Live From The Obama Fallout Shelter July 27, 2010

There are certain times in life, when I maneuver conflict more gracefully than others.  For the times I don’t,  I retreat. Which is why I have been a non blog posting flake for the last two months.  Remember the old Afrocity who used to post once or more a day?  What happened to her?  Did she turn liberal again? Is she floating in the Chicago River face down with a “Sarah Palin  is a Cunt” tee shirt tied around her neck?  Clearly the victim was strangled before she was murdered and it was staged to appear as though the right wing turned on the poor misguided African American conservative.

And here lies the question.

Who can you trust nowadays?

Honestly, (and my dear readers will never have me any other way)  there are days when both sides get on my nerves.  Yes liberal readers, Afrocity does get fed up with conservatives at times. The abortion issue is one of those times.   I do not need the Christian Coalition Against Choice task-force sending me emails every time I author a pro-choice piece.

“It is not about government interference or privacy, it is about murder and against God’s will…yada, yada, yada, yada”

Nothing will make me anti-choice.  Sorry conservative Charlie.  And while we are at it, nothing will ever make me protest gay marriage.  It is not my business.  Having said that, you will never see Afrocity at a gay marriage rally either.  I check my activism at the door when it comes to matters concerning religion, life, death, abortion and marriage.  Meddling often overrides political common sense.  Gay marriage and abortion, have no place in a political discussion.  Both issues unnecessarily divide women and men who may otherwise choose different political parties if the conflict did not exist.  According to liberals, Sarah Palin could never be a feminist because she is pro-life.   In the world according to ass,  pro-life women do not want equal pay or the right to vote.  Why would a pro-life woman care about matters concerning breastfeeding in public or day care?  Pro-life women must love getting sexually harassed at work.

Only liberal women care about that sort of thing you know.

Resolutions to the abortion issue will never follow my lifetime because really, both parties do not want the conflict to end.  It creates much needed political tension and division.

Without divisions, there would be no base.

And speaking of political division… Democrats, before you begin licking your donkey chops, you should know that conservatives- the group with whom  I identify with the most- annoy me far less than most liberals do.  Far, far, far, far less.

The liberal tourist traffic frequenting the FOX NEWS/New Black Panther Party drama coupled with the press attention over the NAACP and the Tea Partiers has of late rendered me politically tone deaf.  Although the NAACP was useful during some stage in American history, after taking a look at their website site recently, I do not know what the hell they are doing besides fueling… well…racism.

Take a look at the lovely online exhibit of racist Tea Party signs the NAACP has curated:

I cannot tell you what the NAACP hopes to accomplish with this. You cannot truly fight racism unless you first cut the cancer from your own hypocritical backsliding throat.  Racism is racism.  You cannot call it racism when it only effects your special interest group.

This is the NAACP’s  pledge to “repudiate racism” in the Tea Party

I believe all Americans have equal rights and equal value.

I cherish the diverse cultures, beliefs, and values of America.

I believe we can disagree without being disagreeable.

I repudiate all acts of racism and hate, both in words and action.

I have faith in the promise of America – a promise built on mutual respect, common civility, and hope for a better tomorrow.

I commit to building that better America by participating actively and peacefully in the democratic process.

We are one people. We are one nation. I’m an NAACP American

That last line really troubles me. I am an American first.  Yes I am an African American.  I am a female who happens to be black.  I am surely not an “NAACP American”.  What does mean anyway?  Exploring the pledge further makes me wonder if the NAACP actually followed their own advice in the past and enforced the PLEDGE when the following Democrats said:

“You think the Republican National Committee could get this many people of color in a single room? … Only if they had the hotel staff in here.”–Howard Dean

“I’ve seen a lot of white niggers in my time” – Robert Byrd

“He [RNC Chairman Michael Steel]has a career of slavishly supporting the Republican Party.“–Democrat Steny Hoyer

“He’s [Clarence Thomas]  married to a white woman. He wants to be white. He wants a colorless society. He has no ethnic pride. He doesn’t want to be black.” -California Democrat Diane Watson

Would the NAACP ever hang this picture at headquarters?

Where was the NAACP when Condeleeza Rice was branded an Aunt Jemima along with colorful images of her clad in a red do rag and mammy doll’s clothing?

Where was the NAACP when African Americans made racist remarks against Hillary Clinton supporters- especially black Clinton supporters?

“At the end of the day, Hillary is still a white woman.”

Those words were spoken to me by my aunt- a rabid Obama supporter.  Her worry was that black women would vote for Hillary over Obama because she was a woman.  Auntie was simply reminding her politically wayward niece that color trumps gender.    I will not get into the narcotic Kool Aid dependencies of Obamabots in this post, but I knew auntie was inhaling and sending her last dollar to the Obama campaign. Her will to see beyond race was compromised by her commitment to righting the political wrongs of slavery and bondage.  In essence , African Americans were becoming everything they used to hate.

What a sad delusion.

What an abysmal state of mind to be stuck in.

The Democratic party- the party of equal rights, tolerance, diversity and most of all liberalism, is on auto-destruct mode.  Such a reversal of misfortunates.  You were once racist against me so that give me the right to be intolerant and racist against you–FOREVER.

Within the analogy of annoyances between conservatives and liberals,  everything depends on what I can and cannot morally stomach.  I hate hypocrisy.  At least the religious/holier than thou trope has always been a staple amongst conservatives. Republicans are pretty consistent about being anti-choice, anti- government and self-knowingly quite hypocritical about it.    Along with the heavy moral quotient, regardless of any fallacies committed along the way, the elephant is usually not delighting in the enslavement of identity politics. The elephant does not suffer from amnesia when it comes to the Civil Rights Era.  The elephant is not involved in some KoolAid/cult of personality  addiction narrative that seems to follow their most successful leaders (Kennedy/Obama).   The elephant in my view is not dispensing hopium to its patients and quickly escaping on a jet to play a hundred rounds of golf in Hawaii.

Is all hunky dory on the right side of the tracks?

No, of course not.  I would be lying if I said it was.   I battle everyday to get conservatives to understand why some of us Americans want to be called African Americans.  If I want a hyphen, then damn-it I can have one.  When I expatriated from the Democratic Party, I did not stop being African American.  If the GOP wants more people of color , they will have to market the brand in a way that does not compromise the values of conservatives; while at the same time showing us that it is okay to be proud of one’s ethnicity.  No watermelon cart is needed.  You don’t need a reparations bill to get African Americans to join the conservative party. Just be yourselves and show them what you stand for and how it can benefit them.

Someone may listen.

I did.

Well, back to the shelter…I may crawl out in a few days when I run out of Beanie Weenies and Gatorade.  Visit if you choose but be warned… I do not allow Kool Aid or Barney Franks.

Autographed Letter Signed

AFROCITY

PS:  Today is my mother’s birthday she would have been 71. It also means my birthday is in 6 days. We always spent the week together as a tradition. It will be lonely in the shelter this week.

Sunday Soliloquy: The Liberal Spook That Sat By The Door June 6, 2010

There are moments in my life when I wonder if  will I ever sufficiently recover from being a former liberal.

Is it possible that I could have a sort of jackass Democratic version of Stockholm Syndrome?

Like an old childhood friend that I have outgrown, there liberalism is at times, calling me when I do not want to be bothered.   The summer guest that just pops in your life with a duffel bag full of old memories and outdated viewpoints.   He comes in uninvited,  puts his feet up on your coffee table – right on top of the new Laura Bush book your were reading.  The leftie poltergeist takes control of the remote and turns the channel away from Fox News.

“Got any arugula? “  he asks. “Better be organic.”

You see my  former liberal mindset captor never really goes away- not completely.

There is a scene in the first Twilight movie, where the main human girl–Bella is playing baseball with her new vampire pals.  Everything is proceeding idyllically.  You got your thunderstorm, your Matrix like double plays.  But wait!!!! You didn’t think that life would be that easy did you?   The mood swings, another group of vampires interrupt the game.  Human gir Bellal must pretend to be a vampire but the intruder blood suckers sense that something is amiss. They can smell it all over her.  SHE IS NOT ONE OF THEM.

Uh-oh.  Was I too naive to hope that liberalism would go away quietly into the night.   Abusive boyfriends never give up.  They become stalkers and you have to get a restraining order.  You can’t get within 200 feet of  Lilith Fair.   It knows your habits forwards and backwards.  The liberal junkie itch plagues you at the most inopportune moments like when you are at a Memorial Day service in let’s say Kansas…

Me at Memorial Day Ceremony last Monday, May 31st, 2010

You are driving away from a great ultra patriotic day when you look up and see a pro-life billboard with an unsettling picture of an aborted fetus in a garbage can.  Conservative friend mentions that they helped pay for the ad.   You smile at them.  Hey free speech for all…right?   Besides there is nothing wrong with both groups getting their point of view across.  Then conservative friend says:

“Women just like killing babies and until we stop them America will never be right with God.”

Until the above statement was uttered, you feel a sense of belonging with the conservative.  Just  moments after, the invisible left-wing reservists appear and take over your personality and mouth.

“Women should have a choice, ” says Afrocity multiple liberal personality #12.   “Abortion is a very private and personal matter. Republicans want limited government concerning taxation, business ….So why would you want the government interfering with the decisions we make about our bodies? “

The conservative did not agree with me but nonetheless, the conversation did not end in a salad bar brawl like it would have had I disagreed with an Obamabot.  No one left with alfalfa sprouts in their comb over or dreadlocks.

Is there ever a total cure ?  Or is liberalism like herpes?  One day your life is left wing wart-less then the next thing you know just when you want to get down and busy for an evening of scintillating discourse  with your conservative companion…BAM!!!  You have a sudden liberal herpes flare up.

The liberal imaginary stalker –texting me while I am having a meal with my new conservative friends.  Like the previous situation I mentioned.  One the exact same day, conservative buddies and I were discussing Obama’s abysmal foreign policy record.  Everything was fine- not a cloud in the political chit chat sky. No text messages from my estranged left wing friend- the ghost of Afrocity’s past.

However when the tide of  verbal mutterings turned to the situation in Arizona and need for diversity in our country,  an uncomfortable moment of the familiar liberal whiner enters the room.

Not again!!!  There is the liberal friend sitting silently by watching me.  The friend nudges me, kicks me underneath the table.  I wince at the prospect of sounding like a wishy-washy RINO- a  John McCain in brown skin clothing.

“Did she just say that gays should not be married?”  asks my imaginary estranged friend.

I kicked the pest back in the shin.  Go away! Shoo donkey fly.  We should secure our borders. If you are not a bleeping U.S. citizen or here legally, you should be deported.   The fact is, I was having a wonderful day.  Surely the most patriotic in my life.  I loved honoring the soldiers who served my country.  I loved embracing American values.  Somehow I never quite got that pill in my liberal diet.  Anytime I sounded “pro-American” around Democrats, I got shitty looks and criticism.  Now I can wear flag pins and support drilling in the U.S. without incurring a bloody nose.

Me having a post Memorial Day lunch at the Veterens Club.

Go away jackass.  I am in a good relationship now with people who respect my views and don’t reek of patchouli.

You are not here. You are in Dubrovnik- the tomb of the unknown liberal.

“Afrocity, may I ask you an honest question without your being offended?”

My conservative friend was addressing me and only me.  Gee I wonder what they are worried about offending me for.  I am a conservative too, right?

” Why do blacks want to be called African American and not just American like the rest of us?”

The room became silent as every conservative and my liberal imaginary stalker awaited my answer.

And the rest, I will leave for another post.

What will Afrocity do?  Is this the end of her as a conservative?  Or will she rise to the occasion and beat down the left wing “Hulk” menace that lies within?   Is there a cure to save her just in time???  TO BE CONTINUED.

Autographed Letter Signed,

AFROCITY

Where the White Things Are May 4, 2010

From opposite sides of a Chicago bus route, one can see two very different Americas.  One side of the route ends in the north side “Gold Coast” Neighborhood. Home to the city’s elite, the Latin School, the Chicago History Museum.  The other ends on the west side.

As I sat watching the #72 North Avenue bus parked outside the window yesterday, I was overcome by memories of my mother- again.

It was the bus route that brought me from the ghetto to the peaceful lakeside where I could forget I was a black girl who lived in a neighborhood where children did not know their fathers.  I would watch white moms and dads pushing children in strollers, buying cotton candy and wonder what life was like for them when they left the park.  At the end of the day, mother and I would ride the #72 back home alone. Just a single mother and her child.  I would sit in the front seat next to the driver.  “Someday I will live and work here”, I told mother. “…where the white things are.”

“What are white things?” she asked.

“White people with white jobs and money. Nice apartments, museums. I want a white life.”

This momentary glimpse into the past took my mind off the speaker in the seminar I was attending.  I did not hear him. I only saw the fountain and the #72 bus  sitting at North Ave. and Clark, waiting to take mother and I back home.   My lip curled when I knew I was back in the present. She was now dead and I was sitting here in this room.  The white life.  The job, the apartment, the friends and I had somehow left her behind to take the #72 bus home.  This time without her daughter.  My brown limbs could not move to join her. Here, the bus –an innocent bus waiting in the layover circle became a distinct vehicle for my guilt and shame at never confronting my mother about doing something about her life during her final years.  I let her stay on the bus while I got off.

Jacob Lawrence The Seamstress, 1946

Although I intervened on several occasions, I was rebuffed and told “You do not understand what it is like to be really black now that you are educated,”  she told me one day in the year 2005.  “Like that stupid Condeleeza Rice and Colin Powell,when blacks get up- they get uppity…They don’t want to wash clothes by hand anymore or drive buses. Then they join the Republican Party and think they are white people. they black fades from their skin more and more each day…Colin Powell don’t look black anymore than Strom Thurmond.”

To appease her I smiled a bit.

“He don’t!” she continued throwing her hand. “Neither does his wife. People forget who they are and where they’ve been.  You get a nice car and don’t realize you are black until someone puts sugar in the engine and you can’t drive anywhere because your engine is all messed up.”

According to ghetto urban legend, sugar in the gas tank was a trick often played in inner city neighborhoods during the 1970′s. A person, usually a Black or Latino man would buy a nice car, say a shiny long Cadillac with white leather interior.  Like many people who are proud of new material possessions, the owner of the  car would drive around and around the same block over and over again so his neighbors could see his new found piece of colored American pie.  A car is not the whole pie mind you; just a tiny sliver. But when the highlight of your life hinges on winning the lottery or surviving an accident at the drill bit plant during third shift, you will settle for the sliver.

The sistas would hang around the car as the doting owner massages it with car wax.  By the end of the calendar year, the car was responsible for at least three separate pregnancies. Unfortunately, then as nowadays when you have a new iPad, people get jealous.  Things that you are enamored with should stay in your pockets and inside the garage.   Bruised manhood is the only remedy for a braggart Cadillac owner who gets too much attention from the ladies.  His reward.  Homespun 100% green with envy Dominic sugar poured in the gas tank.   The ghetto moral: Forget who you are and we will mess up yo’ car.

The modern day equivalent of my mother’s sentiment about uppity and forgetful Black people was expressed by Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) when she made a derogatory reference to Supreme Court Justice,  Clarence Thomas during a recent public appearance.

All of these stubborn, rigid ideas on blackness have in a sense collectively poured sugar in African American identity of Clarence Thomas and other prominent conservatives of color.  Amongst liberals, Clarence will never be allowed to ride the bus back home. He lives where the white things are. Banished in Black history to the prison of collective amnesia and ridicule.

Jacob-Lawrence, Tousaint-et-Ennery 1989

The same fate obviously will apply to Republican National Committee Chairman, Michael Steele.

From this article in the Wall Street Journal

Steele Says He Finally Met Obama

May 1, 2010

By John D. McKinnon and Susan Davis

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said he finally got to meet President Barack Obama on Saturday, at a VIP reception at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. He got his picture taken with Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, as celebrities such as Alec Baldwin milled around.

President Barack Obama makes humorous remarks at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, at the Washington Hilton Hotel, Saturday. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

At last year’s dinner, Obama poked fun at the slightly nerdy Steele and his sometimes awkward attempts to seem cool.

“Michael Steele is in the house tonight. Or as he would say, in the `heezy,’” Obama said last year. “Wassup,” he added, making a hip-hop-style hand gesture. “Michael, for the last time, the Republican Party does not qualify for a bailout. Rush Limbaugh does not count as a troubled asset, I’m sorry.” Steele just stood in the audience, laughing, and clapped his hands.

A few days later on NBC’s Meet the Press, Steele insisted there were no hard feelings.
“That was just good love between two brothers,” he said.

UPDATE: In his remarks to the crowd, Obama gave a shoutout to Steele, calling him “Notorious G.O.P.”

Romare Bearden, 110St. Harlem Blues

Engaging with the facts surrounding the history Democratic Party have never been easy for my fellow African Americans.  Did my mother ever know that the Republican party was the true anti-slavery party? I doubt it.  I never knew until I reached college.  Perhaps I needed the comedic honesty of African American conservatives such as AlfonZo Rachel aka ZoNation to show me the truth as he does in his latest piece on the history of Blacks and the Democrats.

In 1992, there was no ZoNation or Afrocity.  The Democrats were eternal champions of brown skin and equality.  There was no other side to the historical coin. Until I met a conservative of color, some old Republican woman– an outspoken member of a Houston based Republican women’s group. She found me in the crowd one day as I proudly campaigned for Bill Clinton. I would later meet that same woman in 1995 at an event honoring Laura Bush. The old woman offered the truth but I never explored the truth any further. The old woman had to be delusional. Everything she said went against everything my mother told me.  I did not want to know the truth about the Democratic Party nor did I want to understand why Ms. Condi Rice or Mr. Thomas would be proud Republicans. Dining and voting for the enemy.  How could such an animal even exist?

Jacob Lawrence, "Tombstones"

But today, I am the animal my mother and Eleanor Holmes Norton spoke of.  Through my conservative beliefs, I am no longer on the #72 riding home with mother to eat a dinner of breaded sandwich steak, canned peas  and instant potatoes purchased with colored money.  The tumbler of Kool Aid still sits at the table waiting for my former liberal self to return home.  But I can’t because as far as they are concerned I am lost as a Black woman.

I am where the white things are.

Autographed Letter Signed,

AFROCITY

• May 1, 2010, 9:24 PM ET

Steele Says He Finally Met Obama

Sunday Soliloquy: Blackwashing An American Classic April 25, 2010

From Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, illustrations by Edward W. Kemble

The library books I wanted to check out were heavy in my arms.  Stacked up so high that I could hardly see over the top of them.  Thankfully, I had the smarts to tuck my library card in my mouth before I picked up the books.  This would allow the librarian easy access without my having to dig through the pockets of my Toughskins jeans.  I was a young girl of nine and at the time books were my only source of adventure.  When school let out for the summer all I had was that library. But this summer would be different.  In a month, I would be going to visit my big military careered brother who was stationed in Germany. As the librarian counted my books, I smiled at the Berlitz book on Germany.

Everything was going fine until my mother who emerged from the ladies room, decided to come over to the checkout desk and act parental.  Normally she never cared about what I read.   I would bounce from Henry Higgins to Harold Robbins and she never cared much.  Really, if I could count how many times a librarian raised an eyebrow at young Afrocity’s choice of reading material it would be more than my ten fingers and toes.   I had free run of the publishing world until this summer day…. As I said, everything was proceeding to plan until my mother began inspecting the spine titles of the stack of books that the librarian had already due date stamped.  Towards the middle of the stack, she winced and pulled a green cloth bound book out so fast that it did not disturb the stacks neat straight lines.

“She won’t be taking this…discharge it.”

Oddly, the librarian looked at me for approval.

I shook my head thinking mother must have believed I would not be able to read the book in time before my trip to Germany, then the book would sit in my bedroom overdue. She would have to tote the book back for me… “I promise I will read it before I go,”  I protested. ” The movie is coming on Family Classics on Sunday. I want to read the book first-”

Mother pursed her lips and glanced at me crossly “You will never read this book,” she ordered. ” This book makes fun of black people. It has a slave in it who is an Uncle Tom. He follows a piece of white trash name Huckleberry Finn.  Huck treats him like an animal.”

Mother’s voice was not loud but audible to the librarian who had stopped mid air with the date due stamp in her hand.

“You will never read anything by Mark Twain,” she continued. “Not in school. Not from the library. You will never see movies about Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer.”

A big gulp was in my throat, so I said something manipulative to placate her.  Even then I always felt I was smarter than she.  I read a lot more than she did.  She let me see Roots and it had slaves in it too.  She let me watch Bing Crosby movies and she said he was a racist…And what about Rochester on the Jack Benny Show…Mother always laughed at him and to me he looked like a slave… Besides we trusted  Frazier Thomas.

“But it is on Family Classics Frazier Thomas said it is a classic that all kids should read-”  Yep that was my line of defense and all mom’s trusted Fraizer Thomas .

Frazier Thomas  is the local WGN Chicago guy with the mellow voice and pretty books in his library. He taught me about Swiss Family Robinson, Black Beauty and Pippa Longstocking.  Now he wants to teach me about Huckleberry Finn and mother is saying I cannot check out the book or see the movie on Sunday and I never miss an episode of Family Classics.

“Frazier Thomas is a white man who reads to white kids.”  Mother fired back. “You think he would have you at his house. Do you think he is reading to you?  Has he ever read a book about a black family? “

I shrugged my shoulders. The honest answer would have been no but I did not want her to be right.

“…and what about that movie we saw at the theater that you hated?” she asked.  “the one with the black man that was on that island with the prejudiced old white man?”

Mother was referring to a Disney movie that we saw the week previous to my summer recess.  It was about Robinson Crusoe and a black guy named Friday.  To my nine year old eyes, the movie was boring and the white man appeared to be very mean to the black man.  I did not like the movie and was really there for second offering of the double feature-  The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again.

“So the book is boring?” I asked.

Mother knowing that I hated with a passion anything that is boring, especially books and movies answered, “Yes it is a very boring book by someone who wants you to feel inferior to white people. It is about white southern trash like the people in Roots. What did I tell you about people in the South?”

I twisted my lip and looked down at the floor.  One of my friends in school was from Mississippi and I liked her.

“What did we say about southerners Afrocity?”

“That they are ignorant and have the worst white people. John F. Kennedy is dead because of them. They shot Martin Luther King. “

I nodded and answered in a defeated tone “I know.”

The Librarian had ignored the line of people wanting to check out books behind us until one impatient young woman purposefully cleared her throat.  Why she decided to butt into my mother’s lecture is beyond me but it was not a smart idea.   “Miss, may I suggest that you consult your daughter’s Chicago Public School principal.  Huckleberry Finn is taught in many schools and teachers are trained-”

Uh-oh, I thought.  At my age I knew what to expect from my mother.  If there was one thing she did not tolerate, it was well meaning white people telling black people how to raise her children.  Yes we were on welfare but that did not give the the right to parent.

Mother stepped closer to the check out desk.  This all struck me as a when shit hits the fan moment.  I was embarrassed already, now I was certain that I would be banned from the library for ever.

“First of all,” she started. ” Call me Ms. How the hell do you know if I am married or not.  Second, my daughter does not attend Chicago Public School, she is in a private Catholic School so your assumption about all black kids and the schools they go to is wrong. I do not give a damn about what my daughter reads as long as it is not something that makes blacks look like fools. “

The green eyed, blond librarian blinked- a lot. She looked like a blond version of Rhoda from the Mary Tyler Moore show. Somehow I knew she was a good person. I felt sorry for her and this was all of my fault. I should have checked out sooner so Ms. Mother would not have known what I had decided to borrow. Then the books would have been all safe and uncensored in my seersucker book satchel.

Mother took the copy of Huckleberry Finn, flipped through a few pages and found a page she wanted the librarian to see.

“What is this word?” she asked the librarian.

I stood at the desk on my tippy toes hoping to see what she was pointing to on the page.  I saw an illustration of a black man standing in what looked like grass but I could not see the words.

When the librarian looked at the page, she nodded.  “I know what the word is  and I know why you would be upset at the author for using it-”

“Over and over again. Page after page,”  Mother interrupted.

“But it is considered an American classic and my son has read-”

“Does your son look like my daughter?”  On the hostile black woman meter, my mother was about heated seven by this point. “Would you want your son to read a book that called his people Polaks? You are Polish right? “

The librarian chose not to answer. Instead she asked ” Ms. will you be taking your daughters remaining selections?”

Mother browsed my other books for suspect titles.  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was chucked along with a cook book I had chosen about German food. Mother discouraged me from getting cookbooks because they usually led to me begging her to buy some expensive ingredients so I could mess up her clean kitchen and waste our food stamps.

“You will eat plenty of German food while you are in Germany,” she said.

Finding finally a light note to grab on to, the librarian continued stamping my remaining books. Looking at me and me only as if to make my mother disappear she smiled and asked “Are you going to Germany?”

My mother was still closely watching this whole book check out affair and I was frankly afraid to say anything for fear that mother would get reactivated.  My nod was covering my enthusiasm to tell someone, anyone about my upcoming trip.

“Well you have a good time…Okay?”  she pushed the pile of now fully stamped books towards me.  I loaded them in my bag. Mother escorted me out of the building.  As we walked to our bus stop our conversation was restrained.  She only asked me if I wanted to stop off to get some orange Push-up sherbet ice cream treats  from the store. Mother was like that. She would talk up a storm in public sometimes then when you thought she’d let me hear it in private- suddenly silence.

I would never watch the Huckleberry Finn movie on Family Classics that upcoming Sunday.  Frazier Thomas had lost all credibility in my household.

I would also never ever read a book by Mark Twain at all.   Mother and I never spoke of the event again.  Lucky for me, Twain was never assigned in my literature course in high school or college.  I really never thought about it again until the other day when I crossed paths with this piece in the Atlantic.

When Great Art Happens to Bad People

Apr 24 2010

By Erik Tarloff

Every few years, it makes the papers: somebody opposes the teaching of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in some high school, or even wants it banned from the local library. The reason, of course, is the book’s frequent use of the word “nigger” (over 200 occurrences, according to people who count such things). When one such incident made a splash sometime in the ’90s, and the minister who was leading the crusade made a large number of appearances on TV and radio, my friend Wendy Lesser, a distinguished literary critic and editor, protested to me, “But he’s missing the whole point!”

She was right, of course. To seize on a single word, even a single word reiterated 200-plus times, without regard to its context or purpose represents a misreading that seems almost willful. But to my mind, defending the teaching of the book on those grounds, while justified on the merits, also misses the whole point, or at least concedes far too much. Because, what if the protest didn’t in fact miss the point? What if Huckleberry Finn actually were a racist book, rather than a non-racist book that permits its characters to speak in an argot appropriate to their time and circumstance? Would the banning then be justified?

Jims Coat of Arms

Thanks to the Atlantic, my memory was jarred.   I paced through the den of my apartment and stood in front of my two large bookshelves.  My deceased mother’s ashes were in a box nearby.  Thoughtfully looking over my library, I found many books that my mother would object to.  Glenn Beck’s A Christmas Sweater,  Fleeced by Dick Morris.   My library is full of a conservative’s arsenal against liberal thought, against welfare, affirmative action…against phony racism.

Rare books, pretty books, cookbooks everything seemed to be there on my shelves.  However, something was missing.  I think it may be time for Afrocity to read something by Mark Twain and though I have the money to buy the book…I think instead I should go to my local library…and check it out for myself.

Autographed Letter Signed,

AFROCITY

Black Tea and Sympathy: Will Olbermann Attend Dallas Tea Party??? February 24, 2010

It does not come as any surprise to me that the prestige of MSNBC is wearing thin among sane non-Kool Aid drinking Americans.

Nevertheless, we must challenge the residual ignorance that blankets the remaining 650,000 viewers MSNBC receives per day.

Kudos to the  Dallas Tea Party Organization for challenging  Keith Olberman and MSNBC to look at the lack of diversity in their own media outlet.

This repudiation of Olbermann’s statements has been a long time coming.  I have had it with the mainstream media pretending that people of color in the Tea Parties do not exist.  The same assumption is made concerning the Republican Party as a whole.  African Americans that choose conservatism are marginalized to salt and pepper on an iceberg sized steak.  We are characterized as mere tokens used as black up.

Will Olberman show?  Of course not.  He may risk some violence from all of the angry gun toting racist like Dallas Latina conservative, Katrina Pierson or Alfonzo Rachel (aka ZoNation)- an African American Republican.

Even the above examples do not account for all of the diversity within the Republican Party.

There are women, physically challenged persons, Asians, Jews,  gays and lesbians all in the Republican Party.

Any person who attempts to prove this to the mainstream media- is quickly shut down, marginalized, invalidated, and branded as “stoopid”.

Republican National Committee Chairman, Michael Steel is constantly belittled as someone who “should thank Barack Obama for his job”.    Liberals believe had it not been for Obama paving the way in the struggle for the brutha, Michael Steel would not have a career, let alone have been selected as RNC chairman.  MSNBC never reported that Steele was not the only African American on the RNC ballot. They never mentioned that Steele was once the Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, a FOX NEWS contributor,  a former GOP senatorial candidate,  and quite active in the Republican Party  BEFORE OBAMA WAS ELECTED PRESIDENT.

To assume that Michael Steele was only elected as RNC chair because he was black is sort of racist isn’t it?  How would MSNBC like it if we said that Rachel Maddow was the token lesbian?

MSNBC will never interview this man:

MSNBC will never send reporters to cover this event:

The Dallas Tea Party Organization is awaiting your reply Mr. Olbermann.  Or will you make the entire Tea Party, The Worse Person of the Week simply for extending you an invitation?  I am betting that somehow Mr. Olbermann will find the underpinnings of racism within the video. It will be akin to the snuff film of the decade. Yeah, that’s it Katrina Pierson was forced to be in the video because her family was being held hostage somewhere in an Atlanta peach orchard by Rush Limbaugh.

Autographed Letter Signed,

AFROCITY

Sunday Soliloquy: Fireside Chat with Afrocity of the Wayward 10 Percent February 21, 2010

At my most generous, I tend to craft my topics for Sunday Soliloquy with an eye toward sharing some aspect of my past with the dilemmas of my political and social present.  This week, I am not so sure I will do a good job.  The last several days have been all about myself and other black people arguing about my not being a Democrat.  Yep, race again and and again and again.

Liberal Democrat, African American Male:

“…The African-American snobs are the asswipes constantly taking shots at the president so they could get kudos from the real elite. The rich white man!… [Afrocity] Don’t be fooled by the constant head pats that you are getting from these white boys. They get off on black self hate and you are only feeding in to it. It’s truly embarrassing sister…You are on the other hand a disgrace to the “Afrocity” name that you adopted for yourself. You should change it to Eurocity or wannabe Eurocity…While I think they are both retarded it’s your right.

What I take umbrage with is the manner in which a mere 10 percent of black folks feel the need to take shots at the 90 percent that don’t think and act like them. We are either elitist or lower class. No in-between. Only black people that don’t know black people think like that.

Your verbiage is not even your own. It’s that of white folks who are equally as ignorant to black culture therefore you are a blind person being lead by a Seeing Eye dog with no vision. Your posts are disgusting to everyone outside of those with a racist mentality….I will have to think of one to label you and the rest of the wayward 10 percent.”

Ooops.  I’ ve gone and lost my blackness again.  Where did it go? I am a racist too.  Now, according to this brutha, I can no longer call myself Afrocity.  The statement above is self-explanatory when it comes to illustrating how African Americans place restrictions on one another in terms of political freedom.  On the blackness radar, the bias is in favor of black Democrats. Anything else, is an imitation.

We are coming out of the worst presidency of possibly all time who was a conservative. You really have NO moral ground to stand on and criticize or teach (LOL). You should instead criticize and teach the folks who thought it was prudent to give Bush another 4 years. I don’t credit any ideology for black success and I don’t place blame on any ideology for black failure. I’m free and independent in my thoughts and actions so when you talk that liberals this and liberals that you lose me and only prove that you live in a box. I am big enough to know that all people have good and bad ideas and good and bad intentions. And don’t misunderstand my disdain for the manner in which Afrocity and other mis guided black folks diss black America for hate.

When have I ever said that I hated black America? And when did I ever say that I voted for George W. Bush? I did not either time.  I abstained from voting in the 2004 election because I found Bush and Kerry both unfitting for the job.

It always amazes me how liberals derive such pleasure in being anti-racist and inclusive of all viewpoints, yet they are shockingly narrow minded when it comes to tolerating others.  Admit that I am pro-choice among conservatives and we will have a discussion.  Admit that I voted for McCain in a room full of liberals and I become target practice for name calling. Within an eye’s blink I became the guy who shot Dr. Tiller and a KKK member all rolled into one.

Female Black Obama supporter:

…Even American Jews vote Democrat Lawd!. Who wants to be insulted because of race or religion? Today’s Democrats are your 1960s Republicans and todays Republicans are your 1960s Southern Dixiecrats RACISTS. They are almost becoming the Whig party because they cannot articulate any clear message and minorities they dislike do not trust them either…Finally it is erroneous to link Black failures to liberal cities whatever that is, without mentioning events such as crack cocaine that began under Reagan; dumping of guns in Black ghettos as a means to dispose war weapons but also create unruliness; high incarceration of Black men that began in the 80s (Reagan); etc…Afrocity your question about what have Democrats done for Black people is like asking what have Republicans done for White people. I am not following your reasoning or logic. Black people do not like Republicans because of the Southern Strategy and embracing racist elements boldly, and Neither do Jews because of their religion and anti-Jewish behavior by religious right Christians…White poor Republicans blame minorities for not succeeding i.e. affirmative action, anti immigration. It is easier to find a “boogey man” for your problems. Unfortunately politically civil rights and those that opposed truly believe it is the cause of their problems lol!. … “

There was so much there.  Where to begin?  My critic’s statement implies that Democrats cannot be racists, or sexist or anti-Semitic.  Remember Jesse Jackson and his 1984 “Hymietown” comment?  Remember what the Democrats did to Hillary Clinton when she ran against Barack Obama?  Remember when the liberal feminists rallied behind Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal? Any woman became a bimbo, Hillary Clinton was a racist. Blacks could say derogatory things about Jews and whites…and get away with it.

Black conservatives live routinely with having their racial loyalty called into question.  As an aside, I really could not care less about who other blacks vote for.  If 90% are Democrats so be it.  The same goes for Jewish Democrats.  What does my critic’s statement allude to?  That blacks should support the Democratic Party because  Jews do… and blacks and Jews are alike because????

Fine, I will take my hits from African Americans. But do not think that my being a black Republican,  erases my past as a black Democrat.

Clearly I remember being called a “black bitch” by my Bill Clinton loving college friend.   If we want to focus on racism and sexism and wrong doings against protected classes, it is ignorant and unproductive to only look at people in one political party.

Take Amy Bishop, the  University of Alabama professor who shot her fellow colleagues to death.  Did you know that most of her victims  were all of  minorities?  People of color, and she was reportedly an Obama supporter.  Obsessed with Barry, a Kool Aid Snorter.  So does that make her untarnished when it comes to accusations of racism?  Or was she just crazy?

The possibility of  Dr. Bishop being a racist never surfaced. She supported Obama so how could she be racist?   However Afrocity is self loathing and anti-black racist .  The mainstream media gave Dr. Bishop a pass as they were all too busy in their attempt to create a Tea Bagger out of Mr. I flew a plane into an IRS office Stack” .

My questions concerning the Democrats considerable achievements in regards to advancing Black Americans especially urban dwellers are quite harmless.  I was born and raised in Chicago, a liberal haven.  We experienced white flight here, redlining, blockbusting, youth violence.  Why?  This city has been run by Democrats for generations.  I see virtually little if any significant improvement in the socio-economic patterns of African Americans in this city or Detroit which is also ruled by Democrats.

I simply posited that Chicago may be a model for looking at how liberals have all of the power, yet no control over the situation of violence and poverty, despair that many protected classes experience here.

Ronald Reagan never drove me to do crack or hold a gun.   I never saw a corner store robbed because some pitiful urban youth felt the burden of white rich Republicans willing him to be unsuccessful.  If liberals rule Chicago, then why is it so unsuccessful at doing what liberals claim to do best, which is uplifting the underdog?

I am more than willing to enter a substantive dialog with my fellow African Americans about the behaviors and motivations behind each political party- even the Tea Party.  However,  until the every Republican is a racist  and every black conservative is an Uncle Tom meme is dropped, we cannot continue.

Autographed Letter Signed,

AFROCITY

Sunday Soliloquy: One Missed Pill February 7, 2010

Quick of eye are the vultures circling neophyte conservative Afrocity.

Like someone who suffers from panic disorder, there are some days that I do not feel adequately Xanaxed-up.

Obviously, being a a conservative creates an apothecary of concerns for a former Democrat.

I get attacked from both sides.

It is my own fault, I jumped in feet first and sometimes I fall on my soft head.  No one has ever coached me in the details of being a conservative.

If you walked into my apartment, overall impressions of my kitchen table, the cupboard, the contents of my chest of drawers would show you that virtually nothing has changed about me since 2008 except my political affiliation.  Well okay…okay- I will confess to purchasing a burlap RNC 1976 convention tote bag at an antiques store in Iowa.  It was a great find and I could not resist.  Other than that, I promise you that I do not own not one political tee shirt, not one white hood, not one “Don’t Tread On Me”  thong and bra set.

Still the same Afrocity. The blacker the conservative, the sweeter the controversy

I am the same. I just vote differently now.

Still Pro-choice.

Still Afrocity.

Still African American.

Sill a woman.

Still, I receive reproachable letters and comments:

“Ms. [Afrocity] Brown, You’re a conservative Republican. Not sure how you can call yourself a PUMA. By definition, PUMA stands for disaffected Democrats.“

“…You [Afrocity]are no republican or conservative of mine. your just a ghetto girl wanna be. Those who accept you in our party are just as bad as those who voted for obama… you are not needed.You black piece of shit, stay far away from our party till you learn you some…“

It seems foolish to get upset over such comments.

I must accept that despite what I do or say, I will emerge the as the villian on both sides of the political divide.  I am an aspirin. Devour one half one day, save the next for later.

What is in a villian’ s cupboard?

Campbells Chicken n’ Dumplings soup, Kraft Mac n’ Cheese, vitamins, microwave popcorn,  spices, sugar, polenta… What’s in my chest of drawers?  I would answer it depends.  I own a credenza filled with CD’s, old grad school papers, and ashes… Three small canisters.  One with my Dalmatian Paloma she died in 2005, the other with my Dalmatian Picasso who died in 2009 and the last canister contains my mother’s ashes.  You can literally unearth my past by looking in my credenza.  Now that this post has been punctuated by morbidity, one can presume where I am going with this but you may be surprised.

My mother was once a living breathing human being.  Not only did she matter to me but she was actually matter.

Is it true when they say that matter can be neither created nor destroyed?  I certainly think so!

Death becomes her.

Mother is not destroyed, she is slimmer than ever at 7 pounds, 8 ounces.

She is contently sitting inside my credenza.

Quiet, serene a silent whisper of ashes, powder.  Like a pill. A finely pressed pill ground by mortar and pestle. Whole at one moment, with shape and form. Crushed and dissipated the next.

When I die, I too want to be cremated.  Because I am a conservative will my ashes be Republican red?  My mother’s are certainly not blue.   On one occasion, I felt foolish for opening the canister and looking at mother’s remains.  All gray and in a box with a few chips of bone hear and there.

All of her in a box bearing a label with her name on it.   The woman in the box allowed me to exist.   Suddenly, I saw her at thirty years of age, in 1968 standing in front of a refrigerator on her tippy toes…her birth control pills were kept there on top.  As she reached for the pills, she dropped them on the floor, the container opened and the last pills rolled under the refrigerator.  According to mother that is how Afrocity came to be.  One missed pill, a canceled abortion appointment, and 9 months later.  And since matter could neither be created or destroyed then why would the powers that be allow it now?

I will not let anyone destroy me or my message.

Autographed Letter Signed,

AFROCITY

And this little Donkey Went “Wee wee wee” all the way home… January 22, 2010

Scott Brown’s win last Tuesday night, represents the epitome of America’s continuing on again off again relationship with the Democratic Party.  The rise and fall of the DNC.

Conservative experts in the study of the rise and fall of the jackass find that root of the problem lies with the common human error of forgetfulness …

From this article at Townhall.com by conservative columnist  Ann Coulter:

Cartoon from Divervsity Lane

That Old Obama Magic is Back

by Ann Coulter

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Democrats are trying to write off Brown’s colossal victory as the standard seesawing of public sentiment that hits both Republicans and Democrats from time to time. As MSNBC’s Chris Matthews explained, it was just the voters saying “no” generally, but not to anything in particular.

Except when Republicans win political power, they hold onto it long enough to govern. The Democrats keep being smacked down by the voters immediately after being elected and revealing their heinous agenda.

As a result, for the past four decades, American politics has consisted of Republicans controlling Washington for eight to 14 years — either from the White House or Capitol Hill — thus allowing Americans to forget what it was they didn’t like about Democrats, whom they then carelessly vote back in. The Democrats immediately remind Americans what they didn’t like about Democrats, and their power is revoked at the voters’ first possible opportunity.

Obama has cut the remembering-what-we-don’t-like-about-Democrats stage of this process down from two to four years to about 10 months. Folks, I’m convinced that if we all work really hard, we can get it down to three months.

Four years of Jimmy Carter gave us two titanic Reagan landslides, peace and prosperity for eight blessed years — and even a third term for his feckless vice president, George H.W. Bush.

Two years of Bill Clinton gave us a historic Republican sweep of Congress, which killed the entire Clinton agenda (with the exception of partial-birth abortion and felony obstruction of justice) — and also gave us two terms for George W. Bush.

And now, merely one year of Obama and a Democratic Congress has given us the first Republican senator from Massachusetts in 31 years.

In other recent news, last November, New Jersey voters, who haven’t voted for a Republican for president since 1988, threw out their incumbent Democratic governor, Jon Corzine. In Virginia, which Obama carried by 6 points a year earlier, a religious-right Republican won the governor’s office by 17 points.

Sen. Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, won his last election in 2006 by 28 points — the largest margin for a Democratic Senate candidate in that state in a quarter-century.

Since voting for the Senate health care bill last Christmas, the once-bulletproof Sen. Nelson not only gets booed out of Omaha pizzerias, but he has also seen his job approval rating fall to 42 percent and his disapproval rating soar to 48 percent. (Meanwhile, the junior senator from Nebraska, Mike Johanns, who voted against the bill, has a job approval rating of 63 percent.)

The Democrats have no natural majority because they have no fundamental principles — at least none that they are willing to state out loud. They are like a drunken vagrant who emerges from the alley to cause havoc every few years. They are the perpetual toothache of American politics.

To be sure, the fact that 52 percent of Massachusetts voters are racist, sexist tea-baggers — i.e., voted for a Republican — means only that the Democrats just went from having the largest congressional majority in a generation to the second largest. But this was “Teddy Kennedy’s seat.” And it was in Massachusetts.

Now, no Democrat is safe.

But the country just got a lot safer.

Ann is right. Things are all grave (pun intended) for the Democrats because they just can’t help themselves without alienating every sane, pragmatic and logical being on the planet.

What goes up always comes down to their inevitable  loss due to their uncanny ability to disappoint people. I know this.

I used to sleep with the party of ass.  I was the wife, mother and child of my now sworn enemy.

During my time as a liberal, I spent many nights cursing at a seemingly endless chronology of television screens which broadcast harmless electoral college maps into my home.  Maps of America all lit up in Republican red. The color of Nancy Regan’s suit and hair and lipstick.  The color of rich people and success.

“Pretenders” is the word my mother used to describe people who were Republicans that were not rich.

“They (farmers) vote for Republicans because they want to pretend they are rich like other white people,” she said visibly disappointed with the results of the 1988 election.

She wanted Michael Dukakis.

She did not care that on the inside she was a Christian that believed all gays and lesbians were sinners.   It was the outside that mattered.  Wearing skin of the donkeys was always about the government doing what they could for her family as blacks.  Though never outspoken on the issue of abortion, mother was pro-life- belittling my aunt for having three abortions in under two years.  That same aunt would later describe  my deceased mother as the most racist woman she had ever met.

“That woman (my mother) was so racist,” my aunt said while discussing her sister during a time when we were feeling a bit guilty about her untimely passing. ” She hated Mexicans and–”

“Jews,”  I inserted flatly.

“Whenever your brother got in trouble in grammar school, if a black teacher did the scolding, it was okay but if the teacher was white…oh boy your momma would raise some hell up in that school…saying how they didn’t understand or know how to teach black kids…No body wanted to say nuthin’ to your brother cause they knew your momma would be up there at the school like–”

“It was embarrassing,”  I said.  Young Afrocity had also been a  recipient of mother’s undying protection against racist teachers.  “She would do the same at my school.  One teacher treated me like I had leprosy after one of mom’s visits. She cursed him out in front of the PTA…Funny how she could do that without one moment’s thought but when it came to getting a job to feed me…well that was another story.”

“Boy she hated Mexicans when she was in Texas,” my aunt went fast forward to my mother’s last years in Houston.

“Yes, she did,” I nodded.

“She wanted America to only have real Americans, no migrants, especially Mexicans…’Whey does this country help foreigners like those Chinese and Mexicans better than they treat their own black peoples who worked as slaves.’  your momma would say…America needs to help Americans.”

We were both silent. This conversation was deep cleansing for both of us.

“Yes, she loved America,” I said. “Perhaps she would have been a Republican, had she not been a black woman,”  I laughed loudly, though it still did not shake my feeling of loss.

The loss of seeing her as a whole woman with a job and goals beyond waiting for a monthly welfare check from Uncle Sam.

I will always wonder.

Autographed Letter Signed,

AFROCITY

Blackhanded Compliments: Plenty of Room at the Shelter for Battered Liberals January 12, 2010

Have you ever been slapped in the face by the most wonderful compliment?

There you were minding your own business and BOOM. Ka-pow !!!  You were bitch slapped with a compliment. It was so beautiful and star appeared before your eyes.  You were so mesmerized by its sheer generosity that you hardly noticed the black eye you had the next morning.

Sad and shameful is the black liberal attempt to drive home the point that Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) is on the right side of history.

I recall with some crystal clear clarity that it was a year ago when the liberals were in an uproar over comments which alluded to Barack Obama as the “Magic Negro”.

The hunt for racists continued with Rev Al Sharpton’s tirade against the monkey cartoon which appeared in the New York Post.

Now as Democrats rush to squash media attention on Harry Reid’s unfortunate words, this latest chapter in liberal hypocrisy only serves as a further demonstration in the danger of identity politics. Some group is always going to get hurt while hoping their needs will be met. When hurt does occur, they keep coming back for more and more and more.

Black America has come to accept the worse from the Democratic Party.   Like a secret society, liberals like Harry Reid can say that our president is the “Magic Negro” .  That is okay because Harry is down with our history and he is one of our peeps.   This characteristic of African Americans is in keeping with the unspoken rule that only blacks can call other blacks the “N-word”.

“What’s up my nigga?”

Harry Reid’s comment was certainly welcome by the liberals as a compliment…

My, my, my the topsy turvy definitions of racism we weave.  From my first hearing of the Harry Reid light skinned comments, I immediately recognized them as racist which fall into the “well meaning white people” category.  Only someone who is arrogant, ignorant or both would perceive Reid’s comments as a compliment.  I should know, I was one of those people. I was ignorant.  During a work situation, in which a Caucasian colleague was assessing my potential, I was referred to as “articulate” Being the daughter of a woman possessing only a GED and a monthly welfare check, I smiled and lapped up my “compliment” Afrocity had arrived.

A white person said I was articulate.

I was not ghetto like the lessor blacks.

I am educated. I have a masters degree damn it and white people notice me. I am sorta young (ahem), gifted and black!!!

Articulate Afrocity was queen of the mainstream white world!!!!  Until a colleague of color informed me of my erroneous black thought patterns.

“Afrocity,” she implored. “That was not a compliment. It implies that you speak well for a black woman while other blacks are ignorant hood rats. It was a pat on the back for being educated- something that every person should be.”

My colleague’s version made perfect sense.  I felt like an idiot.  Selfish with the cocaine like powder of compliment whoring all over my mouth.

From the " Far Side"

She continued, “Think about it. Do you ever hear white people telling other white people that they are articulate?”

Good point. I never ever heard a white person give that particular compliment to anyone except when referring to a person of color.  Shame continued to grip me as I recalled every moment that I did not correct someone for giving me compliments such as the following:

“Afrocity, I am so glad that you are not like other black people. You don’t sound ghetto.”

“Why do you act like a white person?”

“Afrocity is black but I don’t think she knows it.”

“You are the only black person I can be friends with because you don’t act like a nigger.”

“Afrocity, you are proof that all blacks need is a good education and to stop acting black.”

“How come your skin color is so nice and not all black and chalky?”

“Afrocity when I call someone a nigger, I don’t mean you because you are special and different- not like other blacks”

Yes, readers these are all actual statements made to me during my life. Statements in which I was somewhat inclined to speak out against but remained silent because after all they were complimenting me. I was different from other black folk. A treasure among whites who were tired of hearing about black on black crime, teenage pregnancy, and the rising high school drop out rates among black youth.  I was a “Magic Negro”.

"And He's Clean Too" cartoon by Stilton Jarlsberg, Hope n' Change Cartoons.com

In each case, the compliment giver was someone who like Harry Reid, was “on the right side of history”.

All except one, was a liberal Democrat. They stood alongside me at Bill Clinton rally’s.  I was their only black friend and that made me special.  I was teaching them silently that blacks were not all alike.

I was wrong.

Now I know better. What I do not understand is why President Barack Obama does not know better.

When one is abused and so used to hearing derogatory comments, sometimes we are not aware when we are being verbally beat down.  Someone is kind to you.  They give you food and shelter. Nevermind if they step on your tail from time to time. They did not mean it. They are on the right side of your history.  You defend them when they deserve a sharp tongue, chastising them and saying they cannot and should not speak to you in that manner.

You lash out at the likes of GOP chairman Michael Steel.  “That brutha is not with the program. Republicans are not on the right side of history.”

Liberal women are no stranger to battered liberal syndrome. Sarah Palin was a shock to their culture of brow beating conservatives for sexism while turning the other cheek when such transgressions were made by liberal men like Bill “Bubba” Clinton. Nevermind that your “on the right side” of feminist history Svengali master DNC was kicking the shit out of Hillary Clinton when she ran against Barack Obama during the primaries. You dressed your wounds in laughs at lipstick on a pig comments.

Liberals when will you ever learn that racism means racism and sexism means sexism.

Understand the difference between party loyalty and co-dependency.

Start a  publicity campaign against  “Silence of the Libs”.  Help conservatives and liberals fight racism and sexism.

Autographed Letter Signed,

AFROCITY

Thursday Stitch n’ Bitch: I Too Sing For Black America October 22, 2009

Today’s post is dedicated to my new Facebook friend “Sylia”. Thank you for accepting me as I am.

Being considered “black enough” is something I have struggled with my entire life.  This is probably the one issue I did sympathize with presidential candidate Barack Obama on.  Did his Caucasian mother, Ivy League education, and light complexion exclude him for being black? Obviously not since over 95% of African Americans voted for Barack Obama. Had he been a republican candidate, I doubt the results would have been the same.  A sworn Democrat is the only way that one of African descent could ever be President of the United States of America.

After being called a derogatory name once again by an African American Obama supporter (who claimed to be a fiscal conservative yet she embraces Obama’s policies ????) it is clear that being a democrat is obviously essential to ones acceptance in the African American community. When I use the term acceptance I am referring to the sort of acceptance that means your are accepted unconditionally. Without names or prejudgments (which is actually prejudice) .  I am not referring to being the tolerated friend who gets dragged out of the closet when one needs an entertainment boost at the family picnic. You know the sort. I will pretend to respect your values until I am around my liberal friends/family and then I will join in on the can of verbal whoop ass against the black political sheep.

Any situation such as this should cause indignation and protest on the part of the black conservative but for various reasons, conservatives being conservatives, we are usually conservative about displaying our anger.  That is until you are like me and you snap. Not the going street on some folks kind of snapping you see on the Jerry Springer show, but rather the Afrocity no longer gives a damn sort of snapping.

A malnourished Somali child is wrapped in an American "Stars and Stripes" cloth at a therapeutic feeding center at Dagahaley camp in Dadaab in Kenya's northeastern province, June 8, 2009.

The colors of the American flag are red, white and blue…How is it that America has become so black and white? How is it that Black America has become so rigid in its internal diversity that there is no allowance for dialogue which involves “alternative thinking”. Here alternative thinking is really not that alternative when one considers that Caucasians have frequent discussions on conservatism versus liberalism, religion, and sexual preference.  There are black conservative revolutionaries like Thomas Sowell who clearly see the destructive element among African Americans whose sole political identifications lie with the Democrats.  As a race we are devoid of true political understanding. A tension lies between what is logical or self advancing versus what is “black”.

Take for instance the situation with the mayoral race in Atlanta, Georgia.  Atlanta has typically always had a mayor of color, however this soon may change. From this article in the  Black Agenda Report:

From the Black Panther Newspaper, Image by Emory Douglass a frequent illustrator of the newspaper.

The End of Black Politics As We Knew It: Will Atlanta’s Next Mayor Be White? Should We Even Care?

October 21, 2009

by Bruce A. Dixon

36 years of black Atlanta mayors have given birth to a thriving and empowered class of black managers, attorneys and contractors. But even after moving tens of thousands of poor blacks who once lived in public housing to areas beyond the city limits, fully one third of black Atlanta remains below the poverty level, making Atlanta number 5 in black poverty among the 40 largest US cities, according to current US Census data. So have the generation of black mayors and the crew that brought them in really done African Americans that much good?

The unfortunate answers are maybe, and maybe not.

The 1973 election of Maynard Jackson was supposed to be a great victory, among the first tangible fruits of the fifties and sixties Freedom Movement. The days of marching and striking and demonstrating and boycotting and defying unjust laws, black leaders told anybody who would listen, were over. It was time for those among us who were prepared by virtue of their educations, resumés, good suits and connections, to move into the corporate boardrooms that were now ready to accept them, and the political offices they could now be voted into. The mass movement which opened up those doors was disbanded and sent home. Collective action was to be a thing of the past, except for voting and patronizing black businesses.

Guaranteeing the prosperity of the black business class and the black elite, so the gospel went, was the indispensable key to the uplift of entire black communities. Because he assumed office at the beginning of Atlanta’s mega-airport construction project, Maynard Jackson was in a better position to prove this theory of black economic uplift than the first generation of black mayors in places like Newark or Gary or Cleveland. Jackson retained a visionary purchasing exec who skillfully leveraged mayoral power to spawn more than twenty new black millionaires in the first few years of his administration and lay the foundation for the thriving and empowered class of black contractors and professionals who dominate Atlanta’s political life today.

After 36 years, the results of this experiment are in. It’s a failure. Census data on black poverty rates in the 40 largest US cities reveal that the strategies of boosting black businesses, electing black officials, and locking in the prosperity of the black elite have done all those things without lifting black Atlanta any further out of poverty than cities like hard-hit Detroit or Chicago, which hasn’t seen a black mayor since the eighties, and both of which have lower densities of black businesses than Atlanta. In 2008 33.6% of black Atlanta was below the federal poverty rate, a higher number than Philadelphia or Columbus, higher than Houston or Memphis, or Kansas City or even Detroit. Nationally, Atlanta ranks number 5 in black poverty behind Milwaukee, Cleveland, Long Beach and Portland.

Atlanta has this alarming rate of black poverty despite fifteen years of one of the nation’s most aggressive efforts to bulldoze and clear lower income black neighborhoods.

In her book "Flag: An American Story," photographer Lauri Lyons documents our mixed emotions about the Stars and Stripes.

Rather than caring whether or not a political candidate is of the right color and the right political party, shouldn’t we as African Americans be more concerned that the political candidate will do the right thing for our communities?  If most of America’s urban areas such as Atlanta are electing, black elites to office who continue to excel in their personal and professional lives, while their constituents continue to decline and lose their lives…then really what are we accomplishing by voting for such individuals?  Why are Chicagoans continuously electing the likes of Democrat Todd Stroger who raises sales tax to 10.25% in a city with 36% of African Americans below the poverty line?

Curse Afrocity for being a Republican all you want. Call me a slave, mammy, Auntie Tom. Accuse me of being a delusional black woman who curses my skin color every time I look at reflection in the mirror. I too sing for black America. I too care about our situation, but I will be damned if I am going to subvert my political freedom in order to pacify your need to adhere to the black political standard.

Autographed Letter Signed,

AFROCITY