June 22, 2015--Black Like Me

In 1957, in The White Negro, Norman Mailer wrote about young white people who so liked jazz and were so turned off by what they saw as conformist white culture, that they adopted black culture as their own.

Four years later, in 1961, journalist John Howard Griffin, wrote Black Like Me. It is a non-fiction account of his six-week experience traveling in the racially-segregated South while passing as a Negro. Reversing the much more common reality of some light-skinned black people who, to avoid discrimination, passed for white.

In Griffin's case he arranged for his skin to be darkened through the administration of Oxsoralen, an anti-vertigo drug that also darkened skin, prescribed for him by a dermatologist. In addition, he spent 16-hour days for weeks under an ultraviolet lamp.

He met segregation, threats, and enough overt racism that within days he feared for his life and tried to blend into the background so as to avoid the dangers he sensed around him. He kept a journal of his travels and it formed the core of his book and then later a major motion picture starring James Whitmore.

Something analogous to this has been going on in the state of Washington where Rachel Dolezal recently resigned from her position as president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP. Like Griffin she is white and was attempting to pass for black.

Aside from the fact that she has become an instant butt of jokes on late-night TV and comes from a crazy-mixed-up family (her parents were the ones ultimately to out her) her claim that she is black (which she still insists is true though acknowledging she does not have "one drop of black blood" in her genetic background) raises a whole set of complicated issues about race and identity and what it means to be black or white or Asian or Christian or Jewish or, for that matter, male or female.

In regard to the latter, Bruce Jenner recently revealed that he was undergoing treatment to become a biological woman because for his entire live he thought of himself more as a woman than a man.

Dolezal says a version of the same thing--growing up with four adopted black children as siblings she claims to have developed a deep commitment to black culture and the issues African Americans, because of their race, still face in America.

She said, and continues to affirm even after being forced to resign and dragged through the media gauntlet, that she "identifies as black"--

But it's a little more complex than me identifying as black, or answering the question of, 'Are you black or white?' . . . Well, I definitely am not white. Nothing about being white describes who I am.

She, though, is genetically white but thinks of herself as black. Jenner is genetically male but identifies as female. Situations of this kind are common enough and are now being more openly discussed.

Mainly, what constitutes gender (clearly more than genitals)? What defines race? Just how much African blood or DNA must one have to be considered black by others? And how much, if any, needs to be present for blacks or whites to deem themselves one or the other? Or determined by society and perhaps the courts if necessary? For example, in affirmative action cases?

Freud famously said, "Biology is destiny."

Perhaps not.

Indeed, many scholars claim that all forms of identity are socially constructed. If so--and I feel a strong case can be made that this is true--why is it all right for Bruce Jenner to think of himself as a woman but inappropriate for Rachel Dolezal to take on a black identity? If it is all right to assume one's own sense of gender, ethnicity, or belief system, why not blackness? Or whiteness? Is race still our hottest button?

August 18, 2014--This Guy Is Getting Interesting

Senator Ted Cruz--the physical and ideological image of demagogic Senator Joseph McCarthy--is a candidate for the 2016 Republican nomination for president, but he's going nowhere. Actually, he is setting himself up for a lucrative future on the lecture, book, and Fox News circuit. So we do not have to take any shifting in his positions seriously. He is merely building his brand.

Senator Rand Paul, on the other hand, the current frontrunner for that nomination, is doing some interesting things to adjust or, to be kind, flesh out his views and image. He clearly doesn't want to be this generation's Barry Goldwater and get trounced two years from now by Hillary Clinton.

Indeed, I am beginning to get the feeling that not only is his likely to be nominated but he may have a good chance to become president. Hillary has probably already peaked and is feeling like yesterday's news, a part of the problem in Washington who, playing it safe, thus far has nothing new to say or credibly promise. She's got the gender thing going and has a talented and widely beloved husband, but there may be enough Clinton fatigue to override even that. Barbara Bush may be right--enough already with the Bushes and Clinton. We're not talking Adamses or Roosevelts.

Rand Paul is the only national Republican figure with the guts and inclination to speak at the recent NAACP convention; is comfortable with young people, gays, and people of color; is calling for sentencing reform; and last week had some fascinating things to say about the racial confrontation in Ferguson, MO.

Since 9/11 the Department of Homeland Security has been paying for the arming of the nation's local police forces, making armored vehicles, helicopters, high-capacity weapons, sniper rifles, grenade launchers, and body armor readily available. And so, when there is a confrontation between police and alleged perpetrators (the Boston bombing suspects, for example) or between police and demonstrating and rioting citizens (Ferguson, for example), the cops show up armed to the teeth in full military regalia.

Observing this, Rand Paul late last week in an op-ed piece on Time.com first made a connection between himself and the demonstrators--

If I had been told to get out of the street as a teenager, there would have been a distinct possibility that I might have smarted off. But I wouldn't have expected to be shot.

Then, in regard to the military-style arming of the police and the expansion of their powers he said--

When you couple this militarization of law enforcement with the erosion of civil liberties and due process that allows the police to become judge and jury--national security letters, no-knock searches, broad general warrants, preconviction forfeiture--we begin to have a serious problem on our hands.

Interesting, no?