Not That There's Anything Wrong With That...

So, I fully expect this essay or "blog posting" may offend some and confuse others, while causing still others to change their former view of me (for the worse, I'd imagine), but here goes:

I'm a Jew trapped in a black man's body.

To anyone who truly knows me, this is not startling news, but for those who only casually know me, it may sound like I prefer being Jewish to being black. That's not fully the case, though it is partially the case - but don't worry, it's not what it sounds like - of course I'll explain.

Apart from all the things one might stereotypically (or accurately) associate with Jewish people (overbearing & nagging mothers, social awkwardness, personal guilt, self-deprecating humor, over-the-top sensitivity to racism, reading billboards aloud, etc.), I actually feel a sort of kinship with the Jewish community. Despite the many setbacks and the historic oppression of the community, they have managed to create and maintain a system where the community still stands, powerful and active, with higher than average income and lower than average crime and poverty rates. As a whole, Jews are very influential in arts, culture and academics, as well as science and business. It has become almost canonical that they, as a community, are great at anything worth being great at.

I realize that their community is not perfect, as none are, but I've often said regarding perfection that, as a model, it's probably the closest thing the black community will ever have. And they've even offered it (their model) to us. Granted, one can always debate the nature of that offering, and many of those debates are valid, still, if you're a hungry man, does it really matter why bread is being offered? In the PERFECT world it should matter, but in the REAL world it doesn't matter.

The historic relationship between blacks and Jews in the United States though complicated, has generally been good. The strain of the past twenty years or so, though not at all unprecedented, has been something of an anomaly.

It's no secret that many of the people (besides other blacks) who supported an end to slavery and who looked to hire blacks after slavery, were Jews. Often, the wages were low and the hours were long, but it was something where nothing had existed before. By the turn of the 20th century, black men had coined a term for their Jewish supervisors at work - "Goldberg". It was a derogatory term that definitely heralded things to come, but there was no violent antipathy between the communities at that time (outside of the crime world).

Blacks and Jews developed jazz dance and music together, and often, the closest interracial friends in any given music grouping were the blacks and the Jews. Both suffered violent racism and antisemitism wherever they went, including the murder of one black man and two Jewish men traveling together in Mississippi in 1964, and together, blacks and Jews turned the tide of racial segregation through legislation.

By the time of the late 1970's, relations between blacks and Jews slowly began to devolve, until a full-on collapse throughout the 1980's and early 1990's. However, the Jewish community didn't simultaneously implode in the way the black community did. There were many factors involved in this. Jewish people were not still working primarily in low-wage and/or blue-collar fields at this time, so even though the black community had built and sustained a decent-sized middle-class by that time, when those jobs started disappearing, the black community was disproportionately affected. As well, the crack epidemic wasn't a major problem in the Jewish community. In addition to these, there are many institutional ways in which black people lose money that others don't. Loans to blacks have higher interest rates - both business and private, and blacks are denied more often than others - even when their credit rating is outstanding. Rents charged to black businesses are often higher, and mortgages for black home owners are often higher. This, of course, is rarely known to the black owners until they talk to someone else or do more research, and are forced to take legal action.

The Jewish community is nearly synonymous with the history of merchants; our history as merchants (in the European system of trade) is not nearly as lengthy, and that also contributes to a lack of respect from non-black merchants, clients, and associates.

All of this clearly makes it more difficult for us as a community to succeed - but difficult does not equal impossible. Blacks in the US have again reached a point (financially) where the Jewish (and Asian) models of community success in the US are models we can adopt and "put our spin on". The idea of opening our own businesses in our own communities and patronizing them is first and foremost. This has already started taking a strong foothold in communities from New York and Philadelphia to Atlanta, on the east coast, as well as many other cities throughout the country. Chicago, in the Midwest, is a wonderful example, and Cleveland is beginning a similar (albeit slow) reawakening.

Where we still have some distance to cover with Jewish people is the reverence for education and the balance between entertainment and general commerce. No one can deny that Jews are all about the entertainment industry. But for every one Jewish entertainer, you can find twenty Jewish Lawyers, Doctors, Professors, Politicians, Accountants, Physicists, Chefs, Contractors, Entrepreneurs, etc. There isn't an askance view of professions other than entertainment. The Jewish community values education and what it can provide. However, we are at a point where our youth - and many of those youths' parents - look only to sports or pop music as an outlet. We largely only look for quick money ways to success, and that is a problem. And of those that actually do achieve in those areas, only a select few actually try to help to build something from it. Most just buy expensive homes, cars, clothes and jewelry.

There are other areas too where we lag behind - political influence comes to mind. We largely support and endorse corrupt politicians, who actually hurt us. At least other corrupt politicians rarely hurt their own people - they use their corruption to steal from others. Our politicians keep us in poverty and crime. How many blacks actually supported former mayor Marion Barry for re-election after his crack scandal (one scandal among many)? Well, this much is accurate for sure:
1. He won re-election, and
2. It wasn't on the strength of non-black votes.

Another apt scandal (one of his many) was former mayor Sharpe James in Newark, New Jersey. James was convicted of abusing a program to revitalize Newark's South Ward. The project was intended to help rebuild poor inner-city neighborhoods by selling and granting property and money for redevelopment in a city that had become synonymous with poverty and joblessness. Instead, James sold city-owned property to a former girlfriend for approximately $46,000, which she then flipped for a profit of over $600,000. Few new jobs were created and minority-owned businesses did not get the support they expected and needed. Recently, another mayor Kwame Kilpatrick of Detroit was implicated in multiple scandals. This, in the midst of his city and his people falling apart around him. If you're going to do a disservice, don't. Period. But if you're going to do it anyway, don't do it to your own people.

Also, regarding political influence, we need to impress upon ourselves the importance of voting people in whom we trust, but voting people out in whom we don't. We need to stop marching and complaining, and take action. Voting is a powerful action. We need to get after our politicians the way other communities get after theirs - to keep our streets paved, our schools funded, and our hospitals operational. All this beyond fervent, rhetorical, sermon-esque speeches. And they should pay with their jobs if they don't. But if 70% (or more) of a community doesn't vote, no one listens to that community's complaints. Equally so, we need to take action when voting isn't working. When other communities want something that politics won't provide, they, as a community, pool their individual resources into it or seek wealthy members of their community to assist. Our wealthy black people just put their resources into in-ground pools - shaped like dollar signs.

So, it is in these senses that I wish to be Jewish - or at least have my community follow the Jewish model. Though the black community as a whole, over time, has misplaced a great many of its values, historically, we are very family-oriented, self-sufficient, and innovative. We need to reclaim these traits, cast aside "street-credibility" as something noble, and accede to the throne of respectability. And looking at the model of how the Jewish community has done so over the centuries could be a start. And there's nothing wrong with saying that.

Hooray!!! Black President!!! Except, hold on just a sec...

With this year's election of Illinois Senator Barack Hussein Obama to the presidency of the United States of America, blacks, everywhere in the country, celebrated. Blacks sang in choirs in church at special Tuesday night services, and gathered in bars and parks, and held parties at their homes in recognition of this truly great achievement.

The common sentiment was that "we did it!" and that we had "finally made it!" To a large degree, this is true. If not for Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Marcus Garvey, Shirley Chisholm, the thousands of black men and boys lynched, and countless, nameless others (like my deceased Harlem community activist father) who endured suffering, hardship and death, we may not have been at a point where a black man could even run for local office, let alone win the nation's presidency. Our parents and grandparents represent a second application for the term "Greatest Generation", and Obama owes much of his success in this country to them.

But for the younger generation of blacks, I would say, those of us below age 45, I don't know if that sentiment of "we have overcome!" is fully accurate: Barack Obama is extolled for his graduation of Columbia and Harvard universities, but this is in a time when increasingly less high-minded blacks, who have more public influence, have decided that education and hard work hold no merit, and that the way to be successful is to parade half and fully naked black women across national television screens and shout profanities. As well, Barack Obama's ties to the black community as a whole are, ultimately, thin. His mother was white, his stepfather was Filipino, and he was eventually raised by his white grandmother. The one tie he has to "blackness" is his father, who left him at age two, and whom he only saw once more in his life, at age 10. And though "black", his father was African, and therefore not a part of the "American black experience".

Now, I don't say this to make the argument that Barack Obama is "not black enough" to be considered black, or anything as ridiculous or as simplistic as that. Being of African descent (and having said features) is enough to make one black - no matter the particulars of how you grew up. I heard that same argument about him in the primaries and I felt (and still feel) that it was a ridiculous and superficial argument - in the way it was presented. It could have been made properly, but the mainstream media, with our own help as blacks, as usual, failed to delve deeper into the potentials of that argument. Instead it devolved and was reduced to conversations of "Does Barack Obama listen to Hip-Hop?" and "Will he support Welfare?" My point here - about Obama's lineage - is only to say that, though this is a major step forward for black Americans, and a "victory" even, that the enthusiasm should be tempered somewhat. And here's why:

The election of Barack Obama will doubtless lead all whites and many blacks to the conclusion that since we now have a black US president, any black person can do anything they want in life, and there are no more excuses and "The Man" can no longer be blamed. This is a tricky area, because though I believed that even before Barack Obama ever even ran for president, there are exceptions and loopholes, and those will now be dismissed more routinely than in the past, setting up a new way for discrimination to rear its ugly head.

When John McCain started running ads claiming that, now President-Elect, Obama was merely a celebrity without substance, many (myself included) thought it was something of a reach. Certainly, Obama has reached a celebrity status, for a politician, not seen in this country since the Kennedys. But many were convinced that Obama was substantive as well, even if he wasn't always able to fully communicate that substance. And that inability of Obama to communicate his ideas clearly to the American people, was largely our fault - for having short attention spans and disinterest in true knowledge. Indeed, Obama was lambasted for being "too professorial". It was often argued (not in so many words) that he needed to dumb-down his communications to reach people more effectively.

But McCain, with his celebrity comment, was onto something in a way that no one realized: that celebrity, that Obama had acquired, was a large part of the reason that he could win a primary, let alone be elected president. That celebrity, allowed Barack Obama to surmount hurdles that ordinary black people, in everyday life, cannot surmount.

When I worked in New York City in TV and TV commercial production, I worked hard toward being a crew member. I started out as a production assistant, but I wanted to be a Grip and / or Set Lighting Technician. In my pursuits, I ran into many very helpful white people who wanted to give me a chance - I ran into more who didn't. Of the ones who did want to help me reach my short term goal, many had their hands tied - they were union, I was non-union and hadn't worked enough to be considered for the union. They couldn't get me onto union jobs, and often times, they were helping others as well, so when they worked non-union, they couldn't always call me because they were calling others also. So, sometimes I worked, and sometimes I didn't. I could accept that. That is procedural and bureaucratic and annoying, but it is understandable, and with time and persistence, can be worked around or overcome. However, in many cases, I was refused work simply because I was black. Of course, no one will believe that. "Not in New York." "Not in the liberal film / entertainment industry." Or, worse, "It wasn't race, you just weren't good enough."

Well, that would be fine, except, I had conversations with two people in which they implicitly stated (not explicitly, because that would create proof of the illegality of their actions) that they would never hire me, simply because they didn't like blacks. I know that sounds unbelievable to any non-black person reading this post, but blacks everywhere suffer this type of treatment on a daily basis, and whites who dismiss it do so because they can't in any way imagine that world still exists. But it does, and if you are black, but not a celebrity, you may (and likely will) still get denied a loan, a home, a credit card, a job, or anything else you seek over the next eight years (that's right, I said eight years). But now, there will be even less sympathy for you than before. Because "you have a black president."

So, Barack Obama's success at reaching the US presidency is due (in part) to the fact that his acquired celebrity status transcended his race. The same was true of O.J. Simpson (before his downfall), Michael Jackson (before his insanity), Michael Jordan, Seal, and any number of other black celebrities whose race was transcended because of their talent and abilities, which brings me to my next point: Barack Obama is talented and able, has great ideas, is inspirational, and may prove to be a very effective president. Absolutely, without a doubt, this was the large-scale reason why he was elected. But the fact cannot be denied, that for the black man who pursues becoming a union carpenter, things may not get any easier.

Another thing is important to note: Though Barack Obama personally decided to not overtly play on white guilt, he had to know it was in effect. Jesse Jackson types, who openly played on white guilt in the past - to the point of being accusatory - failed in their bids for higher office, because no one wants to be constantly reminded of a past mistake. Obama's genius was in "forgiving" white people, and allowing for them to feel whatever shame or guilt they harbored privately, instead of throwing it at them in fiery speeches. Obama didn't play on white guilt, and by not doing so, ironically, that guilt helped him be elected.

Only (thus far) in America, could a black man be the "ruler" of a majority Caucasian nation. Also, only by being an American president, could a black man become the de facto leader of the world. For that, we should all be thankful; that we live in a western nation, if not THE western nation that allows for the correction of its past mistakes. But let us not lose sight of what is important in everyday life. What has happened is a milestone, but President Obama won't get anyone hired on their next job. Only their hard work and perseverance, coupled with the nation's own recognition of its past and continuing injustices, and a little luck, will do that.

Whites: Recognize that one, quite major, black success does not make all past and current injustices void. Do not dismiss your darker countryman when he beseeches your help.

Blacks: While not forgetting, do not cling to slavery and the lynchings and cross-burnings. To remember is to honor. To cling, is to enslave and lynch the mind. Remember, but press forward.

End Note: John McCain returned to the John McCain of old last night, when he delivered a heartfelt and sincere speech of concession of the election. This is the John McCain I missed during the election and earlier, in the later stages of the primaries. I hope that he will continue his distinguished service in the United States Senate in the manner of his pre-election self. That was when he was a true maverick.