The only way to undo specific exclusion based on a quality is to practice specific inclusion based on that same quality.

Even if we buy the premise that we should be undoing something, we still end up relying on some force to cause that inclusion to occur, and to select its target.

The devil is in that "some force". That some force is the force of public opinion. The same force which drove Jim Crow. It's like poison gas. One predicts public opinion rather like predicting the direction of the wind: with the certainty that it will change over time.

That's why we need long lived principles. Principles which define us as Americans. One of those principles could be racial equality, but such a definition is opposed by the damndest coaltion one could imagine. People who share one bit of analysis: a hope that public opinion will favor their preferred result, inequality. If not now, then after the passage of time.

I suggest the principled path. The government must become absolutely color blind. "Neither the US government, nor any state, nor any local government entitiy, nor any government official, committee, or function, shall effect any law or decision or policy which grants privilege, or creates restriction based on the skin color of any individual citizen."

You're talking about principle, yet the way you'd apply the principle is like letting a thief keep his swag because it's inconvenient to give it backj to its owner.

Which, of course, is the case.

dw, if you can come up with a different way of correcting the imbalance caused by racism, I'd live to hear it. And if you can't think of another way yet don't want to take this one, what does that say?

P6, the *way* you're positing has a nice verbal logical appeal, which begs the question why you feel the need to camoflage it rhetorically?

Errata aside, what I'd really, really like to know is precisely what bargaining chips you propose black folk bring to bear in order to persuade white folk to suffer the inconvenience of correcting an imbalance in their favor?

Even if a few were persuaded on the strength of the verbal logic, it seems to me that the malignant egophrenia afflicting the many will pose an insurmountable barrier to any such shift in the climate of American consciousness.

Errata aside, what I'd really, really like to know is precisely what bargaining chips you propose black folk bring to bear in order to persuade white folk to suffer the inconvenience of correcting an imbalance in their favor?

I'm not expecting anything to convince them. I provide this sort of illustration in the smae spirit that I recommend The 48 Laws of Power...so folks know what they're dealing with.

dw, if you can come up with a different way of correcting the imbalance caused by racism, I'd live to hear it. And if you can't think of another way yet don't want to take this one, what does that say?

It says, if you want equality, I'll join with you. Real equality. We can build a strong position. Not just you and me, but also people who think like you and me. I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of local posters would take that, if they knew it was real.

If you think it takes inequality, you're on thin ice. It might hold. It might not. Count me out.

And if you can't think of another way yet don't want to take this one, what does that say?

It says, if you want equality, I'll join with you.

So if I turn left when I should have turned right and I want to keep going left anyway, you're willing to join me?

When the left turn cannot possibly get us to our destination?

Answer the first question: Is there way to undo specific exclusion based on any quality other than specific inclusion basedon that same quality?

Answer the first question: Is there way to undo specific exclusion based on any quality other than specific inclusion basedon that same quality?

I'm not being evasive, P6. I'm saying that the premise that we need to undo something has not been established, and I'm saying that the remedy you propose is perilous, and at best could work in the anticipated way for only a limited amount of time, after which it would work differently in unpredictable and inevitably undesirable ways.

Is your reluctance to bet on pure equality based on skepticism that such could actually happen, or is it deeper than that? That you really feel random black people are owed something by random white people, in the sense a thief owes the stuff back?

Here's my rephrasing of the question:

Is the best way to maximize the likelihood that blacks will overcome contemporary racism to penalize random whites?

I'm saying that the premise that we need to undo something has not been established,

I thought righting wrongs would be the self-evident justification. But righting wrongs isn't a necessity when you have the long end of the stick.

I'm saying that the remedy you propose is perilous

I'm saying there's nothing else that will work.

at best could work in the anticipated way for only a limited amount of time, after which it would work differently in unpredictable and inevitably undesirable ways.

So? That's the way EVERY law or rule works. This is why you have to "keep your eyes on the prize."

That you really feel random black people are owed something by random white people, in the sense a thief owes the stuff back?

It's nothing personal. No one targeted specific Black folks to support the subsidization of white folks but specific Black folks were hurt.

I feel Black people collectively are owed the same subsidization white folks collectively got. And no one will target specific white folks to support that subsidization. Same support, same reasons, same conditions.

Now, are YOU ready to support true equality of treatment?

I thought righting wrongs would be the self-evident justification. But righting wrongs isn't a necessity when you have the long end of the stick.

"righting a wrong" is ambiguous. We'll both say it, but mean different things. Just thinking of Orwell here.

The two meanings diverge as to how they accommodate history. By your meaning, a historic wrong demands a future righting. By my meaning, a historic wrong demands a present and future ceasing of such wrongness, and an informed defense against its return. Both qualify as "righting a wrong".

I'll agree with you P6, that some cases require payback. The thief must indeed return the stuff in order to right the wrong of the theft.

Other wrongs cannot be righted in such a way. I cannot avenge the (theoretical) murder of my great grandfather by murdering a living person, regardless of whether their great grandfather was involved in the original murder. There is simply no grounds for me to demand payback in any form, even if I can show that I would have benefitted if my great grandfather had lived a full life. In other cultures and times, there was. They're a long ways removed from modern America. To "right the wrong" says that we need to prevent current or future murders.

So we have two cases which demonstrate the extremes.

Now, are YOU ready to support true equality of treatment?

I was ready to do that my whole life.

"righting a wrong" is ambiguous. We'll both say it, but mean different things. Just thinking of Orwell here.

We will disagree on HOW to address it, but should not disagree there is a wrong to be addressed.

I cannot avenge the (theoretical) murder of my great grandfather by murdering a living person, regardless of whether their great grandfather was involved in the original murder.

What if it was your father?

I'm not talking about slavery, I'm talking about the exclusion from The Greatest Society, the reward the mainstream got for support and participating in World War II.

I'm talking a documentable injustice by the government that needs redress by the government. How do you correct the damage intentionally done?

By the way, you will never get me to deal with this as an issue of individual impact.

the reward the mainstream got for support and participating in World War II.

Interesting diversion here. Better not to get to hung up anyway.

The courage and effectiveness of black soldiers during WWII was the single most convincing experience presented to non-black America to end the blatent inequality which existed in 1940. The single most convincing. No one who analyzed this even slightly could come away still believing that Jim Crow had any basis in reality.

Many whites found this surprising. Maybe even most. It wasn't widely predicted.

So while in retrospect we can see where we should have been more advanced in 1940, the all out mobilization to fight WWII yielded great progress in the education of whites.

By the way, you will never get me to deal with this as an issue of individual impact.

Nor is that my goal, p6, although the nature of rhetoric can make it appear that way. We explore the space, and the vehicle of exploration is the argument. Sometimes we change, but more often we just understand the other perspectives, and our own, a little better.

No one who analyzed this even slightly could come away still believing that Jim Crow had any basis in reality.

Which means no one analyzed it. Even slightly.

So while in retrospect we can see where we should have been more advanced in 1940, the all out mobilization to fight WWII yielded great progress in the education of whites.

But it didn't change their behavior.

Right now I can't work up anything more clever than a simple recognition of history.

Which means no one analyzed it. Even slightly.

I don't think you're granting Harry S. Truman his due.

Truman's order to eliminate racial segregation in the US military, in 1948, was the beginning of the end of legally enforced segregation in America. Not only was it the first such step, it was, in context, huge. Wildly confrontational to the status quo.

And it directly followed, in the sense that it was compelled, by our national experience with black soldiers during WWII.

I grant Truman his due but no more than that. He saw the miltary would benefit and being a command culture could do it by fiat.

However much it benefitted the military, it did little to nothing for Black people. Because the rules of military and civilian societies are so different it didn't even set an example. Redlining was federally mandated until at least the late 60s.

So I'm curious, P6. What do you believe motivated the changes 1950-1970? How did that happen? Why didn't it happen 1870-1910? If you've written on this topic before and archived your thougts, I'd be pleased to look at the archive.

I've attributed the changes to two phenomena: the obvious humanity of black entertainers which resulted in both actual and cinematic black-white experience as equals, and the success of black soldiers during WWII, which, to intellectuals anyway, ended the myth of racial superiority.

It was like a slow leak over a sponge...once the area directly beneath the leak is saturated, the moisture spreads out from the middle toward the edges. Never quite makes it all the way, though, and the edges dry up first too.

So the only difference between 1890 and 1960 was that 70 years of slow progress had occurred?

Sometimes I'm badly informed, p6, and maybe I'm missing some crucial element of the analysis here. But what I conclude from my reading of history is that the 40 years 1870-1910 were basically static. Not much changed, either out in the open or collecting in some sponge. 1910-1935 things changed, but not always for the better. The KKK achieved significant political power. But directed (aimed?) improvement started in the mid '30s, and accelerated after WWII. In 30 years, 1935-1965, we had fundamentally changed the legal nature of race in America.

It doesn't look much like a slow drip.

So the only difference between 1890 and 1960 was that 70 years of slow progress had occurred?

Yes, and not even the type of progress you infer. It was material progress.

There's a cycle in the national attitude toward Black folks...when the mainstream feels flush enough it starts sharing and when things get tight it stops sharing. Sometimes it even takes stuff back. And Black folks remain the outsiders here so we're the first to have our stuff repossesed.

What that looks like at any given moment depends on the material the pattern manifests in. But the pattern is unchanged.

Black folks are dealt with as implements...a means to attain some goal that has nothing to do with our state of affairs. This, too, is unchanged.

There's a cycle in the national attitude toward Black folks...when the mainstream feels flush enough it starts sharing and when things get tight it stops sharing.

How do you explain Porgy & Bess? 1934. About as un-flush as America was, ever.

when the mainstream feels flush enough it starts sharing and when things get tight it stops sharing.

Then we're absolutely SOL because with the dollar devaluation and more generalized thermodynamic contraction headed our way due to Peak Oil and Natural Gas - slavery is going to start looking mighty tempting to the mainstream again - beginning with those already locked up in the prison industrial and extending to the debtors prisons that are only a stones throw away.

In the book 'War Cycles, Peace Cycles' Richard Kelly Hoskins puts forth an interesting interpretation of history. According to Hoskins it appears that 'usary' societies from the beginnings of the eariliest banking cartels have followed a repeating format whose recurrence he sees clearly delineated in U.S. Immigration and demographic policies.

To much of the mainstream, the swelling tide of illegal aliens is seen as an intrusion that should be stopped. Most in the mainstream don't understand why the government allows this and appears to condone it. Most citizens see this migration into America as a negative when in fact it is most likely one of a handful of things keeping the economy treading water. In 2001 there were 8.5 million known illegal aliens in the USA. As of this writing the count exceeds 20 million. Why?

To the bankers and lending facilities in the US and abroad these illegal aliens are simply new debters or people with a clean slate to work from. The bankers want to finance these people's homes, their cars, and their lives and put "new money" into existence to pay taxes to pay for the war and to keep the status quo. When the society at large or the natives, become too overburdened with debt this happens and has happened throughout history.

What we are seeing happen right now before our eyes in the USA has happened before......,

Anyway, the banker's eye view of reality offers an interesting alternative pov. I was going to ask you earlier P6 whether federal regulations actually called for redlining, or whether there was no federal enforcement of regulations prohibiting redlining? Much like in agriculture where county extension offices were the actual hubs of racist predation on black farmers, and the USDA turned a blind eye toward these systemic abuses?

How do you explain Porgy & Bess? 1934. About as un-flush as America was, ever.

What is there to explain?

Anyway, the banker's eye view of reality offers an interesting alternative pov. I was going to ask you earlier P6 whether federal regulations actually called for redlining, or whether there was no federal enforcement of regulations prohibiting redlining?

http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-03-02.htm

But it was another racialized New Deal program, the Federal Housing Administration, that helped generate much of the wealth that so many white families enjoy today. These revolutionary programs made it possible for millions of average white Americans - but not others - to own a home for the first time. The government set up a national neighborhood appraisal system, explicitly tying mortgage eligibility to race. Integrated communities were ipso facto deemed a financial risk and made ineligible for home loans, a policy known today as "redlining." Between 1934 and 1962, the federal government backed $120 billion of home loans. More than 98% went to whites. Of the 350,000 new homes built with federal support in northern California between 1946 and 1960, fewer than 100 went to African Americans.

These government programs made possible the new segregated white suburbs that sprang up around the country after World War II. Government subsidies for municipal services helped develop and enhance these suburbs further, in turn fueling commercial investments. Freeways tied the new suburbs to central business districts, but they often cut through and destroyed the vitality of non-white neighborhoods in the central city.

Today, Black and Latino mortgage applicants are still 60% more likely than whites to be turned down for a loan, even after controlling for employment, financial, and neighborhood factors. According to the Census, whites are more likely to be segregated than any other group. As recently as 1993, 86% of suburban whites still lived in neighborhoods with a black population of less than 1%.

Porgy & Bess, for all of its anachronisms, was early on and powerful in its significance regarding the "national attitude toward Black folks" (to use your phrase). It was humanizing. Imperfectly, maybe oddly, but deliberately humanizing. That's what made it revolutionary.

In the depths of the depression came this important milestone. The sort of thing which wouldn't seem likely to occur if white attitudes toward blacks are primarily determined by wealth.

As recently as 1993, 86% of suburban whites still lived in neighborhoods with a black population of less than 1%.

As fuel prices rise in perpetuity, the costs associated with being one of those suburban *refugees* are going to be astronomical. Assuming that black folk in the cores adjacent to rail and other long underused supply and transportation infrastructure organize and maintain, we'll be sitting on some sharply appreciating value. (I'm thinking very squarely here now of K.C. as the 2nd largest rail hub in the U.S. and the housing and access demographics in Kansas City Kansas and Kansas City Missouri.)

Thank you very much for the insight into how the FHA gerrymandered the system to do damage. Most illuminating. I'm none too confident about the government doing anything to rectify its past misdeeds, but I firmly believe that urban core activism, organization, and focus can be parlayed into future value - if we begin in earnest soon.

Porgy & Bess, for all of its anachronisms, was early on and powerful in its significance regarding the "national attitude toward Black folks" (to use your phrase). It was humanizing. Imperfectly, maybe oddly, but deliberately humanizing. That's what made it revolutionary.

In the depths of the depression came this important milestone.

And Madame Butterfly was a turning point in our attitudes toward the Japanese, I suppose.

Obviously you're just exploring the mental space again.

I'm none too confident about the government doing anything to rectify its past misdeeds,

Neither do I.

People mistake much of what I say to mean I want or expect change from the mainstream, that I expect them to try to prove me wrong by deeds instead of just argumentation.

Nope.

I expect absolute denial in the face of incontrovertable evidence and new reasons to do the same old stuff. Only this time I expect enough of us to recognize it that we know we're not crazy.

And Madame Butterfly was a turning point in our attitudes toward the Japanese, I suppose.

No, but it's been rehabilitated over 100 years to the point where it now seeks to achieve some of the goals which motivated the original creation of Porgy & Bess.

I still have no idea p6 what you think occurred which resulted in important changes. You've offered a vague analogy, the sponge. You offered a whim about wealth, but decline to discuss real gains made during the great depression.

I still have no idea p6 what you think occurred which resulted in important changes.

I still have no idea if you'll join me when I turn left, even though there's no way to reach the stated destination by doing so.

decline to discuss real gains made during the great depression.

You'd have to tell me what they were. And why they were lost.

As for a vague analogy:

There's a cycle in the national attitude toward Black folks...when the mainstream feels flush enough it starts sharing and when things get tight it stops sharing. Sometimes it even takes stuff back. And Black folks remain the outsiders here so we're the first to have our stuff repossesed.

This explains both the "advances" and the regressions.

Black folks are dealt with as implements...a means to attain some goal that has nothing to do with our state of affairs.

And this is what must change before I say there's any change at all. This is the problem. Everything else is sea foam.

DW,

I'm sorry but "Porgy and Bess" was not universally well received when it was first introduced to the public. By the way, the January 10, 2005 issue of the New Yorker magazine contains a fascinating account of George Gershwin, his musical influences and legacy, and the creation of "Porgy and Bess" by Claudia Roth Pierpoint.

Porgy and Bess is SO beside the point...

Folks have always been willing to be entertained by negroes.

The quote that P6 cites above was written by Larry Adelman, who is the co-director of California Newsreel and was the executive producer of "RACE - The Power of an Illusion". Larry is an eminently decent human being who also happens to be one of my oldest and closest friends.

If anyone is interested in doing more reading about the intentional and far, far, from benign racialization of the nation's housing programs please see Prof. Arnold R. Hirsch's exhaustive monograph entitled "Searching for a 'Sound Negro Policy': A Racial Agenda for the Housing Acts of 1949 and 1954." Prof. Hirsch's paper was initially published in 2000 in the Fannie Mae Foundation's journal Housing Policy Debate, which is where I first read it. The paper, which is available in .pdf format, can be downloaded at this address:
http://www.fanniemaefoundation.org/programs/hpd/v11i2-index.shtml

One of the reactions I had to this paper was that it reinforced my already strongly pronounced opinion that the shaping of the nation's housing policy represented one more example of the vast expropriation of the assets of black Americans that has been an integral part of the development of white controlled and owned wealth in the United States. The tax dollars that black people paid into the national, state and local treasuries of government were seldom, if ever expended for the benefit of blacks or the communities in which they resided. In fact, blacks were specifically excluded by law, practice and custom from receiving these benefits although they paid taxes, fees and other forms of revenue to various government entities for generation after generation.

This is one of the reasons why public policy arguments based on a view that the most onerous effects of racism are receding into the past make little, if any, sense to me. If the effects of racist governmental policies can still be seen in the present then how can one sensibly argue that their most detrimental effects occurred in an allegedly rapidly receding past. While it may be true that the overt explicitness of these policies has been lessened it does not follow that their effect has had no influence on the future. To argue that nothing can be done to ameliorate the effect of thses policies on Native Americans and Black Americans is to argue, in effect, that these two groups will be at a permanent disadvantage with regard to whites in this country. While this may be true I wish that it were accompanied with a little less appeal to such abstract noble principles as justice or creating a color blind society.

But, PTC, don't you know us darkies are always fooled by appeals to principle, even if they are arguing for the complete oppisite in practice? Of course, that's sarcasm, but I really dislike those arguments because they seem to assume that we can't see through completely transparent 'arguments'. Maybe it's a cultural difference or something, but to me that sort of thing has the offensiveness of someone lying to your face.

Also, I do remember reading that blacks are the main victims of subprime lenders, and that there are still problems in the area of banking services.

How do you explain Porgy & Bess? 1934. About as un-flush as America was, ever.

I just noticed the text I quoted started its report of racialized mortgage policies with 1934...

Integrated communities were ipso facto deemed a financial risk and made ineligible for home loans, a policy known today as "redlining." Between 1934 and 1962, the federal government backed $120 billion of home loans. More than 98% went to whites. Of the 350,000 new homes built with federal support in northern California between 1946 and 1960, fewer than 100 went to African Americans.

Shannon wrote: "Also, I do remember reading that blacks are the main victims of subprime lenders, and that there are still problems in the area of banking services."

My views of subprime lenders is somewhat different from those generally held in liberal and progressive circles. I see older black homeowners as the most heavily targeted consumers of subprime loans primarily because of the abysmal educational system that most blacks over the age of 50 have gone through. In addition, black churches and other mythological institutional pillars of the black community have done little or nothing to provide economic education information as part of their ministerial outreach effort. The result is that blacks, by and large, are seen as a fertile field for exploitation by subprime lenders.

I remember having an ongoing argument with some "housing activists" (I used quotation marks because almost none of them actually produced any housing) members of the white uplift circle who wanted my agency to pay for them to conduct a study in central Pennsylvania about the alleged problems of subprime lending. My position was that we didn't need to conduct any studies. What we needed to do was to take the same pot of money and conduct a public education campaign warning people in general and in specific minority communities about the dangers of subprime lending. Since I was dealing with liberal Democrats, many of whom who are amazed that there are black people who can actually walk and chew gum at the same time, my counter-proposal and refusal to carry water for them got me labeled as being "uncooperative". Since I was a political appointee too in a Republican gubernatorial administration my resistance to what I saw as a waste of money (It wasn't, however, taxpayers' money. The agency I worked at did not receive any government funds.) was viewed as part of the Republican agenda, although I am quite certain that the governor and his own policy people didn't have a clue about this issue.

Just keep in mind that in the United States today given even the imperatives of the current presidential administration and their free market fanaticism that no subprime lender can force a black American to sign a contract with them. Yes, the activities of subprime lenders should be resisted but the devil can't shake your hand if you keep it in your pocket.

I'm sorry but "Porgy and Bess" was not universally well received when it was first introduced to the public.

Of course not. Provocative art never is.

But it came alive, and started affecting people, both directly and indirectly.

By the way, the January 10, 2005 issue of the New Yorker magazine contains a fascinating account of George Gershwin, his musical influences and legacy, and the creation of "Porgy and Bess" by Claudia Roth Pierpoint.

Thanks, PT. I look forward to reading it.

I see older black homeowners as the most heavily targeted consumers of subprime loans primarily because of the abysmal educational system that most blacks over the age of 50 have gone through.

True, which is why this

In addition, black churches and other mythological institutional pillars of the black community have done little or nothing to provide economic education information as part of their ministerial outreach effort.

is a little unfair.

Folks have always been willing to be entertained by negroes.

Yes indeed.

But you're dismissing what was different about Porgy & Bess.

For the first time, white Americans were presented with love between black people as the main story line. For the first time. It's hard to say, but here's the point: the reality of that time was that this was the first time that many whites had ever been presented with the concept of black love.

Gershwin & Heyward understood that deficiency, and quite deliberately confronted it.

Contrast, in all seriousness p6, with the story line involving a white guy fooling around with oriental girls, human as they may be.

Well, some critics, according to Roth, saw it as provocative because, according to them, Gershwin and his collaborators presumed to speak for Negroes when these same Negroes, they wrote, could very well speak for themselves. Other critics, like the composer Virgil Thomson, disliked the music. Harold Cruse, for example, writing more than 20 years after the opera's initial debut disliked both the dramatization and the music. As I vaguely recall, Cruse wrote something to the effect that Gershwin's music was a pastiche of warmed over Debussy etc. Jazz musicians, on the other hand, embraced the opera's music and have held it fast down to the present day.

I have never seen Otto Preminger's filmed version of "Porgy and Bess" but my parents did and they purchased the LP of the sound track, which my sister and I loved to play. My father, a welder by trade, loved the music but thought the story was crap. BTW, the singer Bobby McFerrin's late father, Robert McFerrin, who died in the last two years, sang the part of Porgy but was not given a credit on the album.

Well, of course, I am being unfair. If I was being fair then I would say nothing at all about the failure of these institutions to minister to the earthly needs of their people. I have a blind spot on this issue and I plead guilty but I will keep saying the same thing.

But you're dismissing what was different about Porgy & Bess.

That difference made no difference.

You're talking about a different problem than I.

Well, of course, I am being unfair

Just being clear.

There's certainly enough ministers skilled at securing their own livelihoods...

True, but that sometimes is the least of the problems. If a lot of them were more skilled at securing their own livelihoods they would be less inclined or have less of a tendency to lead their flocks astray.

Well, some critics, according to Roth, saw it as provocative because, according to them, Gershwin and his collaborators presumed to speak for Negroes when these same Negroes, they wrote, could very well speak for themselves.

I really liked your summary PT, which describes the range of reaction very well.

To this particular point: the question isn't whether said Negroes could have spoken for themselves. The question is whether anyone would have listened. Not only did Gershwin have the talent to produce music which has maintained a presence in contemporary American culture for 70 years and counting (contrast to Debussy), he had access to funding, and mastery of the process of getting such stories in front of an audience. He had a podium and a demographically correct audience.

The fact that today black people also have podiums and audiences required that milepost to be passed. Would it have happened without Gershwin? Certainly. Would it have happened as soon? Not.

You're talking about a different problem than I.

Not deliberately.

I've come to understand, although the explanations have been oblique, that your understanding of 20th century progress in racial relations is profoundly different than mine.

I offer mine so you can rebut it, or offer a competing proposal, but simple dismissal doesn't do either one of those.

I offer mine so you can rebut it, or offer a competing proposal, but simple dismissal doesn't do either one of those.

True enough.

But sometimes that's all you get. This thread started with a mathematical-level certainty. YOu asked my opinion, I gave it and you've given me nothing to change my mind…certainly, given the subsequent lynchings, theft by sharecropping, exclusion from unions, property ownership and simple protection of the law, asserting the public's reaction to Porgy and Bess as some kind of social breakthrough is difficult for me to take seriously because is did nothing to resolve Black folks's race problems.

And Black folks' race problem on the legal and cultural level, is that we are seen as a tool to accomplish some end for someone else's benefit. Which was plainly stated.

I'm slightly confused here and I admit that I may have missed some of the points you and P6 are exchanging. I don't for a moment think that George Gershwin (and his brother Ira or the Haywards) ever thought that they were speaking for the American Negro people. Gershwin would have never, never presumed to do such a thing and the Haywards, I suspect, would have simply refused to lend their names to any such event.

The fact is, however, is that the American people were already listening to the music of the American Negro people whether they knew it or not or acknowledged that fact. Any truly knowledgeable jazz affcianado of that period certainly knew, for example, that Paul Whiteman was not the "King of Jazz" including members of Whiteman's band like the influential trumpeter Bix Beiderbecke and, probably, Whiteman himself.

As near as I can determine you are arguing some sort of case for antecedent causes but I am not following or understanding what it is that you think is the efficient or sufficient cause of the event. Are you saying that without Gershwin there would be no black operas? Or are you saying that without Gershwin there would have been no popular acceptance of jazz? If it is the first question then we would have to presume that there were no black operas written prior to "Porgy and Bess", which is certainly not true. Scott Joplin, for example, wrote a ragtime opera with black characters. This can't be your point right?

The second question is much more difficult to assess. Gershwin's music has an honored place in the American canon because it is that good and he received the financial backing to stage "Porgy and Bess" because he had been quite successful on Broadway. In other words, he made money so money followed him. It is difficult to gauge what flowed to black Americans as a result of the production of his opera. Nearly twenty years went by before Marian Anderson sang at the New York Metropolitan Opera House. This has nothing to do, however, with Gershwin's influence as a composer and songwriter. How could anyone who loves jazz and American popular music not like "Liza" or "Maybe"? George Gershwin attained popularity before Charlie Parker but you're not arguing, I hope, that if there had been no Gershwin there would have been no Parker. I doubt if Gershwin himself, had he been alive during Parker's rise, would have ever thought such a thing.

I don't for a moment think that George Gershwin (and his brother Ira or the Haywards) ever thought that they were speaking for the American Negro people. Gershwin would have never, never presumed to do such a thing and the Haywards, I suspect, would have simply refused to lend their names to any such event.

Maybe I'm confused about the objection Roth described. I took it to be "the story said some important things, but it would have been better if they would have been said by a black man".

Are you saying that without Gershwin there would be no black operas? Or are you saying that without Gershwin there would have been no popular acceptance of jazz?

Neither.

I observe that before Porgy & Bess, no importantly large white audience was presented with black love as the underlying theme of a theatrical production.

I'm tempted to claim, but I hold back, that Porgy & Bess was the first serious attempt to portray blacks as equally human. I hold back not because I doubt that Porgy & Bess had such a goal, but because I may be overlooking something previous. Scott Joplin and a variety of blacks have entertained white audiences during all of American history, but it was always a class-based entertainment. You're the entertainer, we've hired you to entertain us, and not to get emotionally involved with us as a fellow human.

Can you describe a prior important presentation which the story was designed to involve a white audience in black emotion?

It is difficult to gauge what flowed to black Americans as a result of the production of his opera.

It's difficult to provide hard evidence (as p6 contends). But we observe that other black productions quickly followed during the '40s, productions which expanded on the message of Porgy & Bess. Productions which gained increasingly large white audiences. My observation is that for many whites, these productions were their introductions to blacks as real people. It affected them.

given the subsequent lynchings, theft by sharecropping, exclusion from unions, property ownership and simple protection of the law, asserting the public's reaction to Porgy and Bess as some kind of social breakthrough is difficult for me to take seriously because is did nothing to resolve Black folks's race problems.

Do you disagree that we had to pass though such social breakthroughs in order to get more direct issues addressed?

I'm not sure that I agree about the positive effects on white folks. I once read, for example, that the all black film "Stormy Weather" was previewed in a Santa Monica theatre where the following evening Howard Hughes's movie "The Outlaw" was also scheduled to be previewed. The story is that Howard Hughes was so freaked out by the prospect of sitting in a movie house that only the night before had been entirely occupied by Negroes that he had the preview cancelled and moved to another theatre. I'm sure that you won't see Leonardo DiCaprio reenacting this scene in "The Aviator."

I am not sure what you mean by productions that expanded the message of "Porgy and Bess"? Please elaborate.

Do you disagree that we had to pass though such social breakthroughs in order to get more direct issues addressed?

If you'll agree we didn't have to have the direct issues to begin with.

I'm not sure that I agree about the positive effects on white folks. I once read, for example, that the all black film "Stormy Weather" was previewed at a theatre in Santa Monica where the following evening Howard Hughes's movie "The Outlaw" was also scheduled to be previewed the following night. The story is that Howard Hughes was so freaked out by the prospect of sitting in a movie house that only the night before had been entirely occupied by Negroes that he had the preview cancelled and moved to another theatre.

Sure. I don't know much about Howard Hughes, but I have no problem agreeing that the message was rejected by a whole lot of people who did actually hear it. Those who heard about it and freaked out aren't who mattered. Most of those who rejected it changed their minds later.

We had to progress from where we were.

I am not sure what you mean by productions that expanded the message of "Porgy and Bess"? Please elaborate.

I personally was affected by Lena Horne's performance in Stormy Weather. Does that count? There came more all-black productions, all flawed by modern standards, but intending and somewhat succeeding in presenting blacks as people just like whites, and racism as immoral.

"There came more all-black productions, all flawed by modern standards, but intending and somewhat succeeding in presenting blacks as people just like whites, and racism as immoral."

You do agree, don't you, that black people should not have had to go through all of that in the first place? Yes, there were some very touching films that I recall seeing as a child that dealt with racism. There were several that stand out in memory. Sidney Poitier played an emergency room intern in one in which he had to treat an extremely racist and belligerant character played by, I believe, Richard Widmark. Another one had the wonderful actor James Edwards (I wonder whatever happened to him) who played, if memory serves me correct, a veteran who had been so scarred by racism that he had become comatose. Then there was the "Defiant Ones" and "To Kill A Mockingbird" and a remake of that dreadful melodrama "Imitation of Life" and a British movie about a murdered young woman who was discovered to be passing for white. (By the way, I always thought that Rod Serling's "Twilight Zone" did a few interesting shows about racism. He in fact did one episode with a nearly all black cast in which racism was not an issue. It was about an ex-prizefighter named Boley.)

If you'll agree we didn't have to have the direct issues to begin with.

Starting from when? 1935? 1864? 1700? 5000BC?

In 5000 BC, most aspects of human existence were downright uncivilized. Did they have to be uncivilized?

You do agree, don't you, that black people should not have had to go through all of that in the first place?

I'm coming to understand that p6 and I understand this question differently, which is why we see history differently.

I can deplore inhumanity, and agree that "no one should ever suffer inhumanity". I agree that earlier civilization would have been better.

What I don't see however is an immediate path between where we were on any given year and the place we were 50 years later. Seeing such a path, one could be expected to agree we should have taken the path. Not seeing any alternative, it's hard to agree that the path we did take was totally wrong. It did, after all, yield progress which was unprecedented in human experience.

Thanks for the summary, PT. I watch The Twilight Zone from time to time even now. I'll look to catch the eposodes you describe.

If you'll agree we didn't have to have the direct issues to begin with.

Starting from when? 1935? 1864? 1700? 5000BC?

Starting 1619.

What I don't see however is an immediate path between where we were on any given year and the place we were 50 years later.

Did you ever see a serious effort made?

I can give individuals some credit, but individual reactions aren't my issue. See, if I have to give out credit I have to give out blame as well…and you know there's a hell of a lot more blame to hand out than credit.

Starting 1619.

Should civilization have been sufficiently advanced such that America would have rejected slavery from the beginning?

Of course.

But civilization was not that advanced.

So let's start there. 1619. A Dutch guy has sold 20 Africans to the Jamestown colony. Possibly one or two individuals protested, possibly not. Most whites, maybe all whites, welcome what looks to be an improved chance for the future. To them, the Africans are obviously different than regular humans. That's reality, that's our starting point.

What should change, and what will motivate that change?

So let's start there. 1619. A Dutch guy has sold 20 Africans to the Jamestown colony. Possibly one or two individuals protested, possibly not. Most whites, maybe all whites, welcome what looks to be an improved chance for the future. To them, the Africans are obviously different than regular humans. That's reality, that's our starting point.

That's not the reality.

The first Africans that were brought in were dealt with as indentured servants, with the same fixed term of servitude. There were intermarriages, African and European servants ran off together...there was no such thing as race.

Race was consciously created, laws carefully structured to support importing and enslaving a nation. Religion called up to justify it, and religious doctrine changed to allow it.

They knew they were dealing with the same type of humans that they were. And they were civilized enough to create slavery from whole cloth.

"Should civilization have been sufficiently advanced such that America would have rejected slavery from the beginning?

But civilization was not that advanced."

Europeans have a rather uniquely harsh history of inter and intra-tribal brutality. But they VERY obviously had a sufficiently widespread, pervasive, and long-standing acquaintence with Africans, including sub-saharan Africans, that the argument that African humans "were different" is absurd on the face of it.

Haven't you ever seen or heard of Maurice dancing? Ever heard of or seen veneration of black Madonna's? Know that St. Augustine was an African heretic, and on, and on, and on.....?

Let us insofar be honest with ourselves DW.

That superficial differences were exacerbated to the point of induced madness and denial of the historically known humanity of African others pursuant to their commercial exploitation - is a truly unique and unparalleled stain on the collective psyche of America.

Americans entered into a Faustian bargain of degraded consciousness in order to perpetrate exploitation of blacks. That same Faustian bargain of degraded consciousness continues unabated as an updated and forward looking variant of it has been accepted by 51% of the white American voting public in order to rationalize the middle eastern war of resource appropriation, er..., I mean *liberation*.

What I'm curious to see is how many black folk in America will participate in this Faustian arrangement and buy into the madness required to deny the humanity of Arabs and Muslims sitting on top of oil that *we* want to control...,

So it turns out we can't start at one year ignoring everything which came before that. We at least have to establish the attitudes of the people of the day.

Slavery has existed throughout all of human history. It was a common result of losing a war. Better than massacre. Both results are described in Biblical stories, and the Bible has suggestions on being a fair and Godly slave master.

In 1619, there already existed thousands of slaves in America. Native Americans. The losers of the war. They were purely slaves.

Slavery was normal for the time.

It was normal in Africa.

What was new, and thus abnormal was the slave trade, the combination of capitalism and slavery, where individual ship captains could buy a slave in Africa and profitably sell said slave somewhere else. Historic slavery tended to be short lived, and the notion of breeding slaves to get more slaves seems to have not occurred before. The slave trade was seen by some Europeans as uncivilized, but a combination of perceived need and simple lack of information kept any organized opposition from appearing during the early days.

Legally, the colonies were governed by a governor, who basically had unlimited power. The governor served at the pleasure of the King of England of course, but on the ground, they pretty much could do as they saw fit to allow such things as slavery or not. Decisions were different in different places, and as p6 notes, the legal status of slaves was widely inconsistent into the mid 1700s, after which it became very clear, and racially defined.

That's the historically documented stuff.

The "racial mood" of Europeans, and the English in particular is less documented (or even documentable). However, we don't have to look very far to find evidence that the English considered themselves to be the elite culture of the world. I think the "God's gift to non-whites" stuff came a bit later, during the 19th century. Europeans in general were on a roll. They were conquering/colonizing all over the world. Clearly the military equation favored Europe, and white people in 1619, as it had for a few hundred years previously.

So can I "prove" that Jamestown colonists observed a huge human gulf between themselves and African slaves? No. But I think the surrounding context strongly supports that conclusion.

That superficial differences were exacerbated to the point of induced madness and denial of the historically known humanity of African others pursuant to their commercial exploitation - is a truly unique and unparalleled stain on the collective psyche of America.

Good to see you back cnulan.

It's clearly a source of national shame. We might focus on a single American creation, the chattel (merchandise) status of children of slaves. These laws underlied slave capitalism in America for 100 years. The inhumanity of forcefully separating families by selling them piecemeal is beyond comprehension, and near as I can tell, unprecendented in world history.

And yet it happened. But not forever.

Can we more or less agree so far?

So can I "prove" that Jamestown colonists observed a huge human gulf between themselves and African slaves? No.

They had not been trained to denigrate the Africans yet. And their leaders didn't really care one way or the other who was enslaved.

But they did see Africans as human...no one ever went through all this to establish the legality of owning a horse.

This effort unfolded, roughly, in four stages. The first stage, linked, in part, with the Massachusetts precedent, was the extension of the term of black servants from a specified number of years to life. Following Massachusetts on this point were Connecticut in 1650, Virginia in 1661, Maryland in 1663, New York and New Jersey in 1664, South Carolina in 1682, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island in 1700, North Carolina in 1715, and Georgia in 1755.

The second and more momentous stage, a stage that marked the institutional divergence of servitude and slavery, was the introduction of the principle of heredity. Virginia pioneered in this development, declaring in December, 1662: "Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children got by any Englishman upon a negro woman shall be slave or ffree, Re it therefore enacted and declared by this present grand Assembly, that all children borne in this country shall be held, bond or free only according to the condition of the mother."

This raised more questions and doubts than it answered. For what precisely was a Negro? And what was the child of a Negro man and a white woman? And what in the world was a white person? Was it a matter of blood or culture or Christianity?

The third phase of the process-defining slavery and providing a rationale for the system-was involved almost entirely with a farcical quest for answers to these questions. The first question requiring attention was the question of religion, for religion and not race was the first rationale for slavery. This caused no end of problems for Colonial masters, for it was an axiom of their faith that freedom in Jesus Christ was real. More to the point: the whole colonization crusade of the colonists was based on the idea of carrying the word to the "heathens." How then could they deny freedom to a "heathen" who had seen the light? The answer, as usual, was both practical and profitable. "Baptism," to quote Ballagh again, "thus involved a dilemma. If conferred it sealed the pious end of slavery but freed the Christian slave. On the contrary, if enfranchisement was a possible result, Christianization was certain to be retarded or completely stopped. The wisdom and the conscience of colonial assemblies were equal to the emergency. They held both to their justification and to their slaves. The Virginia Assembly in a law of 1667 presents but a typical example of general colonial action. It settled the question by the naive declaration, worthy of the metaphysician that rightly separates the spiritual person from bodily form, 'Baptisme doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or freedom; in order that diverse masters freed from this doubt may more carefully endeavor the propagation of Christianity.'"

That settled that, but it did not settle the legal question of who could be enslaved. And in 1670 the Virginia legislature spoke again on the subject, saying: "All servants not being Christians imported into this country by shipping shalbe slaves for life." Whether by design or accident, this law excepted blacks who had been baptized in Africa, Europe, the West Indies, or other colonies. But this loophole was eliminated in the act of 1682 which declared that "…all servants except Turks and Moores …which shall be brought or imported into this country, either by sea or land, whether Negroes… Mullattoes or Indians, who and whose parentage and native country are not christian at the time of their first purchase of such servant by some christian, although afterwards, and before such their importation …they shall be converted to the christian faith… shall be judged, deemed and taken to be slaves…"In plain English, this meant that all Jews, Asians, and Africans (except Turks and Moors) were subject to slavery in Virginia. It meant also that Virginia was embarking on the process (completed in the eighteenth century) of basing slavery on race rather than religion. (The Virginia legislature finally said that a Negro was anyone with one Negro grandparent.)

In this manner Virginia (and America) crossed a great divide, a divide that requires some elaboration. For what was involved here was the idea of racism, which is not an individual idea or peculiarity but an institutionalized ideology that commits the institutions of a society to the destruction of a people because of race. The idea developed by the Virginians (and Americans) was simple and profitable. The idea was that all whites were biologically superior to all blacks, who were infidels and heathens, a dangerous and accursed people who embodied an evil principle that made them dangerous to the morals and the politics of the community. The truth or falsity of this idea disturbed few men then (or now). The only thing that mattered was that this idea or something like it was necessary to justify past, present, and future aggression against blacks.

DW wrote regarding slavery:

"It's clearly a source of national shame."

My brother, you must be kidding. Right? Folks in this country don't have any sense of national shame about enslaving African peoples. They don't even have any shame about the long night of Jim Crow that followed the abolishment of chattel slavery. How could they have any shame because if you listen to them none of them had anything to do with slavery or Jim Crow. If we didn't know any better we would start to suspect that all of this was really done by the Eskimos or aliens from outer space.

DW, we live in a country where a very large number of people are still taught in our public schools today that the Civil War was fought over the question of states' rights and self-determination, not the insane desire of slaveholders and their supporters to create a slaveholding empire stretching from the Canadian border to Central America and to hold our ancestors and their progeny in chattel slavery for perpetuity.

However, we don't have to look very far to find evidence that the English considered themselves to be the elite culture of the world. I think the "God's gift to non-whites" stuff came a bit later, during the 19th century. Europeans in general were on a roll. They were conquering/colonizing all over the world. Clearly the military equation favored Europe, and white people in 1619, as it had for a few hundred years previously.

The anglosphere still views itself in these terms. There are regional variations on the level of sophistication with which this attitude is instantiated. i.e., America was not as slow to change its PR as south africa, and both were waaaay slow compared with the UK, but in the end, the entire anglospheric hegemon views itself as overtly superior. What do you suppose our republican instrument of governence (not the GOP, but the elite structure of our political system) is up to with its prima facia absurd slogans about freedom, liberty, and democracy in the middle east at the end of a gun barrel? If one believed the hype we are all taught, one would be disinclined to understand that the War on Terror is simply Manifest Destiny in Century 21!!!

Here's what I agree with you on DW. Degraded consciousness of the humanity of others has been engineered into the fabric of the American psyche and culture. It is as American as mom and apple pie. It's always been there, it changes its focus from time to time as a matter of expediency, and it continues to thrive in full effect.

See, given the efficacy of altertumswissenschaft revisionism, (people don't know or feel history) the propagandist ruse of pseudo-darwinian superiority that has always been incompatible and irreconcilable with even the pseudo-Christian ethos practiced in America, is no longer necessary. Now, the system of governance is able to pursue its aims without having to overtly deny the humanity of others, at all. The anglospheric hegemon has achieved a level of sophistication enabling it to propagate its SLEEP-OBEY-CONSUME polity with such impunity that it has managed to co-opt the otherwise bright and articulate progeny of former chattel slaves into its hegemonic fold. (at least that's what I think I've been observing in the senate rituals for sanctioning Dr. Rice)

My brother, you must be kidding. Right? Folks in this country don't have any sense of national shame about enslaving African peoples. They don't even have any shame about the long night of Jim Crow that followed the abolishment of chattely slavery. How could they have any shame because if you listen to them none of them had anything to do with slavery or Jim Crow. If we didn't know any better we would start to suspect that all of this was really done by the Eskimos or aliens from outer space.

So-called alien abductions ARE subconscious upwellings rooted in the history of American chattel slavery. As for the civil war, I concluded that it had to do with control over the geographic placement of the transcontinental railroads and whose economies would be primary beneficiaries of the larcenous profits that would ensue, i.e., the new england textile establishment and its incumbent interests or the southern gentry and its incumbent interests including chattel slavery, the 18th and 19th century versions of *globalization*. Slavery, due to its economic importance was not a totally ancillary issue like so-called democratization or WMD, but freeing the slaves as a matter of principle was about as important then as bringing a halt to rwandan genocide a few years back was to current US national interests.

I've downloaded Mizrach's paper on "UFO Abductions and Race Fear" and have just begun reading it. Fascinating!

Freeing the slaves may not have been a principal factor in the North's reasons for opposing the breakup of the Union and the continuing spread of slavery into new territories but the end of chattel slavery was, I would argue, a predictible penalty or consequence that the slaveholding states would have to pay for having had the temerity to initiate a war against the Union. There are southern sympathizers who continue to argue today that slavery would have ended of its own consequence in a generation or two but I find this argument preposterous.

Of course this alien abductions riff goes deeper and twists in directions one might never have anticipated......, I'ma post it in the context in which it now most readily surfaces via a google search. Obviously this is not where it came from and not where I originally found it, however, the irony of this essay's current most searchable placement today is rich. Enjoy. (brief excerpt below)

For any human who has studied the history of race relations on Earth, this narrative may sound a little familiar. One learns as early as grade school a story about some white people who rode on marvelous ships over the ocean about 500 years ago and discovered that they were not the only intelligent beings in the world. The white people in the ships went to a number of places and found non-white people who they did not understand. Telling themselves these non-white beings were not human, the white people gave themselves permission to use them the way they used other non-human species like animals and plants. The white people forced or tricked the non-white people into becoming workers who would have no choice but to help carry out the reproduction of the white people's own increasingly more complicated 'civilization'. Sometimes the white people would cart away boatloads of the non-white people for use elsewhere and sometimes they would use the non-white people as cheap labor in their own lands. A result of the white people's interaction with the non-white people was the creation of cross-bred children; the African-American population is one of many examples of this effect. In short, the alien beings abducting humans act a lot like those white people acted hundreds of years ago when they found beings like themselves but different, living in ways which seemed nearly incomprehensible to them.

"And if a new Supreme Court overturns affirmative-action laws, Democrats will need to pursue equality in ways that avoid treating whites and blacks differently. Some liberals have long been calling for an emphasis on "race neutral" economic policies to recover support among working-class and middle-income white voters. Legal and political necessity may now drive all Democrats in that direction."

I lifted this paragraph from an op-ed piece written by Paul Starr that appeared in today's New York Times. Starr is a founder of the journal "The American Propspect." The more things change the more they remain the same. Black people have been calling for "race neutral" economic policies at least since the founding of the Republic but their voices were drowned out. White women are the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action but liberals, including folks like Paul Starr, write about it as if it were the sufficient and explanatory cause of any black advancement in the United States. Hispanics and Asians also make use of the use of affirmative action but "helpful" whites like Starr see only blacks as recipients of any largesse that issues from these laws and policies. Starr ends his piece by making reference to Woodrow Wilson as a beacon of liberalism recognized all over the world. Is this the same Woodrow Wilson who signed executive orders segregating federal employees, supported racial segregation and had a screening of "Birth of A Nation" in the White House?

Baldwin's question continues to haunt us:

What white people have to do, is try and find out in their own hearts why it was necessary to have a nigger in the first place, because I'm not a nigger, I'm a man, but if you think I'm a nigger, it means you need it.

The question you have got to ask yourself -- the white population of this country has got to ask itself -- North and South, because it's one country, and for a Negro, there's no difference between the North and South. There's just a difference in the way they castrate you. But the fact of the castration is the American fact. If I'm not a nigger here and you invented him, you, the white people, invented him, then you've got to find out why. And the future of the country depends on that. Whether or not it's able to ask that question.

On a very light note -

While reading Mizrach's paper I recalled a scene from a play called "Simply Heavenly" that I saw on television more than 35 years ago. It was an adaptation based on some of the Jessie B. Simple stories written by Langston Hughes. In one of the plays scene Simple expressed wonderment at why none of the stories he had heard about UFO sightings involved black people. He said that it somehow didn't make sense that no black person ever saw a flying saucer or aliens from outer space.

Thanks for the summary, p6.

The question wasn't whether, in 1619, whites viewed blacks as humans. By the most definitive criterion, can interbreeding occur, there was no doubt.

And we had reached a level of civilization which had granted some degree of respect to the individual, which complicated the matter of one human owning another (in ways with some analogues in our current debates regarding abortion and the death penalty).

Juxtapositioned, we have slave children as chattle. If gyrations in laws and analyses prove that humanity was being taken seriously, slave children as chattle proves that it wasn't being taken very seriously. They were thought of as human, but not human enough to value their family relationships in the slightest. More than a narrow gap there.

"It's clearly a source of national shame."

My brother, you must be kidding. Right? Folks in this country don't have any sense of national shame about enslaving African peoples.

More than a few of us do, PT; I'd say that it's categorically the most shameful thing in all of our history. I would also point out that this is quite compatible with the belief that "I didn't have anything to do with it". Our nation was also shamed by the Salem witch trials. By the political power of the KKK in its era. By Joe McCarthy. And we have national pride over winning WWII. Over Lincoln's emancipation decision. Over the elimination of Jim Crow during the 20 years after WWII. I didn't have anything personally to do with those either, but I'm an American and I feel such pride and shame as an American.

If I'm not a nigger here and you invented him, you, the white people, invented him, then you've got to find out why. And the future of the country depends on that. Whether or not it's able to ask that question.

PT, can you epxlain Baldwin's definition of "nigger" here? I see a negative connotation, a white man viewing a black man negatively, and I see him rejecting such a view, but I'm not really grasping the concept. What does Baldwin reference which was invented by white people?

DW wrote: "More than a few of us do, PT."

Well, okay, but I assumed that you understood that I was referring to the majority of our fellow Americans. I don't want come across as pedantic but the Salem witch trials occurred prior to the War of Independence so it is highly unlikely that the nation, which didn't actually exist, felt any shame at all. I am not aware of any studies indicating that there was a sense of nation wide revulsion at the spectre, for example, of terrorists in white sheets parading down Pennsylvania Avenue in our nation's capital. There was no national sense of shame about Senator Joe McCarthy. Don't forget that what started his downward spiral was that he took on the United States Army and it had no intentions of rolling over for him. It was the Army's attorney, Joseph Welch, who stuck the pin in that poisonous gasbag by publicly asking him if he had no shame, not the editorial boards of the nation's newspapers.

I have no sense of pride about the Emancipation Proclamation although I do celebrate Juneteenth Day and have done so since I was a young man. (I remember my father's best friend, who was from a small town in Texas, once jokingly saying that Juneteenth was the one day of the year that white folks didn't mind Negroes wearing white shirts and drinking all the strawberry soda they could find.) I'll attempt to address what the prophet Baldwin meant by "nigger" later but I do wonder if you're putting me on.

I have no sense of pride about the Emancipation Proclamation.

That seems fair, PT. Does it seem ok if I do have such a sense of pride?

I do wonder if you're putting me on.

I'm here with you guys because I'm curious about the real you. What's a bit unusual is not such curiosity, but the opportunity for a real discussion. I enjoy black people every day, but do you think I can ask them for such an explanation? In truth, maybe I can. But maybe it would damage my relationship, and I value them more than my curiosity. Even if I got past that, there's some chance they think like p6 but would be afraid to tell me what they really think because they value their relationship with me and think I couldn't handle the truth. That's why some of my questions might be beyond ordinary experience. Black people and white people can't ordinarily have this kind of discussion.

Even if I got past that, there's some chance they think like p6 but would be afraid to tell me what they really think because they value their relationship with me and think I couldn't handle the truth.

Actually, it's more likely they feel it would rebound on them somehow.

That's why some of my questions might be beyond ordinary experience. Black people and white people can't ordinarily have this kind of discussion.

True.

But I actually have such talks whenever someone is interested.

Juxtapositioned, we have slave children as chattle. If gyrations in laws and analyses prove that humanity was being taken seriously, slave children as chattle proves that it wasn't being taken very seriously. They were thought of as human, but not human enough to value their family relationships in the slightest. More than a narrow gap there.

Again, I have to disagree...African slaves got the exact...I repeat, EXACT...same treatment peasants and peons caught in feudal times. Just as the Big House on southern plantations were approximations of castles done in wood, slavery was an attempt to establish a permanent land bound peonage.

I enjoy black people every day, but do you think I can ask them for such an explanation? In truth, maybe I can. But maybe it would damage my relationship, and I value them more than my curiosity. Even if I got past that, there's some chance they think like p6 but would be afraid to tell me what they really think because they value their relationship with me and think I couldn't handle the truth.

Isn't truth and trust the basis for any relationship worth its salt?

I'm not advocating that you do anything differently DW, just pointing out the insane invisible barrier to sincerity that prevails in the social mainstream.

Again, I have to disagree...African slaves got the exact...I repeat, EXACT...same treatment peasants and peons caught in feudal times. Just as the Big House on southern plantations were approximations of castles done in wood, slavery was an attempt to establish a permanent land bound peonage.

P6, this is why I hope for your reaction. I've never, ever considered such a concept before. I'll give it a try.

Isn't truth and trust the basis for any relationship worth its salt?

It is the truth that I'd prefer to know my black friends at such a level.

But I'm not likely to nominate them as my personal representatives of Black America.

And even less likely that they'll volunteer that role.

But I actually have such talks whenever someone is interested.

It wouldn't take actual genius to recognize p6 and me as being compatible in person.

But I'm not likely to nominate them as my personal representatives of Black America.

And even less likely that they'll volunteer that role.

True. In fact, I wouldn't volunteer for that role. This is all my personal views and learning.

I used to have a couple of different mottos for the site. The one immediately prior to "All respect and no restraint" was "Don't assume that because my conclusion is the same as someone else's that my reasoning is the same." Something like that.

The first one was:
"...freedom is never a final act, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationships."
A. Philip Randolph

And then there's "Learn to laugh at yourself…WE certainly have…

"That seems fair, PT. Does it seem ok if I do have such a sense of pride?"

I have no problems with you feeling a sense of pride about the Emancipation Proclamation.

"I'm here with you guys because I'm curious about the real you. What's a bit unusual is not such curiosity, but the opportunity for a real discussion. I enjoy black people every day, but do you think I can ask them for such an explanation? In truth, maybe I can. But maybe it would damage my relationship, and I value them more than my curiosity. Even if I got past that, there's some chance they think like p6 but would be afraid to tell me what they really think because they value their relationship with me and think I couldn't handle the truth. That's why some of my questions might be beyond ordinary experience. Black people and white people can't ordinarily have this kind of discussion."

Considered. I still wonder, however, why you would like me to explain what Baldwin could have possible meant by his use of the word "nigger"? Are you telling me that you are white and that you are puzzled as to what a black man could mean when he uses this term in the context that Baldwin was speaking in?

I'm telling you that Baldwin does not speak to white people. I'd dismiss him as someone who doesn't care to communicate with me, except that he does speak to black people.

I don't know if Baldwin is hostile toward white people, or if instead he's trying to drive black people to overcome racism. If white people have invented a "nigger" with some relationship to Baldwin, and it's important for white people to answer why they have done so, we have a collection of words which doesn't parse in ordinary white experience. Simplistically, one rejects the notion that white people (or at least the ones I know) invented any such thing, and moves on. What I'm doing is backing up for a second look. Maybe white poeple did invent something and I just don't understand. Maybe Baldwin's nuts.

Baldwin was definitively not nuts. And if you don't think the Caucasian Collective (my attempt at stopping you from evaluating collective decisions as though each and every individual made said decision) invented the THEME "nigger" then you are THOROUGHLY indoctrinated...probably to the degree that you really can't gain anything from these discussions. I'm surprised your head hasn't exploded from thses discussions.

Yes, I'm saying it's useless to talk about it to most white folks.

You know, DW, you argue like an Objectivist.

P6 wrote: "You know, DW, you argue like an Objectivist."

I get your drift, P6, but remember that in the Objectivists' universe there are no racial problems or issues. The multi-page speeches that their patron saint and founder, Ayn Rand, stuffs into the mouths of characters like John Galt, Hank Reardon and Howard Roark contain the most general condemnations of racism but not one word about how slavery, for example, was tied in an integral way to the founding and development of this country. And the Civil Rights movement and the resulting legislation, in the view of many, many of her disciples, was just another intrusive action by the government to promote collectivism and take away people's rights of association.

dwshelf wrote: "Maybe Baldwin's nuts."

On second thought I'll withdraw my offer to attempt an explanation of what Baldwin meant. James Baldwin was not crazy and I am at a loss to understand why you would even suggest such a thing. You don't have to agree with him or me but he wasn't crazy!

James Baldwin was not crazy and I am at a loss to understand why you would even suggest such a thing.

Maybe I said it wrong, PT. You wondered regarding my sincerity, and I tried to expand on my inability to comprehend some of Baldwin's writing, in particular the kind of thing you quoted. I was attempting to detail my quandry, not to literally disparage James Baldwin.

And if you don't think the Caucasian Collective (my attempt at stopping you from evaluating collective decisions as though each and every individual made said decision) invented the THEME "nigger" then you are THOROUGHLY indoctrinated...probably to the degree that you really can't gain anything from these discussions.

Forgive me p6, but I'm just putting this all together. I'm more inexperienced than indoctrinated. I'm quite sure that I've never experienced this theme.

An examination of history shows a re-defining of the word in the KKK era, away from a slang but not pejorative substitute for Negro, and to a strongly derogatory term. I don't doubt that this re-definition was done by whites who didn't like the incursion of blacks into their space.

Would you agree with the above P6? If so, is this the idea I should have in mind while reading Baldwin?

remember that in the Objectivists' universe there are no racial problems or issues.

Oh, I remember.

I'm quite sure that I've never experienced this theme.

Bullshit.

Is that the real you, p6?

Or are you saying something different.

Are you saying that blacks & whites cannot discuss Baldwin?

Or that maybe they could, but it ain't you as the black half?

Say it straight out.

I'm saying I'm not taking you seriously when you claim not to understand what "nigger" means to white folks OR Black folks. I'm saying I don't "explore the space" for no reason.

Now, let me add to that.

You ask if that is the real me. This means you think I've been fronting or bullshitting. You got the real me. There ain't but one me. You just haven't seen me pissed at you personally.

You're edging perilously close to that point. You've already annoyed me a bit with the Objectivist approach. I don't like it when every time I raise a collective issue you try to apply it on an individual basis like you're too stupid to know the difference...and you ain't. And this time you want to take a statement about an individual gesture and cast it as my attitude about all white people as though you're too stupid to know the difference...and you ain't. I'm not thrilled with your attempts to shift the conversation ("we've got two issues here...the one you raised and the one I want to talk about...the one you raised isn't interesting so I'm gonna talk about what I want to say.").

I KNOW these errors of yours aren't errors...and when we raise the issue of white folks needing someone in the nigger role you want to talk about the etymology of the word I know you're trying to jerk me.

THAT'S why I call bullshit.

Clear enough?

"...freedom is never a final act, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationships." A. Philip Randolph

Conflict Ecology

Could you consider for a moment p6 the concept that the real me is trying to interact with the real you?

What makes you think you haven't gotten the "real me" all along?

Say it straight out.

I don't doubt I have the real you.

You doubt you have the real me.

Having observed each of you exhibit textual realness, there's no question of capability.

Why not assume that the souls - as a general rule - are willing, but from time to time, the minds' levels of commitment and effort are weak?

"Intentional suffering", or the expression of evolutionary will in the moment, requires that a man dispassionately observe the automatic production of negative emotions within his partially functioning centers, and, that he refuse to allow that untransformed energy to be released by his false personality.

What is it that suffers during such an exercise?

Only the identified, false personality that imagines that its interests and reputation are being impugned in the harsh world of the social ecology of conflict. The social ecology of conflict is all that suffers when a normally funtioning human being refuses to express himself negatively. Obviously such suffering is imaginary.

Realness takes work (will). It's far easier - and a hell of a lot more fun - to sleep.

What'll really bake your noodle in this attenuated context is that only *you* know whether you're working or backsliding...,

dwshelf,

C'mon brother! No one has suggested that blacks and whites can't discuss James Baldwin. Why do you believe, however, that we should go through an explanation of the etymological history of the term "nigger" as a prelude to this discussion? If you don't know what Bladwin meant by his use of this word then what sort of discussion could we possibly have regardless of whether you agree with Baldwin or not.

I once watched a televised debate between Baldwin and William F. Buckley, Jr. on the question of whether or not the American Dream had been achieved at the expense of the American Negro. The debate was held at Oxford University in England. (This was during a time when the term "public television" actually meant something as opposed to this middlebrow pseudo-intellectual happy talk that PBS and NPR mostly gives us today in the form of the PBS's "News Hour" Charlie Rose's so-called interview program and the narrow minded "Talk of the Nation".)

The one thing I'll say that separates Buckley from many of his intellectual heirs today is that at no point, as I recall, did he ask Baldwin to define his terms. He knew full well what Baldwin meant and he debated with him on those terms. If you don't know what Baldwin meant then go read a volume of his essays. If you do know what he meant then let's start that discussion. I'm waiting.

Why not assume that the souls - as a general rule - are willing, but from time to time, the minds' levels of commitment and effort are weak?

I think calling bullshit yet being willing to continue real interaction and remaining honest effectively assumes that position.

I don't doubt I have the real you.

Then why did you ask?

dizznamn that brings back memories....,

Back when I was a little kid, Buckley was my ace boon. I used to watch Firing Line religiously with my mother to savor WFB's oily prevarications and enjoy my mother taking him on virtually from the comfort of our den. Oh, he would make her hopping mad and just about every week she would have slapped the taste out of his mouth if she could have.

ROTFLMAO!!!!

Then why did you ask?

When I asked, I didn't understand what was going on. It didn't make sense to me at all.

Once you explained it, I could at least respond. It finally sunk in what it was that you (and PT also, I guess) didn't believe about me.

If you don't know what Bladwin meant by his use of this word then what sort of discussion could we possibly have regardless of whether you agree with Baldwin or not.

That's exactly why I asked, PT.

If you don't know what Baldwin meant then go read a volume of his essays.

Do you know of any online reference? I'll Google around for myself, but if you know of a specific place that might make it easier.

I posted something to this effect before, but one reason why I might be lacking some experiences is that I was raised in small towns in the northwestern US. Towns with few or no black people.

I never personally encountered racial hostility.

As a young man, I did encounter other young men who expressed such, and used the "N word" while doing so, but there was no reason to take them seriously. I also began to personally know a few black people, which went well. That phase of my life ended CA 1978. I joined big city life, and encountered plenty of professionals and semi-professionals of all races. I vaguely assumed that most of those other young men had grown up too, although cnulan convinced me that an important percentage of them likely didn't.

So that's it, as personal experience goes. I just don't have more than that. I have second hand experience involving a 98%+ black school in west Oakland, involving a close relative who taught there for a few years.

Shannon once suggested I live in la-la land. Maybe so. But it's the real me.

"I posted something to this effect before, but one reason why I might be lacking some experiences is that I was raised in small towns in the northwestern US. Towns with few or no black people.

I never personally encountered racial hostility."

DW - You are old enough to know better than to continue to measure the reality of other black people's experiences through the lens of your own unique upbringing as a black person. You don't have to have been personally called a "nigger" in order for you as a black person to understand what Baldwin meant. His meaning can clearly be derived from the entire context in which P6 posted the video clips of Dr. King, Malcolm X and James Baldwin. Your argument lacks a degree of merit in my opinion.

Go buy a copy of "Nobody Knows My Name" or the "Fire Next Time". Forget about Google.

I'm white, PT. I do agree however that my personal experiences were somewhat isolated and likely not generalizable over a large percentage of people.

Go buy a copy of "Nobody Knows My Name" or the "Fire Next Time". Forget about Google.

Fair enough. Maybe sharp quotes aren't the way to discuss an author. I ordered them from Amazon. $5 and $9. But they won't come for three weeks.

My dad and I used to watch "Firing Line" on Sundays. My mother and my sisters thought we were out of our minds for watching his program.