Anthropological Association’s Statement on “Race” which was published in 1998; about 94% of human genetic variation is within groups that have been classified as “Races”: no one is actually in a “Race”, which is the opposite what we have been taught for the past four centuries in America:

http://www.aaanet.org/issues/policy-advocacy/AAA-Statement-on-Race.cfm

Fosberg finds that there was a legal obstacle to his biological father and mother moving to Virginia where his grandparents lived, when he was born in 1957 and John Sidney Woods and Adrienne Pilibosian were married; this was a major contributor to their problems, for

“The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia forbids, even to this day, they don’t enforce it, but blacks and whites can’t live under the same roof.  It was hard to believe this outrageous statute still stood.  It probably did at one time, but in 1996?  Truth is, there was a Virginia law – the Racial Integrity Act — forbidding blacks and whites to marry (either in the state or another), or to have sex together.”[13]

Therefore, social and legal forces made it extremely difficult for the young ‘mixed-race’ couple to survive, relying on family resources that could not even be accessed due to the absolute segregation of 1950s America. (Fosberg provides evidence in a chapter titled The South that the sentiments of the Virginia law above have not changed, fifty years later.) John was rejected by Adrienne’s mother, who came to visit her daughter in Boston only when he was not at home, staying in a hotel. However, Adrienne’s sister and brother-in-law were tolerant, during their visit in the 1950s.

This brief review cannot possibly encapsulate the scope, gravity, or sociocultural value of what Fosberg has discovered, in America. In my opinion, Incognito must be made into a feature film, like Glory, for worldwide distribution. It provides a thoughtful, introspective analysis that can help America, and the world, move beyond the Take One, Please paradigm, and its problems with diversity that result in conflict.

Dr. Larry Ross

Professor of Anthropology

REPRINT BY PERMISSION ONLY.

Hola, Buenos Dias from Tarifa, Spain!  I’m here on holiday visiting my brother, his wife, and their adorable 18 month old son, Luka!!

In the past week there was something I found terribly disturbing about the NBA playoffs which no one seemed to notice.  (Aside from the fact that my Chicago Bulls are down 3 games to 1 to the Miami Heat!!). During the 3rd game of the Bulls series with Miami – a sport quite dominant with players of color – Joakim Noah, the energetic pony-tailed center for the Bulls was caught on camera (TNT broadcast for those of you following cable television) saying a gay slur toward an abusive “fan” in the Miami Heat arena.  According to several Bulls players on the bench at the time (and perhaps they are not the best judges of the situation since they would do anything to support a player on their team…but, in this case, one has to believe there is some basis in truth…), the fan was overly abusive, loud, aggressive and undeterred.  Noah angrily – but not aggressive or abusively – spouted off what appears to be “faggot”, turning away from the fan (whom we do not see in the picture) as quickly as he utters the word.  Taj Gibson, a fellow teammate, described the fan; “The guy just kept going.  I know the crowd looked at the guy too, like, ‘Come on man, leave him alone.  It’s over.’  But the guy just kept going…It was the usual, but in that circumstances, it was heavy because he was really loud.”

I’d like to point out a couple things about this which I find terribly wrong with our sports obsessed (fanaticism) country;

First, although I would never want to defend someone using a slur such as this, and yes Noah is a ridiculously highly paid athlete, why is it okay for the “fan” to speak that way to a player and not get fined, or penalized in someway?  Noah, a multi-million dollar athlete gets paid to push his body/self to the limit in an extremely high pressure/high stakes game in an arena where the energy level with 20,000 screaming fans is off the charts, and we expect him to respond in a manner appropriate of visiting the Queen??  Again, no excuse for using the word/slur, but com’on…aren’t our expectations out of line here?

The Second point – which is important to the first – within this highly frenetic, chaotic, atmosphere we allow….YES…ALLOW, a fan (or fanatic, which is where the word finds its roots) to address (or dress down as might be the case here) a player in this way.  AND, as Taj Gibson says almost matter-of-factly, “It was the usual”.  ”The usual”?  Shouldn’t we be addressing this issue as well?  Yes, these are highly paid professional athletes in the heat of the moment and they should be held accountable in some way for their super-stardom, but why aren’t we holding fans accountable as well?  This behavior is considered “usual”??!!

When was the last time you went to a game and really listened to what fans are saying?  Have you heard the kind of offensive language used in ballparks all across the country?  Have you seen the alcoholic abuse drunken fans enjoy spewing toward players?  When are we going to stop this kind of abuse?  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not happy about the ridiculous money players are getting, but also don’t think this high paid fleecing justifies the fan abuse or the expectation of players keeping in line with league policy. Many of these players have come from neighborhoods most of us couldn’t dream of being brought up in, under conditions we can’t imagine (isn’t that a sad fact of the discrepancy in our society).  Again, not saying this gives them permission to use said language, just saying, why doesn’t it cut both ways?

Upon delving deeper in the fan – fanatic, I was surprised to find a definition that jolted my understanding; according to Wikipedia, philosopher George Santayana defines fanaticism as “redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim”, and Winston Churchill, “A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject”.  Fanaticism is a belief or behavior involving uncritical zeal, particularly for an extreme religious or political cause or in some cases sports.  Synonyms being; enthusiast, zealot, bigot.  Bigot.  So, if we connect the dots here, a “fan” might be considered a bigot (a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices, especially one exhibiting intolerance, and animosity toward those of differing beliefs.  The predominant usage in modern English referring to one who is hostile to those of differing race, ethnicity, nationality…)

Now that makes sense!

There’s been a flurry of news activity the past few weeks, filled with jingoistic and racist tones.  From Donald Trump’s faux-Presidential aspirations and his relentless hammering of President Obama over his nonexistent birth certificate (with NY accent – he had guys on da ground in Hawaii checking it out!), then once that was exposed as a false motive, Trump undeterred, went after Obama’s school records and anything else he could in a coded/racist way.  When folks in the media began to use the R word as it applied to Trump’s wacky non-stop drivel (and why exactly were they blanket covering him in the first place?), Trump responded with, “There is nobody who is less of a racist than Donald Trump” – speaking in the third-person about himself!  I think my theory of racism applies quite aptly here; if you have to deny you are a racist, then there is a very good chance you are!

Oh…and this is the same guy who said, “I have a great relationship with the blacks.  I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks.”

AND in the highly controversial 1989 New York case of a white woman who claims to have been raped by five black boys while jogging in Central Park, Trump took out full-page newspaper ads calling for the death penalty for the African-American suspects who were later exonerated in 2002 when an already incarcerated man admitted to perpetrating the crime by himself of which DNA evidence proved him correct.

And finally, perhaps the most damning, in 1973 DTrump’s Management Corp was sued by the Justice Dept for alleged racial discrimination.  Snoop Dogg referred to the case by joking about DTrump’s supposed 2012 Presidential run by saying; “Why not?  It wouldn’t be the first time he pushed a black family out of their home.”  DTrumps lawyer at the time was the infamous Roy Cohn, a former Joseph McCarthy aide known for his hard-ball tactics.  In an act of desperate bravado, Cohn sued the Justice Dept. for defamation seeking 100 mil.  The judge in that case not only threw it out, but did so with the comment; “wasting time and paper from what I consider to be the real issues.”

DTrump settled the discrimination suit two years later and was ordered  to stop discriminating (wow…big deterrent!) and provide a list of vacancies in his 15,000 apartments to a civil-rights group, giving them first priority.  However…undeterred, DTrump did not fulfill his promise, and three years later was charged again!  This time DTrump was forced to compensate victims…

“Nobody could be less of a racist than Donald Trump.”

Enough about that loser who finally came clean by letting us all know he never really intended to run for President but was just using the media as a philanderer….

www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-may-11-2011/tone-def-poetry-jam—lyrics-controversy

The link above sparked last night’s debate between John Stewart and Bill O’Racist(Reilly) on FOX news after the incendiary mock “journalist”, along with several other fellow mock-journalists at FOX were OUTRAGED by the recent appearance of the rapper Common at a poetry event held at the Whitehouse.  Hannity, O’Reilly, Carl Rove and others went ballistic even though their HipHopcrisy was thick.  It’s a good laugh, but a frustrating experience to have to watch Stewart try to remain light-hearted while mr mean-as-they-come O’Racist pound away with not a trace of civility.  His lame attempt to associate the Obama’s with Common and “other’s of questionable character” (ie. Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, etc.) as if these people somehow have the President’s ear when it comes to what he believes and how he runs the country, is more than absurd….it’s racist!

And finally, speaking of FOX news, a recent study done by the University of Maryland found that FOX news watchers were far more likely to believe falsehoods and rumors about national and world affairs when compared to those who paid attention to other news outlets.  Which also jived with an NBC news survey taken during the height of America’s health care reform debate, where FOX News viewers were found to be most likely to have believed wildly inaccurate interpretations of the legislation.  The Vice President for news at FOX disparaged the U of Maryland by saying that “the Princeton Review ranked it amongst one of the top schools where students study the least, and for it being the best party school.”

Just for the record….the Princeton Review ranked it as one of the Best Northeastern Colleges, and #19 in the rank of party schools!

Exactly how much damage is FOX doing to our country?

Poor Marilyn Davenport of the Orange County Republican Central Committee…she who recently sent out the Obama as baby chimp to mommy and daddy chimps email that has now gone media viral.  Today she apologized for sending out the email but remains steadfast in her refusal to resign.  Yet she maintains, as she has from the beginning of the now ludicrous racial teaching moment episode, that she is “not a racist”.  As I’ve written previously on this blog, if you have to deny it, then you probably are it!

Examining this a little closer, upon seeing her picture today I was not surprised to see she is an elderly white woman (who lives in a very conservative white area of Southern California – or as it is sometimes affectionately referred to; “behind the Orange curtain”, in reference to the oppressive wall of conservatism practiced there.  On a side note, Orange County is also the home to Orly Taitz the Soviet Union born dentist who is the Original Birther, claims Obama is killing homosexuals tied to his old church, and is personally funding Hamas terrorists.  I’m thinking she must be good friends with Terry Jones the preacher of Dove World Outreach from FLA who recently burned the Koran because God told him to!?  See previous post on him.).  What is most troubling again is the fact there are so many like poor Marilyn who are so sheltered from actually knowing any people of color.  She lives in a reality where the privilege of her light skin is taken for granted, and the language she and her friends probably use is so steeped in historical racism that they are unaware of its insensitivity.  One wonders what racism actually means to her?  I’m guessing it’s guys in white sheets…of which she is not, therefore she couldn’t possibly be racist in her depiction of our dark-skinned president as a by-product of chimpanzees.

There have been a few who have jumped to her defense, mentioning her nice demeanor and yet the liberal denigrations of President Bush drew scant attention.  There have also been a few Orange County Republican leaders who have called her actions tasteless and inappropriate….”much more racist than the watermelon email” (the email sent out by the mayor of Los Alamitos depicting the Whitehouse in the middle of a watermelon field.  I’m not making this up.)  Which reminds me of an Oct ’08 post just prior to the election in which I took another female Republican committee member to task for creating a flyer depicting Obama eating fried chicken and watermelon.  They must learn these “lighthearted” techniques, or as Marilyn recently called it, “satire”, at some kind of Republican sensitivity training school (that is satire).

I sense politics seems to bring out the worst in us as a people, but if we can’t find a way to have a civil dialogue, conversations about race, discussions about our similarities (first) AND our differences (second), then I fear we will never be able to find a way to become “neighbors”.

The recent killings in Afghanistan being attributed to the burning of the Koran by the ever in-the-news crazy preacher of the year, Terry Jones, made me wonder how the media decides what is news.  A crazy man (Terry Jones) who leads a small “congregation” (reportedly under 50 people) goes off on Islam and threatens to burn a Koran (God told him to.  Really?!) last 9/11 and every media outlet, the Secretary of Defense, and even the President pleads with him to reconsider in the name of national security.  He relents saying he had struck a deal with the Imam who was supposedly building a mosque on ground zero (see previous post about the ridiculousness of that whole episode!), however the Imam says he never spoke to the guy and the press gives him a pass on that claim.  All is calm until Mr. crazy pastor decides he really enjoyed being in the national media firestorm and announces that he and his rag-tag group of equally intolerant fundamentalist lunatics will once again revive the burning-bush(Koran) event on March 20th.  Apparently they do so, only nobody is there from the media to cover it!  How dare the press forsake our craziness!

Two weeks later – last week – it is reported that a mob scene erupts in Kandahar (a previously semi-quiet area of Afghanistan – yeah right, as if that actually exists!), and thousands storm a UN aid center and kill 5 people.  It is widely reported they did so in response to the reported Koran burning (which most of us here knew nothing about since the press finally got wise to the continued reporting of a crazy-man’s exploits).  Said crazy man insists there be forceful retaliation for such heinous acts of barbarism and claims his “right” to burn such a book.

Forget the fact that both acts are each insane and intolerant, seems – according to Fareed Zakaria – the President of Afghanistan, Harmid Karzai, used the unreported Koran-burning non-story as a way to fuel unrest and in his twisted logic, and had hoped to stoke resentment toward the very people (US) who are propping up his government (re: lifestyle).

Which brings up two thoughts; a) Why is the media reporting the exploits of crazy men?  Do they report on the guys on street corners (both homeless and not) who spout equally crazy conspiracy theories in cities across this country?  NO.  Why then is a crazy religious fanatic in Florida (of all places…don’t get me started…!) getting face time with national media?  I can barely get the media’s attention and I am spouting off positive, and in some cases life-changing, messages…why not offer your media saturated public something uplifting to ponder?

and b) why are we still spending enormous amounts of money (can you say billions?) in a country that is lead by a proven corrupt man who continually sticks his middle finger up at us while he takes our billions and lives a fairly comfortable lifestyle (by Afghan and even American standards)?  I know this particular question has little to do with race/identity/stereotypes/intolerance, but while we are cutting teachers in every state across the country (yes, those thousandares who are breaking the state budgets because of their 40,000 a year cushy jobs!), cutting budgets and services for the poor, the unhealthy, women, children, and not raising the taxes on those who can actually afford to pay more…..WHY ARE WE STILL THERE?

Okay….I got off on a tangent, but the intolerance that this situation (9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, and our subsequent Islamiphobia) has bred is intolerable!

So I’m reading the latest news on the Barry Bonds trial – he’s accused of lying to a grand jury about whether or not he knowingly used steroids during his baseball career – and I was suddenly struck by yesterday’s testimony.  Apparently Bond’s former mistress was on the stand testifying that Barry told her he use steroids during their nine year relationship (and she claims his testicles actually shrunk by half!!  Although later, off the witness stand, she claimed this was a slight exaggeration!!!  Holy cow.).  It suddenly occurred to me how common this seemed to be – NOT her claim of testicle shrinkage – but that Barry had a mistress for nine years and she was on the witness stand and nobody seemed to even blink about it (although I can only imagine the looks during the testicle claims…but I digress!).  Where was the outrage, the disgust, the character assassination???…the kind that Tiger Woods received during his mistress(es) ordeal?  Granted he seemed to have had multiple mistresses and practiced plenty of deception with not only his family but friends, colleagues, and others….but why isn’t anyone asking about Barry’s wife and family?

I have two theories….either Barry Bonds is so despised (he’s never been a warm and cuddly baseball all star) that he is able to fly under (or maybe it’s over?!) the radar of hatred and vitriol since he is no longer an active ballplayer.  OR…perhaps some of the anger and vitriol Tiger has experienced comes from the fact that he is essentially the only black golfer in a primarily old white man’s game (yes, there are several foreign players of Asian descent as well as younger players…).  How could he do this to “us” they must be thinking in their primarily white clubhouses?!  Forget the fact that Bonds plays in a fairly integrated league….  Or if we want to bring up other stories that seemed to have been glided over (unlike Tiger’s), what about Brett Favre’s dalliance with a woman in the Jet’s organization (he supposedly sent her naked pictures of himself!) while he was supposedly a happily married man?

Just asking….

Chicago; March 27, 2011:

Having spent the past 45 minutes weeding out the ridiculous spam that filters in here with various disguises (!), I can now take a moment to share something I’ve been meaning to discuss for several weeks now.

Since the release of my memoir, INCOGNITO: An American Odyssey of Race and Self-Discovery, I have been featured in numerous articles as well as radio and television interviews both local and national.  I am happy to say I’ve had a delightful time talking with various interviewers and have heard word back from numerous people on how much they have enjoyed hearing or reading the stories on my life.  There was one article however that really gave me pause – not so much due to the content of the piece, but rather the comments that followed.

I was featured in a frontpage story in the Sunday Chicago Sun-Times on 2/20, two days before the release of my memoir.  I had spent over an hour speaking to the writer the week prior and she compiled a very thorough and compelling article about my life-changing story.  She also called my book; “A stunning new memoir…” which I am flattered to have received such praise.  As all newspapers are now carrying their content online, this article appeared in the online edition beginning the Sat before….and also like many newspapers have grow accustom to doing, they allow their readers to post comments to articles.  It was in these comments I found the real reason I continue to tell my story and try to engage people in REAL dialogue about race and stereotypes.  Below is a sampling of a few of the more disgusting comments:

-TMONT writes: This is such a bunch of baloney, it ain’t even funny!  Apparently, this sap believes that is one has a drop of negro blood, then he is black.  This is wrong; just look at Obama, he’s really not black, just half black, he’s white too.  So he’s not the first black president!  Then why does this sap in article, emphasize JUST his nutty part, and not his white part?  Poor, deceived sap!

-JOHN C3 writes:  So what, can he sing and dance or play ball?

-LITTLE TOMMY writes:  Does he have a 55Gal barrel BBQ on his porch, that’s how you tell.

-ATOM writes:  So he enjoyed “White privilege”, and now he’s cashing in on his “Black privilege” with his one man show.

-WOMAN60 writes:  I believe this guy is angry because its typical of a black father to do a dissappearing (sp) act on their kids.  Why is he flaunting this 1% sambo like the president.

-DAVE4118 writes:  Does this mean he may have to pay himself reparations?  and can he sue himself for not hiring ‘qualified’ blacks

-MOOLIN=JOHN writes:  What is this?  White guilt or now I’m cool cause I got some Black in me?  Whatever nationally or race he is one things for certain.  He’s 100 percent A HOLE!

-MOOLIN=JOHN also writes:  Heres the real deal.  This loser says he’s an actor.  Well he acted in five different events.  The last was 1992.  This is a way for a loser to get some press.

This were the comments I was able to capture before several (including a few of these ) were removed by editors at the Times.  One can only image what the ones removed before I got to see them said?!  After directing people to the article and encouraging them to read these despicable things, one friend wrote me back:

“The comment thread on that Sun-Times article makes me want to vomit.  I am ashamed for those people.  I want to respond to each and every one, but I don’t think they’re worth the time.  They are, however, shining a big ‘ol spotlight on the value of what you do, the relevance of the issues you raise, and the importance of the dialogue you inspire.  Keep on keepin’ on my friend.  Can’t wait to read the book.

Last weeks duping of the NPR fund-raising exec by the notorious right-wing filmmaker James O’Keefe (highly praised by Bill-I’ll disrespect-the-President-on-National-Television-O’Reilly), which lead to the resignation of the Executive Director of NPR, embattled by the Right’s frontal assault on their governmental funding, seems to have not only conned the media (much like that of the mysterious WMD’s in Iraq), but the public as well.

James O’Keefe, the young smart-alec filmmaker who brought down ACORN to the cheers of the Right, by duping members while dressed as a pimp no less, has an extremely checkered past as a part-time (or perhaps full…who knows???) Racist.  And, I don’t use that term lightly.  Seems in the past he has actively participated in the White Nationalist Movement, used racist language and pranks which eventually got him fired from a position (amazingly with a white supremacist group!), and has collaborated with one of the more racial-offensive Right voices, Andrew Breitbart…the man who was originally responsible for the craftily edited fictitious video of Sherrly Sherrod allegedly making racist remarks at a NAACP meeting (when in fact she was defending her help of a white farmer).  AND…to top things off, much like the original ACORN film that crumbled the network providing social assistance to those less well-off, this NPR video appears to have been edited as well to make it seem more inflammatory.

So…the smart-alec racist dupes an exec to say something derogatory to a group of fake Muslim philathropists in private while being filmed.  The video goes viral, the exec resigns, the Head of NPR resigns, and NOBODY ANYWHERE, not the press, not NPR, certainly NOT Fox says anything about O’Keefe’s past???????????

Excuse me but WTF?  Really?  He’s a racist and we let him operate as if he’s some award-winning journalist?

www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/02/03/james_okeefe_white_nationalists

No one has said anything about O’Keefe’s motives, his past, or his careful editing of the tape to make things appear differently.  Nor has anyone mentioned that most people probably say things in private that they don’t in public, no matter who they are!  Do you think Newt-I’m gonna run for President on family values even though I’ve dumped wives more times than John Boehner has cried -Gingrich has never said anything in private to a potential donor or whomever, that he’s glad was never made public?  (And this is a guy that has said plenty of RACIST things IN PUBLIC!)

I guess I can understand why the fund-raising exec stepped down, although I personally would have liked him to call a spade a spade….in other words, call O’Keefe for who he is, rather than stumble over yourself backing down.  But, I cannot understand WHY? the Chief Executive of NPR capitulated to this guy’s sham.  All in the name of funding?  Her board forced her to do it for the sake of appeasing the conservative wing which has been for years desperately trying to cut the government funding for PBS and NPR?  These desperate attempts to de-fund Public Broadcasting due to their supposed Left-leaning reporting?  EVEN THOUGH there have been numerous studies done by independent agencies which show that their reporting has been equal left and right on both NPR and PBS?  Do you think maybe the supposed Left-leaning they perceive is because the TRUTH is being told on the Public airways, and the REAL TRUTH does not add up to their twisted view of Racism (there…I said it!), Non-compassionate, anti-union, anti-social programs, pro-corporation, pro-gun, pro-life at all costs, logic?

AND….all this going on in the shadow of the hearings conducted by Pro-IRA (an official TERRORIST group!) Republican congressman from NY, Peter King, on the radicalization of Muslims in America and how he believes that over 80% of the mosques in this country are terrorist affiliated!

Wow…are we moving backwards?

With the recent shootings/massacre in Arizona of a “center” Democratic Representative (as described by many in the media), along with an outspoken judge, several elderly women, and a child, by what appears to be a very mentally unstable individual, there has been an outcry of horror from all sides both left and right.  The left has leapt to bemoan the divisiveness and anger perpetrated by the right, the right denies and parries by playing the mentally unstable card (perhaps it might be convenient – or inconvenient – to mention that it has been the right who has consistently eliminated programs for these such people.).  Both again at each others throats decrying violence while subtly perpetrating it.  It might be time to ask the right (and perhaps those on the left as well), what do these two things have in common; White Privilege and Right Denial?

White privilege is a unrecognized right of light-skinned (white) people bestowing various advantages on them and theirs at the expense of people of color and immigrants.  The more common and absurd being; not having to worry about being followed around in certain stores while shopping, not having to worried about being pulled over while driving “white” (racial profiling), the ease with which they can hail a cab, etc.  Of course there are the more tiring things they don’t have to deal with such as being certain that in most rooms they enter people will perceive them neutrally, not having to worry about being mistaken for the spokesperson for their race, never having to qualify the reason for a promotion.  These advantages are common, unrecognized and pervasive in our society.  The way in which we go about our lives black, white, and others is quite different, but assumed to be equal and the same.  The perception is very different from race to race.  Imagine if the shooter in the case above had been black, what might the media be spinning in that case?

The denial on the right exists in much the same manner as privilege.  Yes, what we know so far of this young man is troubling.  He was strange, alienated, weird, perhaps even mentally unstable.  But to DENY that any of the harshness of the political discourse, our anger, our culture, violent movies, the constant instillation of fear from the media and elsewhere, our extraordinarily easy access to guns (and especially those that fire an inordinate amount of rounds rapidly), has not had anything to do with this, is truly closing our eyes to our problems as Americans.  It is a privilege we cannot afford to have.  It is causing what is left of our unity to crumble.  It is most definitely irresponsible, unreasonable.

Reason is not something we are good at as Americans.  We tend to jump to one side or the other….remember, you get two choices in America; black or white, Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal, good or evil, crazy or sane.  Reason is in between.  Reason is what is missing.  Reason is what happens when people talk to one another and most importantly listen.  When the talk is so loud and so rampant and so often, reason is crushed.

This is a no-brainer.  A tough Allstar NFL football player like Vick could take Carlson in a second, hands down.  However, yesterday while substituting for another of their “tough-guy reporters” on FOX Sean Hannity (Insanity Hannity!), Tucker Carlson, he of the “I can say anything more outrageous than you can” school of conservatism said he personally thought Michael Vick should’ve been executed (I believe that’s the death penalty?!) for his part in killing dogs.

Wow.

WHITE conservative “news analyst Tucker Carlson, he of father Richard Warner Carlson, former US Ambassador to the Seychelles, President of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Director of Voice of America.  Tucker, who’s mother, maiden name Swanson and heiress to the Swanson food conglomerate fortune, proclaiming that Michael Vick, young NFL star BLACK athlete, raised in the Ridley Circle Homes – one of the worst crime-ridden, poverty-stricken neighborhoods in Newport News (or the country for that matter) – surrounded by drugs and violence, one of four kids of working-class (re: minimum wage) parents.  Can anyone say WHITE PRIVILEGE?!

Let’s throw aside the fact that Vick spent 2 years in prison, declared bankruptcy after being fleeced in schemes perpetrated on him by an assortment of fraud money managers, and is by all rights one of our premier “spoiled” superstar athletes.  He is a black man, who did a terrible thing, paid a price doled out by our justice system, came back and proved he could still get paid the ridiculous sums other star athletes of his calibre command.  There are countless white athletes who have certainly not been accused of the terrible crimes he did, but have faired far far better in their treatment by the press.

And…while we’re discussing “the killing of animals” and execution being suggested as fair punishment for said act of murder by a privileged white man, ironically I just happen to be reading Michael Pollen’s, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Here’s a quote about our industrial animal factory in pursuit of ultimate in capitalism:

“To visit a modern Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) is to enter a world that for all its technological sophistication is still designed on seventeenth-century Cartesian principals: Animals are treated as machines –”production units”–incapable of feeling pain.  Since no thinking person can possibly believe this anymore, industrial animal agriculture depends on a suspension of disbelief on the part of the people who operate it and a willingness to avert one’s eyes on the part of everyone else.

Egg operations are the worst, from everything I’ve read: I haven’t managed to actually get into one of these places since journalists are unwelcome there.  Beef cattle in America at least still live outdoors, albeit standing ankle-deep in their own waste eating a diet that makes them sick.  And broiler chickens, although they get their beaks snipped off with a hot knife to keep them from cannibalizing one another under the stress of their confinement, at least don’t spend their lives in cages too small to ever stretch a wing.

That fate is reserved for the American laying hen, who spends her brief span of days piled together with a half-dozen other hens in a wire cage the floor of which four pages of this book could carpet wall to wall.  Every natural instinct on this hen is thwarted, leading to a range of behavioral “vices” that can include cannibalizing her cage mates and rubbing her breast against the wire mesh until it is completely bald and bleeding.  Pain?  Suffering?  Madness?  The operative suspension of disbelief depends on the acceptance of more neutral descriptors, such as “vices” and “stereotypes”, and “stress”.  But whatever you want to call what goes on in those cages, the 10 percent or so of hens that can’t endure it and simply die is built into the cost of production.  And when the output of the survivors begins to ebb, the hens will be “force-molted”–starved of food and water and light for several days in order to stimulate a final bout of egg laying before their life’s work is done.”

He goes on a little later to say:

“The industrial animal factory offers a nightmarish glimpse of what capitalism is capable of in the absence of any moral or regulatory constraint whatsoever.”

Now one might have qualms with comparisons of dogs to cows, pigs, chickens, hens or cattle, and I’m no vegetarian, but hey, let’s get real here….”Michael Vick killed dogs, and he did it in a heartless and cruel way.  And I think, personally, he should’ve been executed for that.  He wasn’t, but the idea that the President of the United States would be getting behind someone who murdered dogs?”  Quoth Tucker.

Apparently Obama called the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles (the team Vick plays for) and congratulated him for giving Vick a second chance.  The percentage of young black males in prison is too ridiculous to even mention here.  The percentage of young black males out of work is more than twice that of white males.  The percentage of young black males that can’t get home loans, healthcare, or a cab is too stupid to mention.  So the fact that Obama thought a young black man – who paid a steep price for his crime (obviously not steep enough for Mr. Carlson) – was given a second chance and this was worthy of congratulations…..

Ridiculous Mr. Carlson.