Prometheus 6

i guess my answer to your final question is: fight for the ideal, fight against the reality. same position as Derrick Bell in "Faces at the Bottom of The Well".

but CP....,

there's not much difference between today's imperialistic hauteur and the imperial ambitions of the Jeffersonian presidency. there's definitely not much difference concerning the lack of respect for Black intellect and humanity between then and now; like Jefferson thought back then and the neocons think now, blacks were good enough to sleep with but not smart enough to be made part of the family.

coercion has given way at least in part to hegemony...., but much else remains the same, particularly and indisputably, rule by elites.

I tend toward elite atheism, realizing the existence of these people, I nevertheless disregard them operationally because we don't run in the same circles..(: I believe I've heard Cobb argue something to the effect that there are elites who have our interests at heart, possibly even respected black American elites..., though I'm disinclined to think any occupy a seat at the big table

Be that as it may, America is busily fighting on multiple fronts. The fighting promises to intensify. We've fought in all previous fights and I'm not convinced that black social capital in the American venture appreciated in proportion to black military investment. This time, there's not even a decent cover story for the *fighting*.

If I'm looking at an inflection point, it would be here.

In consideration of the above, is there an American ideal or an American reality that is morally worth fighting for?

ps I often think the reality of the American ideal is embodied in nothing more profound than a huge shining refrigerated tractor trailer careening down the highway at 85mph to deliver ice cold yard beer (pick your brand) to a grocery store near you. LOL!!!

i'm coming back for this one, i swear.  the dual devils of barbeque and a paper deadline are curtailing my P6 productivity levels at the moment, though.  hope y'all had a great weekend

Forgot to login.  On vacation.  Posted anon, I guess it needs to get screened.

Sorry, there's no pending comments out there. Maybe you hit preview instead of post?

Ok. Clearly I screwed up in more ways than one.

You have real correlation vs.causation issues, DW. 

What were the other changes that were made in the 70s? The death of phonics? "New math"?

Observe that I never claimed that equitable funding was the problem, rather that it wasn't, in and of itself, the solution.

Non-phonics,  new math, and "bi-lingual education" did in fact arrive coincident with equitable funding to CA, and they were universally negative in their effect.

But they weren't the changes which devastated the bottom tier schools.

The huge change involved tolerance of intimidation by students. Intimidation of teachers, and intimidation of other students.  When PT and I were in 6th grade, intimidation (in the classroom) was simply not tolerated.  If a student got on that track, he was counciled, then paddled by the principle, and then expelled. Gonzo. Not around to poison the atmosphere.

The tolerance of intimidation by students is directly responsible for the insane rate of imprisoned students from such schools. A student who has been trained to intimidate as a way to achieve goals will end up in prison, and a student who sees intimidation work is a student who is being trained to intimidate.

But we decided three things:

1. schools should be funded with respect to daily attendance rather than enrolment
2. expulsion was not really an option short of criminal behavior
3. paddling was not to be allowed

The sum of these three yielded success to a culture of intimidation in the bottom rung schools. Once one student sees it work, many others follow, and the school enters a zone of near total failure. While we're unwilling to break that culture of intimidation, no amount of money will do any good at all.

*from the depths of revision hell*

DW - no disrespect to your experience.  but you're wrong on this one.  the rise in student explusion and "acting out" has a lot to do with the culture the TEACHERS brought to the classroom.  look at the statistics on expulsions and disciplinary measures.  Black students are disciplined and expelled at a rate which FAR exceeds the rates of white students committing the same infractions.  education is not a vacuum. everybody brings their home life - and the behaviors they use to deal with that life - to the classroom.  i'm not saying that the kids shouldn't change.  but that possibility is scuttled by the shitty attitudes teachers and administrators have about the minority youth they're forced to educate.  NB:  i'm not excluding middle-class black teachers from this.  like DuBois and other point out, they often hate poorer blacks because they want the approval of their white peers and superiors.

okay - back to work.  still drafting my response to cnulan's comment (thanks for the shoutout over at VC.org) 

In my observation cp, only the worst of schools have allowed this culture of intimidation to arise.  In good schools, even in mediocre schools, one way or another the intimidation is confronted, even with the rules we adopted. 

Check it out.  See if "I'll kick your fucking ass", directed by a student toward a teacher, is even slightly tolerated in the good schools. Then see if it is tolerated in the worst of schools.  Let me explain what you'll find in those worst case schools. You'll find that it depends. What they face is a decision to call the police or not, because that is their only possible reaction. And you know, they'll frequently decide that it just isn't worth the hassle.

"Pleasing white people" doesn't even show up in the equation.  "Keeping the kid out of prison" does.

look at the statistics on expulsions and disciplinary measures. Black students are disciplined and expelled at a rate which FAR exceeds the rates of white students committing the same infractions. education is not a vacuum.

I spent the weekend infuriating conservative true believers on a private listserve. In the course of 50-odd listserve discussions, not a single data point was offered by ANY of the conservative correspondants in support of any of their many contentions. Some could only sputter, name call, and demonstrate the rich array of logical fallacies infecting their political world-view.

As you pointed out, education doesn't take place in a vacuum. Without faculty demographic data, e.g., the percentage of young white female teachers in 1990 vs 1980 vs 1970 vs 1960 etc..., student-faculty racial demographics, student-to-teacher ratios, and a whole host of other factors that have a direct bearing on classroom discipline, I'm inclined to dismiss out of hand the notion that an epidemic of *intimidation* of faculty by students and students by students has undermined operational discipline in the public school system.

Maybe a surplus of ill-prepared, insecure, young and inexperienced white female teachers has undermined the orderly culture which once prevailed in the public schools?

I sat in the whirlpool two weeks ago with a trio of public school officials from Kansas City Kansas. One was a male principal who had gone to school in suburban chicago, graduating in 1963, the year I was born. He told us that at his highly integrated highschool, with 10,000 students, order was maintained by uniform police officers carrying guns, and that on average there were 9 homicides per year at that school. He had nothing but warm memories of the years he spent there.

I attended an expensive private independant John Birch society founded school from grades 7-12. As the 3rd black male student at this school, I was subject to daily harassment and intimidation by self-appointed bullies drawn from the majority white male student body for my first year and a half. During my tenure at this school, I quickly learned more about the fine arts of pre-emptive and retaliatory violence than during all the rest of my 42 years combined. By the middle of the 8th grade, I'd inflicted enough stitches, fractures and other nasty surprises that it became apparent that the cost-to-value of phuqueing with me was extremely poor.

The primary order-keepers at this school were all tough white male teachers, deans, and the headmaster, none of whom had any compunction about slapping, kicking, or punching malefactors. I graduated in 1981 and went on to MIT. At the time I graduated, swift and ruthless corporal punishment was still the order of the day.

I'm quite certain that none of this corporal punishment regimen remains intact, nevertheless, the school has more than quadrupled in size, has far more ethnic and gender diversity, while garnering loads of routine academic accolades and Ivy League graduate placements. It is one of the top private independant schools in the midwestern U.S.

Observe that I never claimed that equitable funding was the problem, rather that it wasn't, in and of itself, the solution.

Was it even part of the problem? Equitable funding was (I believe without looking back) the only element of the problematic situation you specifically named. That strongly implied blame, and I'm looking for clarity now.

 The huge change involved tolerance of intimidation by students.

A national problem. A cultural shift.

Okay, what do you think caused the cultural shift? 

Wait.  I thought the question was, what caused bottom tier schools to BE on the bottom tier, not what caused bottom tier schools to become worse.  

 But in either case, there are a few problems with this cultural argument:

 1.  I went to school in the seventies and eighties.  I was paddled.  We didn't intimidate teachers.  But my public school got markedly worse from K to 5th grade.  No change in the culture of the school.  Changes in the outcome.  Whenever I hear someone make the argument "well, back in the day we did X" I think one of three things: either they are romanticizing, they don't have real data, or both.

2.  The theoretical argument is based on variance in disciplinary strategies across schools, when there doesn't appear to be variance.  That is to say, if my poor working class black school paddled kids, then the rich upper class white school paddled kids too.   If my school stopped paddling kids, then the others stopped too...if not at the exact same time then either a little before or after.

So if you're trying to answer the question "what makes bad schools bad?" then the cultural argument fails because of a lack of rigorous data on the one hand, and poor theory on the other.  If you're trying to answer "what makes bad schools worse?" then it is possible that getting rid of discipline in EVERY school may have especially bad outcomes for certain types of schools.  Is this what you're saying?

 ....

On prison rates.  We are talking about K-12 right?  Could you give me a breakdown across time of kids below the age of 18 being sent to jail?  This sounds like more anecdotal data to me.  From my understanding of the literature, the strongest predictor of aggregate prison rates is not k-12 school culture, but rather aggregate employment rates.    This is going to sound offensive, but it isn't meant that way.   <b>You've got to bring DATA to the table</b>.  In a space where we've got English professors claiming expertise on black social science matters, we've got to be better than this.

Equitable funding was (I believe without looking back) the only element of the problematic situation you specifically named.

I was reacting to a posting by PT which implied that inequitable funding was part of some ongoing process to deprive black people of a good education. In retrospect, I suspect I gave a narrow reply to a broad point by PT.  PT argued that inequatible funding was bad. I responded that equitable funding doesn't solve the problems of bad schools.  From a lofty perspective, one can see that I didn't engage PT's point concisely.

For the record, I strongly support equitable funding, at least on a state-sized basis.  It doesn't seem to have drug down the good schools.

A national problem. A cultural shift.

Okay, what do you think caused the cultural shift? 

Looks like one of them rhetorical devices there.

I don't see any national shift to a culture of intimidation.  I see the educational system, which prior to about 1970 provided some degree of structure in the lives of all children, having lost some tools.  In all but the worst schools, this loss was not devastating. But in the worst schools, it was utterly devastating.  10 year old thugs achieved power.  Kids saw that nowhere in their lives was there enough structure to suppress the threat of violence.

Intimidation in action is way cool to a teenager.

P6, could you implement a rhetorical "bring some to get some" dharma rule? Along with it, please consider a "saying the same thing over and over and expecting to get a different result" insanity rule?

John Taylor Gatto is required contextualizing reading about the history and trajectory of public education in America.

P6, could you implement a rhetorical "bring some to get some" dharma rule?

I had comment moderation, but no one used it. 

oh!

that's what that was for.....,

Ok Earl.  Unless there are still pending comments I got one eaten.  I don't preview comments, or spend a great deal of time going over them afterwards.  

i'm going to let DW address this 'culture of intimidation' argument; i'll only add that i graduated from a public gifted and talented boarding school.  no corporal punishment...but it was the first place i was exposed to how 'good' (white) kids verbally abused their parents. but that's just high spirits, right? 

It's wednesday brah..., there's been plenty coffee, fruit, and salad twixt you and this past weekend's slow-cooked swine.., (:

Now I know DW is boning up on Gatto, googling his ass off to find some data points in support of his "pronouncements", or just laying low cause he was called on that oft expressed and heartfelt desire of his to resurrect Bull Connor to handle the incorrigible young nigra problem..., be that as it may - I expect it's gonna take him a while to get back up in the frying pan.

You sir, on the other hand, have had plenty of time to ruminate on the main question I posed in response to your thought provocations, and it really boils down to a simple yes or no in the overall context of black folk contracting trichinosis or other $TD's from GOP pork, and the still larger question confronting us in the context of the presently ruling conservative junta;

is there an American ideal or an American reality that is morally worth fighting for?

I think we ought to explore this in some detail before the brother minister speaks his mind to the millions in October..., I think he's already foreshadowed his thoughts for what promises to be an eventful day.

Mind you CP, I've posed this question in slightly less clear terms previously, and have thus far found it to be an area of exceptional restraint on the part of commentators in this otherwise no-holds-barred neck of the woods...,

So I'm doing this Flickr thing, and I join this group called The United States of Africa.  In one of the discussions, the creator of the group asks whether a real USA would work.  My response was that I didn't think it would (Africa is too big), but that the idea of a USA could possibly get us to talk about the type of values that we'd need to create a new form of humanity. 

So in as much as we're here, and even if we choose to leave, our families aren't going anywhere, the question isn't so much whether there is an American ideal or reality worth fighting for.  The question is, is there a way to use the concepts of "American ideals" or "American values" to CREATE a new reality? 

i'm going to throw this back in your lap:  identity is internally and externally defined.  Who is more American - the person who has benefitted from centuries of undemocratic social control and policies that benefit him over others based on his skin color?  or the former chattel who has fought and died for the right to vote, to read, to own property?

that being said, if you want to define America as white privilege, then that's not worth fighting for - morally or otherwise.  if you want to define America as a social experiment in progress, i'll fight for that - as long as we - the ones with the most to benefit from the success of the experiment -  continue to work for progress.  i'll work with any brown people to make it work; hell, i'll work with white people to make it work precisely because they have to be the ones to relinquish their privilege but they won't do it without education (and a little coercion *evil grin*).

let's return to ideology vs. psychology for a second.  you wrote that

coercion has given way at least in part to hegemony...., but much else remains the same, particularly and indisputably, rule by elites

coercive tactics have changed - lynching is no longer a social event, nor is openly expressed racist discourse.  however, hegemony has not.   your bildenburg (sp) article is interesting to me precisely because of the lack of attention given to it by the MSM; like P6's recent re-airing of the Joe Taylor beatdown, it reminded me that whites like to argue that there is no spoon even while they twist it out of shape.  no matter what Cobb says - and i read him because we differ often - Black elites exist primarily because they hegemonically support white privilege.  they have drawn themselves up into an economic fetal position from which they can excoriate Black poor people's behavior while drawing tainted sustenance from the fecal umbilical of white approbation.  but i digress.

MLK was FIERCE in his last days.  his war on poverty was what got him killed - not his civil rights stuff. let me rephrase your question from 

is there an American ideal or an American reality that is morally worth fighting for?

to

is [democracy] or [socioeconomic equality] morally worth fighting for?

i think your answer to that will neatly tie us back into the discussion on education and culture that is raging over my head at the moment. 

LATER:

LKS get out of my head!  i didn't even see your comment until i posted...but its good to see we're headed in the same direction. 

is there an American ideal or an American reality that is morally worth fighting for?

Mind you CP, I've posed this question in slightly less clear terms previously, and have thus far found it to be an area of exceptional restraint on the part of commentators in this otherwise no-holds-barred neck of the woods...,

I've said before I find America to be a playing field or set of rules and culture to be a toolkit. That implies my answer is no, and I'll make that implication definte. To me it's like declaring loyalty to chess.

The question would be, to me, is there any ideal worth fighting for. That ideal (assuming a yes) can be expressed in America, Soviet Russia, Antarctica, whereever...repercussions of said expression differing according to context,of course.

The question is, is there a way to use the concepts of "American ideals" or "American values" to CREATE a new reality?

No... 

Sorry to go all Zen on you, but that which you indicate with your use of the wrod "reality" is not real.

in the Zen moment:  if reality is not real, then what is culture?  if culture is a toolkit, are you the tool or the user?

in the Zen moment:  if reality is not real, then what is culture?

Reality is real. "American ideals" and "American values" are conceptual and contextual and therefore are not real, i.e. existences that must be responded to. And neither is anything that can be built from them.

What you may be able to do is build a filter for,or an approach to, reality.

 if culture is a toolkit, are you the tool or the user?

Me in particular? Tool user and tool maker...the quintessential human skills.

pump your brakes!  reality is a consensual hallucination.  because we can only perceive the world through our senses AND because the interpretation of our senses is subject to our cultural and social allegiances, reality is what everyone says it is.  which puts us in the lap of rhetoric.  which is why i wanted a rhetoric degree in the first place.

okay.  so you came back with:

"American ideals" and "American values" are conceptual and contextual and therefore are not real, i.e. existences that must be responded to. And neither is anything that can be built from them. What you may be able to do is build a filter for,or an approach to, reality.

American ideals and American values are the same thang.  they have power because social actors have acted in concert to invest social/economic/material resources in them. The challenge for the Black community is to construct a social paradigm that will do the Keyser Soze trick:  get Blacks power and access like whites without letting [the wrong] whites know what is going on.

more to follow... 

not only is reality a consensual hallucination, it is an auditory hallucination implemented in linguistic tokens..,

the filters available to, but profoundly atrophied in almost everyone, are emotional and moving-instinctual. for present purposes, we could focus exclusively on repair and restoration of normal emotional function

When whites vote with their feet to move out of neighborhoods when they become more than 15% black, they are acting because of ideas about black women in particular, and because of adherence to a particular racialized American IDEAL ("hard work" and "responsibility").   The circumstance of a black urban women on welfare then are not simply the product of larger material forces, but also the product of ideas and ideals that shape people's perceptions and behaviors. 

Subjective conscious mind is an analog of what we call the real world. It is built up with a vocabulary or lexical field whose terms are all metaphors or analogs of behavior in the physical world. Its reality is of the same order as mathematics. It allows us to short-cut behavioral processes and arrive at more adequate decisions. Like mathematics, it is an operator rather than a thing or a repository. And it is intimately bound with volition and decision.

A third feature of consciousness is narratization, the analogic simulation of actual behavior. It is an obvious aspect of consciousness, which seems to have escaped previous synchronic discussions of consciousness. Consciousness is constantly fitting things into a story, putting a before and an after around any event. This feature is an analog of our physical selves moving about through a physical world with its spatial successiveness, which becomes the successiveness of time in mind-space. And this results in the conscious conception of time, which is a spatialized time in which we locate events and indeed our lives. It is impossible to be conscious of time in any other way than as a space.

Consciousness and the Voices of the Mind - Julian Jaynes

dropping hella knowledge on the language, culture, and hegemony rackets...,

American ideals and American values are the same thang.  they have power because social actors have acted in concert to invest social/economic/material resources in them. The challenge for the Black community is to construct a social paradigm that will do the Keyser Soze trick:  get Blacks power and access like whites without letting [the wrong] whites know what is going on.

So. Your solution to living in an illusion is to construct a more comfortable one.

When whites vote with their feet to move out of neighborhoods when they become more than 15% black, they are acting because of ideas about black women in particular, and because of adherence to a particular racialized American IDEAL ("hard work" and "responsibility").

Or because capitalism is conceptually bound to race...there are real costs to letting the blackamoors in.

People act like people, and explain it as best they can...or don't explain it at all (my preferred posture). Peole see whatthey see and explain it as best they can.

illusion.  hmm...which part is the illusion? 

[American values] have power because social actors have acted in concert to invest social/economic/material resources in them.

that's as real as it gets.  despite the conversation going on in the other thread, we are over here trying to negotiate a socioeconomic system as if there is some empirical, unassailable truth to the conditions that made it a reality.  that Bogus (*snicker*) law review article you linked to reminded me that there are a host of political, social, economic, and ideological factors behind the Constitution that are never really made explicit.  if there is a truth, it's that a bunch of social misfits - criminals/businessmen, sociopaths, religious fanatics, and other cornballs - created a social system that they half-assedly try to live up to.   

People see what they see and explain it as best they can

if only,

imitation or unconscious microsynchronization of body language trumps common sense in the overwhelming majority of people - thus - the power of propaganda and the big lie.

People parrot what dominant people say, they adopt and repeat the explanation best for the dominant people

Dominant people became so by ruthless self-service (force and fraud)

That collective psyche principally driven by imitation is incapable of genuine evolution

if there is a truth, it's that a bunch of social misfits - criminals/businessmen, sociopaths, religious fanatics, and other cornballs - created a social system that they half-assedly try to live up to.

They created a system of governance that has served their interests with astonishing reliability, those governed have been predictably complicit in their automatized assimilation to that scheme.

Those excluded from the scheme, that'd be America's Most kept it real for as long as we were bottled up. As I reflect on Beyond Vietnam, it even occurs to me that an intentional governance decision was taken in reaction to black idealism and moral suasion in order to break that bottle and in the process lead America's Most into a more manageable apostasy...,

Because as we all know, divide and conquer is a tried and true method of problem resolution, and in 1967/68 - the ambitious and morally commanding embodiment of American ideals was presenting some real governance problems indeed.

Hell, a mere two years later, Hollywood was lining its coffers with a continuous celebration of liberated black criminal sociopathology - and you know what - it's all been down hill since then.

I'm merely noting correlations, not positing causation

If you'll note chapter K. p 372 The Absence of Direct Evidence from the Bogus article you'll find the entirety of the extremely heated conservative dismissal of this piece.

Matter of fact, the discussion provoked so much heated shame on the part of the conservatives (with predictable name calling and tortuous denials) and one truly devastating humiliation of a prominent list member who got caught in a bald-faced lie - that I got disgusted with the whole lot of them and told the moderator that he could stick this entire hypocritical coterie where the sun don't shine and unsubscribed.

Mind you, this article hits very close to home, right up to the minute - as Murkan culture is still very much caught up in a violent collective psychology of self-inflicted fear.

It is inescapably clear that the Murkans are beyond hope of ever realizing anything approaching an American ideal..,

imitation or unconscious microsynchronization of body language trumps common sense in the overwhelming majority of people - thus - the power of propaganda and the big lie.
People parrot what dominant people say, they adopt and repeat the explanation best for the dominant people
That collective psyche principally driven by imitation is incapable of genuine evolution

this explanation troubles me.  my inner rhetorician  tells me that while people may not rationally understand the decisions they make, they  typically conduct themselves in accordance with the social paradigm that best serves their interests.  If we use the Constitution as an example, we can see how enlightenment principles such as rights, liberalism, and democracy were completely subverted by the unescapable fact that whites owned people and were determined to do so as long as possible.  Derrick Bell would call this interest convergence, and i'd have to agree.

i'm not pitching the Illuminati here.  as Spence points out, "hard work" and "merit" are codewords for the real (yes, a reality) of the continued promulgation of white privilege and white supremacy.  so your sheep are actually not very sheepish; they are consistent in their support of an ideology which favors them at the expense of others. 

this social reality is real.  some of our people have bought into it.  can you suggest a praxis that can subvert (if not defeat) it? 

I admit I am interested in his answer.

I talked earlier about the tipping point--the point where integrated neighborhoods rapidly become white.  The theory about white flight (being a direct response to material circumstanceds) doesn't quite cohere.  If whites always acted according to their material interests rather than as a response to ideology, we would be living under a very different regime I think.   

can you suggest a praxis that can subvert (if not defeat) it?

The problem, as I see it, is that Murkan interests are defined exclusively in terms of material consumption, or, what I've also termed gluttony. This normative definition applies whether you pursue gluttony via the paths of sanctioned *hard work* and *merit*, or, the allegedly unsanctioned path of non-FDA-approved pharmaceutical sales*.

*(the economic NOS supercharger system for the otherwise failing engine(s) of the Murkan economy)

Americans consume at a thermodynamically unsustainable pace. As a matter of fact, material consumption is our underlying real polity binding all disparate points of view in the omni-american enterprise. Conspicuous consumption and whatever we have to to do to continue doing it is our collective ritual habitual - binding all comers to the Murkan ideal. as contrasted with the American ideal

The operative code word for this is *freedom*. Murkan *freedom* is an evolutionary blind alley. what's more tragic still, is that there is a sustainable energy alternative that could be implemented to the collective good of humanity now while the oil remains sufficiently plentiful but it would radically contravene and disrupt established patterns of habit to attempt to do so.

The sheepishly emulated and thus followed hasnamuss alphas running things, are imho cognitively unable to break out of their dopamine-addicted habitual - and are thus themselves incapable of considering implementation of alternatives to the status quo. I sincerely believe that they are feeding behavioural addictions and are in turn being emulated by people satisfied with the crumbs from their masters' tables. It doesn't take many ruthless shepherds to utterly rule a vast flock of compliant, automatically imitative sheep. you will note, however, that the domestic police apparatus is being greatly enlarged in anticipation of something

First Principle

People are stuck in their ritual habituals exactly like addicts are stuck in feeding their habits. No amount of rhetoric is sufficient to alter the underlying reality of addictive patterns of behaviour. thus also, my malthusian pessimism concerning what is changeable...,

Second Principle

This dopamine addicted hegemon will destroy itself. It has done so in every previous instance of unsustainable population overshoot, it will do so again. However, it now possesses the means to take out most everyone with it.

Third Principle

The consensus ritual habitual is utterly intolerant of substantive deviation from its norms.

Fourth Principle and Praxis
You can only defeat it in yourself, period.

The only changeable element in the addictive consensus perpetuum mobile - is one's very own self. Don't ever even consider changing anyone elses.

Ordinary praxis consists of studying, that is, "talking about" objects other men have found in their box. Effective praxis begins with investigation of your own box--nothing but your box (once a quick study of other mens objects is effected and out of the way). Without understanding the nature of your own box, you can understand nothing, you can DO nothing - and things simply happen to you by the laws of cultural *accident*.

What is the easiest way to investigate the box, by doing what it does not like or want to do. Constant resistance to the ritual habitual, if you're right handed, use your left, if you eat three times a day, don't, if you like hot showers, suffer some cold ones, etc..., everyday, as often as possible, DO what it does not like or want to do.

No one will even know you're playing this game except you. No one should even know you're playing this game. With regard to playing the game itself, the following equivalent dicta apply:

Matt.6
[1] Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.
[2] Thus, when you give alms, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.
[3] But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,
[4] so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

To paraphrase Gurdjieff, "An individual begins with 'I' in talking about everything he does, but he mainly refers to his habits and fears ingrained in him from childhood, plus his newly acquired resentments and petty conquests; he has all but forgotten the possibility of a sense of 'I' that impartially accepts his life as it is." An individual, in other words, falsely represents to himself his actual ability to stay connected with his deeper self, which, occasionally, is expressed in impressions of impartiality and feelings of compassion in relation to his own life and its circumstances.

The Rules of Fight Club.

1st RULE: You do not talk about FIGHT CLUB.

2nd RULE: You DO NOT talk about FIGHT CLUB.

3rd RULE: If someone says "stop" or goes limp, taps out the fight is over.

4th RULE: Only two guys to a fight.

5th RULE: One fight at a time.

6th RULE: No shirts, no shoes.

7th RULE: Fights will go on as long as they have to.

8th RULE: If this is your first night at FIGHT CLUB, you HAVE to fight.

Said one guy "Reality is the totality of facts – not things,"

countered the second guy: "Reality is the totality of thoughts – not facts,"

appeared a third guy, hurriedly passing by (either late for a date, or on to something) adding the final word: "Reality is the totality."

If you can sustain simple habit-disrupting practices for long enough, the third guy will show up and begin running things correctly for you.

If whites always acted according to their material interests rather than as a response to ideology, we would be living under a very different regime I think.

Pending specification, I'll step out on a limb and assert my disagreement Spence.

All *changes* (coercion-to-hegemony) manifested in the past 50 years - have been driven by practical self-interest and necessity. Period.

Ideology did not drive the tooth-and-nail socially resisted legalism of civil rights, rather, cold-war exigency in the face of determined cultural resistance drove civil rights. Murka with goods was not at liberty to openly extend its apartheid operations world-wide, but if the pretense of Americaness could be upheld for a little while, then it could grow with less active resistance.

This Murkan system is still fundamentally driven by manifest destiny. It must encompass increasing *space*, else it dies.

Neocon mismanagement of the hegemonic enterprise has started something that has gotten WAAAY out of hand, strictly due to managerial incompetence. Right now, and for the forseeable, it needs fully compliant and properly assimilated negro helpers...,

If Farrakhan merely repeats himself to a massively televised and enlarged audience, it has the potential to be a cultural bunker buster...,

"I talked earlier about the tipping point--the point where integrated neighborhoods rapidly become white. The theory about white flight (being a direct response to material circumstanceds) doesn't quite cohere. If whites always acted according to their material interests rather than as a response to ideology, we would be living under a very different regime I think."

This is really not an either/or argument. The chicken and the egg are coequal and coeval. White flight, as I see it, is both a direct response to the view of whites' that too large of a black presence in their communities will have a deleterious effect on their accumulated homeowners' equity and a fear, too, that the culture values or standards of the neighborhood will be supplanted by something of less quality if black homeownership increases in their neighborhood. In this case whites are acting according to their perceived material interests and as a response to ideology.

"Neocon mismanagement of the hegemonic enterprise has started something that has gotten WAAAY out of hand, strictly due to managerial incompetence."

Managerial incompetence should be seen as a predictable and expected outcome because the range of variables that must be controlled in order to keep the hegemonic enterprise ongoing is increasing at a rate that creates even more uncontrolled and unanticipated variables. No matter how carefully the managers knit and plan and prepare for the future, sooner or later the principle of uncertainty, i.e., the unpredictability of events, rises up and smashes all their games to the floor.

"If Farrakhan merely repeats himself to a massively televised and enlarged audience, it has the potential to be a cultural bunker buster...,"

If Farrakhan talks for two hours he will have talked for one hour and 45 minutes longer than is necessary or prudent. If he can't state what the line of march is in 15 minutes then he has failed in the fundamental task of a political leader.

"Those excluded from the scheme, that'd be America's Most kept it real for as long as we were bottled up. As I reflect on Beyond Vietnam, it even occurs to me that an intentional governance decision was taken in reaction to black idealism and moral suasion in order to break that bottle and in the process lead America's Most into a more manageable apostasy...,"

Great post!!

One of the points that you make here (and have made elsewhere in this thread) is that a cultural shift occurred within the black community. One of the things I would like for you to elaborate on because I think you are correct is what form did this cultural shift take and in what ways did it begin to manifest itself in the larger black culture and community?

CNulan, I think we may disagree on some of the details regarding America's move from coercion to hegemony...emphasis on MAY.  But I was referring to mass white ideology rather than white American elite ideology.  There is a distinct difference.  It is in George Bush's material interest to continue to support big oil for example.  It isn't in the interest of some Louisiana hick who most likely voted for David Duke.

Farrakhan, in my opinion, is a political leader because he has a significant political following regardless of whether or not those who respond to his call are members of the Nation of Islam or not. What he has not demonstrated to date is an ability or interest in translating or converting this following into a a mass political movement. In America, political leaders don't have to be elected to an office or seeking an office to influence public policy and public debate. We should also keep in mind that granting him status as a political leader doesn't imply, at least on my part, any support or specific agreement with his positions.

"This dopamine addicted hegemon..."

I love this phrase. I crack-up everytime I read it.

"he has a significant political following."

Farrakhan's standing as a political leader, in point of fact, anyone's standing as a political leader, cannot and should not be determined solely on the basis of his or their role or influence on electoral politics. Farrakhan is a political leader by virtue of the fact that he is able to get folks in motion, which is, again, a fundamental task of any political leader.

The question(s) that needs to be asked here is why are those black political leaders and organizations that purport to get people elected or to influence public policies at the local, state and federal levels have little or no mass following among African Americans. Farrakhan may be engaged in show business leadership, which seldom, if ever, translates into tangible gains but to argue that he is also not engaged in political leadership seems to me to be overly dismissive not of Farrakhan but of the people who respond to his call.

Close attention should and must be paid to the activities of those tens of thousands of people who plan to attend the new march. The literally hundreds or thousands of formal and informal meetings that will be held under official and non-official banners as part of the organizing effort of this march represents democratic political activity at its most basic and inspiring level.

This is what it means for people to come together and experience the joy and, yes, empowering feelings of liberty, free expression and the give and take of political debate and expression. This is the yearning that the traditional forms of political activity that the black community inadvertently and, to its great detriment, fell into after the civil rights agenda was considered accomplished, has failed all these many decades to provide to people. That is, a sense that they have a stake in these issues and that they can organize themselves to address these issues.

This was one of the great discovered pleasures and heartfelt joys of the entire Civil Rights Movement. By acting in concert together, black people discovered their capacity and love for action, which is the essence of politics.

What Farrakhan and his advisors have failed to recognize and appreciate is this democratic impulse. This failure will make his efforts to institutionalize his political leadership extremely problematic but it does not prevent him, at ths point, from being a political leader. And it should not blind those of us who care and have a capacity to help lead and provide guidance to this effort to see that folks are engaging in political activity par excellence.

I love this thread. I ain't gotta say shit.

This thread isn't going to end until it ends, by the way.  If it goes on for a second month I'll continue it again.

"The literally hundreds or thousands of formal and informal meetings that will be held under official and non-official banners as part of the organizing effort of this march represents democratic political activity at its most basic and inspiring level."

I should add that I find it inconceivable that some of the folks talking, strategizing and organizing at a grass-roots level around this event will not begin to generate resolutions, papers, newsletters, proclamations etc. regarding local, state, national and international issues that they will attempt to have presented to the larger organization. This is where, I believe, that Farrakhan and his advisors must begin to show their mettle as political leaders and help guide this process so that it becomes a genuine political movement. Two hour speeches with bullshit digressions about numerology and the role of the Masons won't cut it.

you haven't been reading visioncircle have you? 

"Why should either of these be considered as legitimate measurements? George Lucas got a whole bunch of people to see a white person play James Earl Jones. Is he a leader too?"

This particular comment is so churlishly empty of anything besides an overheated and an overintellectualized contempt that I am hesitant to respond but I will. George Lucas used the voice of James Earl Jones to create a character for a series of films. I think that he was well within his rights as a filmmaker to use whatever resources were available to him to enhance the exposition of this character and the making of his films. James Earl Jones obviously didn't resent being paid for the use of his voice anymore than he apparently resented selling his voice to Verizon. If you nurture some resentment about this fact then take it up with Lucas. Spare me, please, this kind of bullshit, infantile, bourgeois nationalism masquerading as in insightful trope. George Lucas is obviously a leader in the film industry because his movies have a following and they make money. Now to the remainder of your post and, no, I have no desire to discuss this issue with you in a podcast.

"I gave more than one definition of what a political leader was. Your argument is that Farrakhan is a political leader by dint of the fact that he is able to "get folks in motion."

I say again, prove it. Give me some objective measurement."

Your definitions of what constitutes a political leader are almost entirely drawn from and dependent upon electoral political activities as manifested through various political parties and the "sausage" of these activities, which is what call public policy. In addition, you call for objective proof but your own presentations or definitions are insufficiently objective themselves because they only recognize and admit to a rather narrow definition of politics and political leadership. What you need, my friend, is less objectivity and deeper subjectivity.

The fact is that several thousand, if not tens of thousands, of black Americans will be meeting in various venues all over the country to discuss and organize around Farrakhan's call for a new march. This behavior on its face represents political activity of the deepest and most resilient kind. The people attending these meetings, where ever they may held, will be talking about and trading opinions, ideas, beliefs, fears and hopes about a broad range of issues pertaining to the African American community. They will be discussing politics and they will be attempting to grapple in a serious way with the political issues of their day. This is what it means for folks to get in motion. They have to be in motion before coalesence and institutions can be created.

It doesn't matter for our purposes here whether Farrakhan understands that his call for a new national march will engender this level of political activity or not. More importantly, it doesn't matter whether you understand it either because I am beginning to suspect that your contempt for Farrakhan extends to the people who respond to his call for a new march.

*watching from  the sidelines*  can i throw this M-80 onto the fire?  Cobb's entry on Karenga, Elijah Muhammad, and Cosby seems to be following a parallel thread of the conversation here.  where do we place Black conservatives on the "political leader" scale? Cobb states boldly that "All the debate for the future of African American politics and identity starts with Cosby". He is arguing that they are ideological leaders - a position i have a problem with in any case - that are the radical element of American society because of their concern for Black people and Black culture. 

whose side of this debate is he on?  PTC's or LKS's?

Anyone who seriously asserts that debate for the future of African American politics and identity starts with Cosby is simply trying to advance an agenda that corresponds to their own ideological beliefs and economic pursuits. The river of black political consciousness is fed by too many streams and tributaries for anyone to seriously proclaim that in the future all debate and discussion will follow the paths of a stand-up comic, television pitchman and successful sitcom star and producer. Comments like this must make DuBois, Ellison and Cruse roll in their graves and it may yet send Albert Murray to an early grave.

hold up.  not to rain on your commentary, but you were extolling the virtues of a former calypso singer and violinist.  are we to assume that your professional path excludes you from becoming a cultural or political leader?

He's not one either side. That's a different discussion.

Here's the question: would Bill Cosby call himself a Conservative™? How about a Republican™?

Michael didn't say Cosby is a Republican or Conservative. He said he's "Old School"...Michael's verbal construct he uses in an attempt to bridge the gap between Republicans and Black folks. The discussion of the best social or cultural direction for Black folks to take comes beforethe conversation on which particular gang to join.

Old School values and behaviours arose during an era of unparalleled economic growth and abundant cheap energy. To the extent that the Old School by-and-large lacks organic competencies and independant and autonomous material ways-and-means - that Old School model is not a viable one for the afrofuture in Murka. It is utterly dependant on material supreezy - material supreezy looking eyeball-to-eyeball with a significant economaterial reality correction, soon.

The NOI operates farms..., even the offshoots of the NOI operate farms, rudimentary service businesses, etc...,

here's an entryway to the political and material gang affiliation I'd wager has the greatest reciprocal potential for America's Most...,

as with what I predict will be his call to blacks to reject the misbegotten War on Terra Farrakhan should use the moment to link this to neocon malignancy in the Americas and issue a strident condemnation of the Murkan embargo and skulking thuggery against non-client states in the western hemisphere. Haiti is a basket case, (and francophone to boot) but Cuba, Venezuela, and Brazil possess immense vitality with which we should consciously orient our true American political capital in quite definite terms as soon as possible.

It is utterly dependant on material supreezy - material supreezy looking eyeball-to-eyeball with a significant economaterial reality correction, soon.

Bears repeating. 

I believe the relevant chapter of Faces in the Bottom of the Well is titled "Nigger Free."

"Your definitions of what constitutes a political leader are almost entirely drawn from and dependent upon electoral political activities as manifested through various political parties and the "sausage" of these activities, which is what call public policy. In addition, you call for objective proof but your own presentations or definitions are insufficiently objective themselves because they only recognize and admit to a rather narrow definition of politics and political leadership. What you need, my friend, is less objectivity and deeper subjectivity."

I think that you are quite mistaken. I am not extolling any alleged or real virtues of former or current calypso singers or Jello pitchmen. For anyone to seriously assert that Bill Cosby has set the terms of future political debate for black folks in this country is absurd. Unpredicted and unanticipated events, for example, will always outstrip us. If you want to assume that Bill Cosby has established the parameters of discourse within the black community let's see what another year may bring. And I am not referring here to the fact that he is being investigated here by two local district attorneys based on allegations of sexual assault.

We get a little bit more than talk, my friend, if people are given guidance and assistance and come to believe that their ability to act in concert together can make real changes. I am making a distinction here since you refuse to do so between people coming together to here a speaker talk at them and people coming together for a political purpose and organizing themselves to achieve that purpose. Such behavior is an example of political power. Power grows not out of the barrel of a gun but from people acting in concert with each other to effect a political change.

Activities of this type took place over and over again during the Civil Rights Movement and also during the American and French Revolutions. People first have to be able create a public space for themselves where they can be seen and heard. Speech is a form of action.

People first have to be able create a public space for themselves where they can be seen and heard.

Both, for ourselves, and, in ourselves. Only out of a deeper subjectivity, a deeper and more focused collective subjectivity, can the will to DO arise and be sustained.

This is not mysticism mind you, it is simply the psychological soil in which ideological ferment and behavioural change are always rooted. oh and, we are NOT unified, we ARE too apathetic, and we NEED to be more like we were in 1957..., with the benefit of 50-odd years of uncompromising 20-20 hindsight

"Ok...so we weren't in motion before? So your theory is something like this. Farrakhan is a leader because he can get people to...talk. Getting people to...talk will get people to move. Getting people to move will lead to politics and all sorts of other neat stuff."

In the first place neither one of us are advancing a theory. I am offering, whether you agree with me or not, a reasonably informed opinion. My opinion may quite off-the-mark but it is just that - a reasonably informed opinion. Secondly, I am not opining that Farrakhan is a political leader because he can get people to talk. I am saying that he has a mass following. Anybody who can persuade a million people that it is in their interest to travel across the country and congregate on the Mall in Washington, D.C. has a mass following. We can argue about the significance of that gathering but we can't argue about its abundant facticity.

I have absolutely no idea of what your experience in practical politics and community organizing has been but my own experience and background in these areas only reinforces my belief that in order to organize people for a political purpose a "public space" must be created for them to talk and see themselves as part of a larger effort.

Deep subjectivity actually might help you to understand that your so-called objectivity is not sufficiently objective. You keep trying press my opinions into your dialectic squeezebox but you are really having an argument with someone else about something else. There is nothing that I have ever posted on this site, for example, that would lead any reasonably open minded person to think that I am in favor of revival type of spectacles.

I was only eight years old in 1957. I did a lot of bicycle riding and playing games with other kids in the neighborhood. Maybe you can tell the rest of us what we were like then. I haven't a clue.

"We get a little bit more than talk, my friend, if people are given guidance and assistance and come to believe that their ability to act in concert together can make real changes."

 So people don't believe they have the ability to make a difference now?  Where exactly does that sentiment come from? 

 Blogs didn't exist in 95...but we've been here before.  In fact, more than once.  Look at the rhetoric that accompanied each significant march of the last 25 years.  The various commemorative marches for the March on Washington.  The Million Man March.  The two Million Youth Marches.  The Million Women March.  And now this one.

 Maybe we do get a little bit more than talk...but just a little bit.  The scale is too big, the structure is too elite driven and speaker-centered.  And that's just for starters.

 "I am making a distinction here since you refuse to do so between people coming together to here a speaker talk at them and people coming together for a political purpose and organizing themselves to achieve that purpose."

You are absolutely right.  There is no measurable distinction here for me.   Ask people why they went to the Million Man March and you'd get thousands of reasons if not more.  You are making assumptions because of a deep subjective desire to see something good come out of this.  But these assumptions are not borne out by history.  Just look back 10 years.

 You want to see organizing?  I went to Columbus for the League of Pissed Off Voters, who wanted to explicitly train people to register people to vote, and to train youth to use their own cultural products to give young people in local communities the agency to take over their space.  We held training sessions on dealing with the media, on voter registration, on building and maintaining coalitions, plus more.  I've also been on the other side, paying speakers thousands of dollars to mobilize and energize black people.

There is no comparison between the two activities.  One is concrete, gives people specific skills they can then take home and use practically.  The other makes you feel good about being black.  It is clear to me what is going on here.

"Such behavior is an example of political power. Power grows not out of the barrel of a gun but from people acting in concert with each other to effect a political change."

I really really hate to compare this to other ethnic groups.  I f*cking HATE it.  But you tell me how the evangelicals took over the country from where they were in 68 when many of them were thinking about leaving the country because they felt the country was going to be taken over by the Communists.  This isn't an example of political power.  It's an example of national level political slickery.  Power grows from organizing people to concretely change their reality.  No other way.  It doesn't come from making people feel good about themselves.  It doesn't come by saying a series of words in the right order to "set folks in motion."  

"Activities of this type took place over and over again during the Civil Rights Movement and also during the American and French Revolutions. People first have to be able create a public space for themselves where they can be seen and heard. Speech is a form of action."

You should take a look at I'VE GOT THE LIGHT OF FREEDOM by Charles Payne, or THE ORIGINS OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT by Aldon Morris.  Or even RADIO FREE DIXIE.  What you're talking about did occur.  But in most cases these types of events actually SAPPED the energy of the real local organizing that was going on.  Read Michael Thelwell's critique of the first March on Washington if you can get a hold of it.  If we were talking about post-Reconstruction Jim Crow Era southern politics, I'd buy this argument.  But now?

We're way more powerful than this.

"I really really hate to compare this to other ethnic groups. I f*cking HATE it. But you tell me how the evangelicals took over the country from where they were in 68 when many of them were thinking about leaving the country because they felt the country was going to be taken over by the Communists. This isn't an example of political power. It's an example of national level political slickery."

You really need to take the long view. Evangelicals have not taken over the country. They are certainly in dominant position but you have no way of knowing how long their ascendancy may last. The evangelicals have not achieved their position as result of "political slickery" whatever the fuck that means in the context of this discussion. They took their licks and they got busy organizing. They took the long view. It is a classic example of how to go about attaining political power in a representative form of democracy.

"Power grows from organizing people to concretely change their reality. No other way. It doesn't come from making people feel good about themselves. It doesn't come by saying a series of words in the right order to "set folks in motion."

You are contradicting yourself. In the paragraph of yours that I quoted above you deny that the evangelicals have organized themselves to change the current political reality. In this paragraph you claim that political power grows from organizing people to conceretely change their reality. I agree with this observation. Now why is it okay for white folks to hold meetings and organize themselves over a 20 or 30 year period to gain political power but when it is suggested that black folks do the same you get all bent out of shape?

"You should take a look at I'VE GOT THE LIGHT OF FREEDOM by Charles Payne, or THE ORIGINS OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT by Aldon Morris. Or even RADIO FREE DIXIE. What you're talking about did occur. But in most cases these types of events actually SAPPED the energy of the real local organizing that was going on."

I consider the local organzing that was going on a major part of the Civil Rights Movement. I'm not sure of your point here.

I didn't understand for a second.  I see it now.

So I couldn't be here for the best 3 days of p6 ever...

The mainstream of the thread has drifted a bit.  I'll reconnect back, but I tracked back to this by Spence: 

When whites vote with their feet to move out of neighborhoods when they become more than 15% black, they are acting because of ideas about black women in particular, and because of adherence to a particular racialized American IDEAL ("hard work" and "responsibility").   The circumstance of a black urban women on welfare then are not simply the product of larger material forces, but also the product of ideas and ideals that shape people's perceptions and behaviors.

Now you'll have to forgive two things, Spence. One, I come back with a question for you rather than first addressing your excellent response to my last posting.  Two, I have no direct or even indirect experience with whites leaving neighborhoods for any reason at all; I lived in small, ~all white towns as a kid.  I don't see it around me today. PT tells me that I live in some racial paradise.

One more thing: for my entire life, I've lived where one could leave a car unlocked and expect everything to be there in the morning.  The rare exceptions were always tracked down to local kids and sorted out quickly.

So I see "white flight" as purely a fear of crime.  Whether the issue is more complex than observing  places where white flight occurred 35 years ago, we can discuss. Whether it turned out to be a valid fear, we can observe.  Those who fled early maximized on two axes: financial and avoidance of crime.

PT tells me that white flight is occurring today. This seems odd to me, because I observe just the opposite: whites (and other races) creeping back in to black neighborhoods which have achieved some degree of civility.  Neighborhoods which remain > 50% black, but which have suppressed crime and intimidation.  We can actually observe the "positive spiral" in many parts of the SF Bay Area.  As the neighborhood  becomes less tolerant of crime and intimidation, it becomes more attractive to all races (and becomes even more intolerant of crime and intimidation).

So my question: do you agree with PT that my observations and experience are simply not representative of reality?  That the SF Bay Area is some magical place where problems are more solvable? 

"PT tells me that white flight is occurring today. This seems odd to me, because I observe just the opposite: whites (and other races) creeping back in to black neighborhoods which have achieved some degree of civility."

What are you are witnessing is gentrification. That is, more adventurous whites who tend to be younger, childless, gay and in many cases not quite as affluent as their more suburban-based "kinfolk" are looking for and finding more affordable housing in so-called transitional neighborhoods. My sisters and I, for example, just sold a single family home with a separate upstairs apartment located in West Oakland to a young, single white man who is self-employed. He will be one of the few whites in a good neighborhood that is virtually all black. I can't imagine any white suburban family moving into this neighborhood. White flight is still occuring in the United States and, DW, we weren't digressing from the main theme(s) of the thread.

"So my question: do you agree with PT that my observations and experience are simply not representative of reality? That the SF Bay Area is some magical place where problems are more solvable?"

The Bay Area is not a magical place. What it is is an EXTREMELY attractive place to live that draws people who are willing to make lots of sacrifices to secure a home. The projects that O.J. Simpson grew up in, for example, are not a good place to live at all but residents have a spectacular view of the San Francisco Bay and East Bay Hills. Do you know of any other place in the country where public housing residents have a view of a bay or ocean?

"I was only eight years old in 1957. I did a lot of bicycle riding and playing games with other kids in the neighborhood. Maybe you can tell the rest of us what we were like then. I haven't a clue."

My comment here is off-base and inappropriate. I was feeling overly testy at the time and misread and misunderstood CNulan's comment. My apologies.

A couple of things.  I don't as a rule spend much time editing comments.  The quote DW used by me is accurate in that I wrote it and he used it correctly...but there is a sentence missing.  Instead of:

 When whites vote with their feet to move out of neighborhoods when they become more than 15% black, they are acting because of ideas about black women in particular, and because of adherence to a particular racialized American IDEAL ("hard work" and "responsibility").   The circumstance of a black urban women on welfare then are not simply the product of larger material forces, but also the product of ideas and ideals that shape people's perceptions and behaviors.

 I meant to say:

When whites vote with their feet to move out of neighborhoods when they become more than 15% black, annd when they support regressive welfare policies solely because they associate poverty with black women they are acting because of ideas about black women in particular, and because of adherence to a particular racialized American IDEAL ("hard work" and "responsibility").   The circumstance of a black urban women on welfare then are not simply the product of larger material forces, but also the product of ideas and ideals that shape people's perceptions and behaviors.

But the question you asked was different.  You were right to note that white flight is at this time more of a historical dynamic than a present one.  Many cities with significant black populations have already seen their populations bottom out as far as the white populace goes.  Black middle class flight may be a more significant problem.  At the same time it is not clear that the process of whites coming back--which is real in places like DC, and Baltimore--is enduring.  PT is correct in noting that the whites who are "coming back" are not actually coming back--they are coming OUT for the first time.  Single professionals/artists, and newly married couples (without kids), represent this new demographic. 

They move out though as soon as they have kids.

Now this may be the ongoing process that PT is referring to.  But the process that caused Detroit to lose over 1,000,000 residents between around 1960 and the present is pretty much done.

CNulan and I disagree on the need for unity, on the nature of apathy in black communities, and on the state of black communities in 1957.  We tend to highly over-romanticize this period for understandable reasons...but there's no way in hell I'd want to go back there.

 With that said, I am not quite convinced that using it as some sort of clarion call for what CNulan calls the Wagon Train Charter is a bad idea.  We do need to organize much more tightly, and as what is coming may have some similar features to that period, it may be good to at least imagine what the benefits of living under Jim Crow terrorism led to as far as the ways black people behaved towards one another.

With that said, I am not quite convinced that using it as some sort of clarion call for what CNulan calls the Wagon Train Charter is a bad idea.

That is SO unclear. It reads like you WANT to find it a bad idea but can't.

This could be an important conversation...the only thing I want to enforce here is clarity.

What are you are witnessing is gentrification. That is, more adventurous whites who tend to be younger, childless, gay and in many cases not quite as affluent as their more suburban-based "kinfolk" are looking for and finding more affordable housing in so-called transitional neighborhoods.

Whether named or not, surely it qualifies as being "the reversal of white flight". 

Do you know of any other place in the country where public housing residents have a view of a bay or ocean?

No, but if ocean views made for a desirable place to live, there's a lot of CA coastline being ignored.

My sisters and I, for example, just sold a single family home with a separate upstairs apartment located in West Oakland to a young, single white man who is self-employed. He will be one of the few whites in a good neighborhood that is virtually all black.

So tell us your thoughts on this transaction, PT.  Did you have any concerns that you were participating in (if not precipitating) changes which would result in this eventually not being a black neighborhood? Would that be a good thing or a bad thing?  Do you share anything common at all with the early white flight sellers?

I was only eight years old in 1957. I did a lot of bicycle riding and playing games with other kids in the neighborhood. Maybe you can tell the rest of us what we were like then. I haven't a clue.

I wiseacred PT..., (a form of lying in which you talk about something you don't directly or personally know) But in 1971 when I was 8 years old, and lived smack dab in the middle of my little hood - there were two grocery stores within 3 city blocks of my house. I did as you did, but I also worked saturdays and a couple hours every day in my parents shop. There were was an NOI bookstore within walking distance of my house, and also a Shabazz bakery where I could go get bean pie and whitefish and other goodies I'd already been convinced were the shizznit(and bean pie is the shizznit) from reading Muhammad Speaks. I had an immense collection of Muhammad Speaks newspapers - whose underlying mythology I found very irritating because it didn't jibe with objective mythology - but whose political audacity I found exhilirating. You see, I grew up in an intensely political and news focused household, my parents were older and they didn't really shift their world to accomodate me, instead, I was simply added as a small other to their world. My parents were not in the NOI, but they placed no constraints on my access and exposure thereto.

The men of the Nation of Islam sold the Crusader and the Pittsburgh Courier, the Amsterdam News, and the Westchester (N.Y.) Observer because they contained Mr. Muhammad’s message, often surrounded on the same page by advertisements for Muslim-owned businesses that supported Mr. Muhammad’s work. In the Courier and the Crusader the column was called “Mr. Muhammad Speaks.” In the Amsterdam News it was entitled "The Islam World," and the Observer printed the teachings of Mr. Muhammad in a series called: "White Man’s Heaven is Black Man’s Hell." It was this distribution network which enabled the Courier to rival the Defender and grow to have the largest Black newspaper circulation of its time—350,000 copies per week in 1957—according to Dr. Clint Wilson II, professor of Journalism and Chair of the Department Journalism at Howard University, and author of "A History of the Black Press," the most recent and most definitive study of Black newspapers. "The Courier was nationally distributed," Dr. Wilson told The Final Call, thanks to the Nation of Islam. "One of the few ways that could be done effectively would be with a group like the Nation involved. The Defender," he pointed out, "was distributed nationally with the help of Pullman Car Porters who were responsible for a lot of that distribution." The role of Black porters in the distribution of the Defender is well documented in scholarly research on the Black Press, Dr. Wilson pointed out, but the role of the Nation of Islam in making the Courier as well as the Crusader nationally known newspapers, is still largely an untold story.

It's clear to me that going back to 1957 is a bad idea.  It is clear to me that the wagon charter is a good idea.  What happens when you put a bad idea together with a good one?

They move out though as soon as they have kids.

How do we know?

What we do know is that people move out to avoid bad schools and to find a lower ambient crime rate.

We also know that such people, when they stay, tend to create better schools and to influence the crime rate lower.   I'm not sure we have sufficient experience to say that the positive spiral cannot progress that far before those kids come along.  I see plenty of reasons to be hopeful, and I would use PT's basic concept: a highly desirable place to live.  However, I see "highly desirable" as having more to do with the community than with the view.  Most of these neighborhoods are close to city centers,  which aren't necessarily as vibrant as they were 50 years ago, but remain