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I wanna be like Mike #BlackenAsiaWithLove
Originally written: 26 November 2001
I wanna be like Mike. Mike is filthy rich, in great physical condition, is well perceived by not only his fans, but also the wider public, and he’s even faithful to his monogamous relationship. Mike is generally agreeable, and you almost never see him expressing aggression towards others outside of the game. Mike has never been ‘exposed’ as gun-totting, neither bashing women nor gays, and he’s even pretty articulate. Rumors spread about his philanthropic efforts the same low-income communities where he grew up in a hard-working family. His best friend and biggest fan is his dad, and Mike is so sensitive and secure with his manhood that he wept before the nation upon his dad’s death. Mike’s at the very top of his craft yet never brags and never rests on his laurels. Mike’s humble and certainly a team player. “Nothin’ but net.” Mike works hard.
This is what America tells the world, and outside of this country (which is neither the center of the universe nor even this tiny planet) many believe that Mike is wholly representative of the American dream. For sleuths of Americans, he’s likely representative of the ideal American. I mean, I am not a sports gladiator nor was I born with a trust fund. Hence, in order to be like Mike, I am in school. I work hard. Thus far I’ve earned a degree from an elite university and am currently enrolled in another. I estimate that so far, my education itself has indebted me over one hundred twenty thousand; and I am nowhere near done. There’s little guarantee that I’ll be wealthy, or even employed. There’s absolutely no guarantee, and in fact, factors are working against me finding a lifelong stable monogamous relationship.
And I am quite privileged. Imagine if you will, most of the world. Most of us have received that chain e-mail which looks at the world population scaled down to one hundred folks. Imagine if this entire Earth’s population were composed of just one hundred people, there would be less than one person with the opportunities I’ve had. So then, how many would have those opportunities like Mike?
Don’t e’rybody wanna be like Mike?
Imagine now, that you have a happy, humble life. You work hard. You live in the south of France and you attend to the vineyard, just as generations upon generations of your ancestors have done before. What are your chances of ever being like Mike? Imagine that you’re a social worker in Kazakhstan with few resources to offer those who present themselves before you, regardless of their destitute. You work hard. Imagine you’re a child soldier in Sierra Leon who was forced to burn his village to the ground after being forced to massacre several relatives. You cling to the drugs your captors make you take numb you when they rape your mother and sister. You work hard. Imagine that you’re sitting with a doctor in Botswana as she tells you that you are HIV+. You join a quarter of Botswana’s population who live with HIV/AIDS. You work hard, but the monthly medical costs of a person living with AIDS is much more than a year’s salary for you and your husband, who is also positive. Now imagine you are their kids. You like basketball, too. And you practice every day with the plastic carton nailed to the tree out back. You work hard. Imagine you’re the same kid, with the same circumstances, only you’re in the ghettos of America, just like Mike. If you work hard, wouldn’t you become an Olympiad? Wouldn’t Obama present you the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the White House with the Gates? Couldn’t your image become a logo?
Be Like Mike in the coupons section of your local Sunday paper!
What are your chances of ever being like Mike? You work hard. Would it anger you that these images bombard your life? This world is big, but Mike’s dream persists…and penetrates every market on Earth. We’re all sold that version of that dream – that anyone, even a kid as regular as Mike, could be like Mike. If he can do it, anyone can (and you can with this can of cola, sports drink, burger, apparel, underwear, or other consumable… be like Mike) Don’t it inspire you? No rim! Don’t you want to be like Mike?
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Are We All God’s Children? #BlackenAsiaWithLove
Warning: This is prose is an original work of fiction about an aching and divided world. May we develop a culture that values the strength to love.
Somebody once tried to tell me that we were all God’s children,
That all people were born into His kingdom,
Flesh of His flesh,
And meant to reign over the Earth on His behalf, with His grace.
I never bought that crap.
If people believed in God, would they alter his garden so drastically, that the earth itself is fighting back for life?
How can we say we were put here by Him,
Only to treat this place like crap!?!
If people believed in God, then
Why do so many of us try to rework the image He gave us?
We prick, pull, peel, perm, slim down and slice up our bodies so dramatically, that
We’re often unrecognizable to ourselves.
If we were created in His image, why do we mutilate it so?
I never bought that crap.
If people really believed in God, then
Why do we give in so easily to jealousy,
Riding the coat-tails of others,
Admonishing those who do good, but
We’re still victims of what we consider to be as ‘perfect’.
You can’t be Woke in this word unless you’re Jesus,
And you see what happened to Him.
If Jesus Christ walked into the White House, The Vatican or #10 today,
They’d crucify Him all over again.
Did I mention today’s Easter Saturday…the one day between crucifixion and resurrection…
The one day when Jesus is truly dead…
Only the believers believe that he’ll come back.
But His followers today would be ready to make Him a martyr all over again…
Just to keep their story straight.
I never bought that crap.
WWJD Today?
If Jesus walked in here today,
I believe he’d be trying to heal the masses with some universal salve that cures all…
But drug companies saw their profits dive and so they crucified Him.
They were out for blood, and with the strength of their lobbying,
Blood is what they got.
If Jesus walked in here today,
I believe he’d feed the needy.
But conservatives would see their power draining,
Since they needed to demonize the poor as welfare losers.
Jesus was giving them a hand up, not a hand-out, and
Many had climbed out of poverty,
Too many climbed out to manipulate, so
They labelled Him a socialist.
Conservatives got together and decided to crucify Him.
If Jesus walked in here today,
I believe he’d rid us of WMD.
That includes guns!
Masses of people are killed by their own guns.
But Jesus wouldn’t want people going around gunning down wild animals for sport, either– Even to the point of extinction.
They called Jesus a tree-hugger because He brought up the near extinction of the North American bison in the same breath as
He gave the stank face to big-game hunters today.
Jesus said:
“Hanging the dead corpse of your kill on the wall was death worship,” and
Questioned if such people could call themselves Christian?
He was here to promote Life.
Jesus said anyone was a hypocrite for restricting access to birth control.
He accused those religious zealots of misusing His name in order to control women’s bodies and wealth through meds and policies.
Jesus promoted reproductive choices with the proceeds people always gave Him.
Jesus even invested in birth control for men, including
A pill, an injectable and a scrotum implant.
He claimed He was empowering men to be able to have that choice.
Worse still, Jesus was not only a carpenter, but an avid horticulturist…
He grew His own.
Everything.
And He had led pilgrimages through forests to hug trees.
He only hugged trees tapped for logging,
Jesus loved hugging trees so much he’d once got several thousand people to go down to the Amazon and chain themselves to the trees high up in the canopy.
He said forests were his Father’s first cities; who were we to tear them down?
Logging was sacrilege.
And as for this tree-hugging crap,
Jesus was a vegan, too.
He said He couldn’t hurt any of God’s creatures, and
Even though He didn’t suggest we all refrain from meat,
He used His YouTube channel to interview more humane animal farmers around the world.
(Oh yeah, there was also that time Jesus went to Davos – uninvited-
He weighed in on fair trade. Isolationists were none too pleased).
He even had vegan cosmetics lines.
He had interviews with His farmers, factory workers, warehousing, delivery, even retailers to show good working conditions and fair pay.
Because of this, consumers said His pricing was fair, and began campaigns to press the other major companies into transparency, too.
LVMH’s sales took nose dive, as did others.
Worse, still, He only marketed His vegan haircare brand, Glory Locks, through
Online tutorials for wooly hair.
His conditioner, Kinky Salvation, became a sensation in the natural hair care community, where
It was discovered that the formula also beat hair loss!
Jesus could regrow hair!
That year, GQ put Him on the cover as The Man of the Millennium.
He caused a bidding war between major cosmetics companies when He agreed to sell His patented mineral foundation, Holy Teint.
There were lines in stores when He released new compact motifs-
The blue dove and the red cross sold out within hours.
Reviews in Vogue, Bazaar, Cosmo and more all said His foundation matched coppery skin tones above all other brands.
His vegan cocoa butter, Divine Skin, had seen sales of Vaseline drop by 50%.
As a vegan,
He was most animate about respecting God’s plants enough not manipulate seed genes that can’t reproduce,
Just so farmers would have to buy more each season.
The giants of pesticides and seeds, beef, logging all got together to take Him down.
Big chicken, Big Fish and Big Pork all joined in the Jesus bashing, too,
For they knew he’d soon come for them.
He’d already posted a nasty comment on a viral video about an industrial chicken farm, for which Netflix had given Him a ten-part special called: Unholy Food, Inc.
He went all vegan, too!
Not even honey was safe,
And the episodes of palm oil and avocado saw those commodities’ stocks dive the day after each debut!
Now, that’s gangster!
Jesus was no joke!
At Michael Jackson’s funeral,
Jesus did an interpretive dance to the artist’s Will You Be There.
At the end of His performance, He suddenly grabbed the mic in tears and said:
“I love my Jackson 5 nostrils, and I believe if Michael had, too, he’d still be here.”
Katherine and Joe Jackson just hung their heads.
‘I love my Jackson 5 nostrils’ quickly became a meme and
Later incorporated into a pop song.
He was accused of being anti-white.
In an MTV interview about the controversial lyrics, He said:
“The clear message here is that…
What we consider beautiful too often has too little to do with our authentic selves.
We do the exact same to mother Earth,
Digging, prodding, cementing over and dirtying up the air and waters of My father’s kingdom.”
Jesus was deep.
He was an avid reader, too.
Jesus wept when He read the Letter from a Birmingham Jail.
When asked for comment He simply said:
“So few in My Father’s kingdom have the strength to love.”
For the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots,
Jesus accepted invitations to lead Pride parades all over the world.
People thought he’d had enough in New York, Chicago, Boston, LA and of course, San Fran.
But many were surprised when Jesus was on the first float at Black Gay Pride in Atlanta and DC!
None were shocked, then, when
Jesus showed up at London and Paris Pride and Christopher Street Day in Berlin.
But no one, and I mean no one,
Imagined for a second
That He’d dress up silly and
Dance with a gay Christian Carnival Crew at Cologne’s CSD Day!
When did He even have time to practice those moves?
Who knew He had such an angelic voice…
Until they heard His rendition of George Michael’s Jesus to a Child.
He brought everyone to tears that day in Heumarkt Square.
Plus, everybody loved the performance He did with Conchita Wurst of Beyoncé and Lady Gaga’s Telephone.
The two bearded men literally re-enacted the whole music video !
Who knew Conchita could do Gaga drag?
They popped-locked-n-rolled in spandex just like in the video.
Who knew Jesus had a black-boy-bubble-butt…
Like somebody cut a basketball in half and hung it off His tail bone.
Both videos went viral.
This was way too much for those in Africa who’d used His name to bash gay people.
They buckled down and passed anti-gay laws,
Nigeria making sure they out did Uganda.
They dismissed this Jesus as evidence of the decay in European values.
When He accepted the invitation to Pride in Cape Town and Nairobi…
Those in the region got ready.
Pride was canceled in Uganda.
Others roused lynch mobs from the pulpit.
They crucified Him all over again.
If Jesus walked in here today,
I believe he’d heal the disabled.
Jesus wouldn’t heal their conditions by some miracle of making a blind man see, a deaf man hear, or a crippled man walk.
Nah, nothing so simple.
Jesus removed what really hurts – fear and discrimination.
He targeted the stigma against disability.
No longer viewing different abilities as a liability,
Jesus undermined entire industries built around keeping them down.
Suddenly, office workers had to compete with the wheel-chair bound because,
Who needs to be able to walk into an office?
People had already seen how Autistic Savants could
Show us patterns in our lives that unfold life’s mysteries,
But Jesus showed the people how every person of every ability had something to contribute.
Charities for the poor fell because,
There were no more poor people – everyone had enough.
Politicians who’d been shoring-up votes by vilifying the Other as leachers could no longer galvanize their base around these fears.
The people eventually elected politicians who represented the people.
Somebody had to “take the country back, to make it great again,” so
Big Lobbying fought back.
Jesus had removed the control large corporations had over these politicians, so
They crucified Him.
Needless to say, because Jesus intervened,
There was universal healthcare that cared for the whole body – any body.
They resisted calling Him a socialist, but when Corona happened,
Everyone saw that unlike society, diseases don’t discriminate.
More of those who confessed to follow Him could see the sense in universal healthcare.
Insurance companies got together with Big Pharma and crucified Jesus for he’d taken away their monopoly.
Jesus exposed all their tricks, from
Inventing diseases to which only they had the cure, to
Hiding antidotes when they could instead sell us life-long supplies of meds that
Keep us just barely alive.
Jesus was fed up with humanity, but never gave up.
Jesus not only made room for the disabled, but
Made sure everyone got looked after.
He had to die.
He was much too good for this world.
It was clear to them that the only good Jesus was a dead Jesus –
The dead one they’d created in their holy books.
This resurrected one just wouldn’t do.
So, Jesus had gone too far.
War-mongers would vilify Him in the UN, and
Circumvent the authority of the world community, and
Wage a military campaign to track Him down.
For these war-mongers would charge Jesus with hoarding WMD.
They preferred the Iron Curtain to the Prince of Peace, so
They convincingly made the public scared of Him.
Big men wielding big sticks hunted Him down,
During a 40-day Vipassana retreat He’d taken in the Judean desert.
24-hour News spent months replaying drone and Body-Cam footage of His last moments,
Where their bullets crucified Him on the spot.
Just as they’d done for Osama Bin Laden,
Crowds of Christians gathered that night at the capitol to celebrate the blood-shedding.
They were death worshippers.
They even built a statue of Him on that spot to commemorate His sacrifice.
Crowds gathered there each Easter for festivities.
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Classified/Wanted Ads #BlackenAsiaWithLove
JOBS
Factory seeks to promptly fill 3 vacancies for late-night, high-security, discrete deliveries. Must be available 24/7 and show evidence of advanced combat and weapons training. Veterans welcome. Preference given to diversity candidates. Valid driver’s license required. Security devices and vehicle provided by employer. Paid weekly in cash.
VOCATIONAL – FINE ARTS
Wanted: A 18-25-year-old male is needed for a forbidden love-themed pop video. This is a well-known, bleach-blond, blue-eyed country artist’s pop debut. Casting requires an exotic, biracial type with boyish looks and natural hazel/green/blue eyes. Must be skilled in street dance.
RETAIL
Designer swimwear shop seeks Guest Relations specialists for flagship shops in The Hamptons and Malibu. Must be at least 6’3”, very dark-skinned, athletic, and deliciously beach ready. Funky hair a plus! Think Tyson Beckford meets Dennis Rodman. Duties include: Serving champagne, occasional overnight travel and beach volleyball with our exclusive clientele. Seasonal packages include: On-site room and board, comprehensive healthcare, professional grooming services and uniforms from our latest collection. No speaking, reading or writing required.
SPORTS
Streetballers wanted! Did you grow up dunking basketballs in a milk crate nailed to a tree? Have you battled the ghetto’s roughest players on the court? Then the New England Groten Academy wants you! NEGA is among America’s most elite, K-12 boarding schools for boys. NEGA’s Basketball program has won 3 Boarding School League championships and alumni just built a state-of-the-art athletic facility. NEGA’s athletes also train a futuristic virtual reality environment designed by GTA creators – real streetball simulations. The program is massively popular in the community, and welcomes NEGA staff as family. Nestled in pristine Vermont, 99% of NEGA graduates go on to study in the Ivy League. So, if you’re the champ of ghetto street ball, NEGA wants you!
“Help wanted—male” classified ad, Chicago Defender
General Research & Reference Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundation.
December 1, 1917*
PERSONALS
Couple seeks big, black buck for ravishment and master/slave role play. We’re are adventurous, old, white, middle-aged, middle-class couple newly empty nested. You: Tall, dark, hung, handsome and comfortable acting out domestic violence scenes. Tattoos, gun wounds and knife-scars a bonus. Extra paid for prison-time served.
Turn to pages 3-7 for pretty little white girls. There are plenty of new ads from kitchens to bedrooms and boardrooms seeking supporting roles.
Next week, no more of this diversity crap.
—
Afterwards:
Stuck at home on lockdown, I have (unwittingly), more regularly engaged with much more TV. Searching for entertainment, I’m continually amazed by the permutations of harmful stereotypes. Since childhood I’ve often wondered about the labour that buttresses this trade in harmful stereotypes. In my daily role as an educator, I expose my students (and I) to myriads of ways of seeing. This piece is one response to the cognitive dissonance between the two spheres of social and intellectual instruction. Don’t worry, books still live!
*https://teachers.phillipscollection.org/artwork/help-wanted%E2%80%94male-classified-ad-chicago-defender
Featured image: https://www.newspapers.com/clip/478/emma-martin/
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DNA Tinkering/Pandora’s box. #BlackenAsiaWithLove
Who would choose to be black?
To have dark skin?
Dark brown eyes?
A wide nose?
Or yellow skin?
A round face?
Not-so-blue eyes?
Who would choose this?
If given a choice, if you could go to the store…
And pick out a kid?
Now remember, like every parent, you want your kid to have a happy life.
Successful, easy, fulfilled…
All those things.
So, don’t blonds have more fun?
OK, so those of you who bleach your hair,
Would you choose to have blond kids?
Skip the bleach?
Or, for those who bleach their skin…
Would you tweak your kid’s DNA to give them lighter skin?
Or a more narrow, acauline nose?
Thinner calves and longer legs?
Plumper lips and longer eyelashes?
Or double eye-lids?
An angular jawline?
Breast size?
Would you have a kid that looked like you?
Do you hate yourself so much that if given the choice,
Would you erase you?
There is a race for technology right now…
One that would allow gene editing,
And needless to say, I don’t mean ‘jean’ editing like painting your denim,
Or taking a pair of shears to them, trimming them in places, selectively poking holes in others…
Needless to say, I don’t mean that,
But, ‘genes’ as in genetics,
As in DNA editing.
And not just going to a doctor to choose to have a kid- or not.
And no, I don’t mean going to a medical professional and having them test you and your partner’s blood to see if you both carry the same deteriorating genes.
Did you know that
In some places, if you and your fiancé carry the gene for some diseases, then
The state won’t sanction your relationship.
And no, I don’t mean like your fiancé being of the so-called wrong religion or the same gender.
But what about so-called diseases like Huntington’s Disease?
There are literally a litany of diseases that require better research and funding just to save lives.
And they jailed that doctor in China who gene-edited HIV immunity.
Though clearly more people are willing to pay for a thinner nose than a Sickle Cell test.
But now we have designer babies: Eye color, intelligence and height?
Freckles?
Earwax stickiness can be selected in a lab.
Fertility clinics routinely remove cells from embryos to check for diseases, sex, eye-color…
But you can go to the shop on the corner now, and
Change your hair color, and
On the next corner, you can change boring brown eyes to blue, magenta, hazel…
Anything but boring brown of the majority of the planet, BTW.
Select babies?
I am black.
And gay.
And in spite of my many other attributes – like my faith, my values or my politics –
These two singular characteristics have uniquely marked my life.
What if I could change these?
Being gay has caused me to doubt my own mother’s love,
Doubt my own allegiance to my community due to open homophobia towards me.
For many, now,
A gay foetus is NOT a viable foetus.
For them, gays are an ugly smear that must be erased.
Gay life is so abhorrent that they cause it harm at every turn…
Eschewing every opportunity god gives them to show compassion.
Would you edit us out of existence?
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News Flash #BlackenAsiaWithLove #SpokenWord
This Spoken word piece was inspired by watching the TV news with my aunt Shirley. Shout-out to Evelyn from the Internets, because I’m calling in Black tomorrow.
Audience/Reader: Hum, snap, step, clap, sing ‘Another One Bites the Dust’
Newsflash at dawn:
After several overnight reports of disturbances,
Police are on the lookout this morning for a smart negro male,
Accused of bringing up racism and angering the masses.
The suspect is considered armed with intelligence,
and other deadly weapons such as pen and paper.
Bang!
9 0’clock morning News:
Police are on the lookout for a smart negro male,
Accused of bringing up racism and angering the masses.
Suspect is considered armed with intelligence and other deadly weapons.
The public is advised NOT to approach the suspect,
And notify authorities immediately…
Immediately…
So he can be shot.
Bang!
Bang! 
News at noon.
Police are on the lookout for a smart negro male,
Accused of bringing up racism and angering the masses.
This station has obtained exclusive video of today’s deadly police shooting captured by a member of the public.
This exclusive footage posted to social media shows the suspect reading a book on colonization, before advising authorities who responded immediately…
When authorities arrived,
Suspect was found holding a book,
Defacing it with pens and markers as officers approached.
This exclusive video captured by several members of the public shows suspect refusing the officers’ orders to release the book.
Suspect is seen raising the book,
At which point officers fired 32 shots,
Twelve of which landed in the suspect’s head.
After anti-terrorist units spent several hours clearing the area of any potential radical activity,
Emergency services were allowed on the scene at which point the suspect was pronounced dead.
Bang! Bang!
Bang!
Evening news flash:
This station has new, exclusive CCTV footage from the Central Library where the suspect loitered for several hours.
The suspect is captured on several different cameras,
And can even be seen interacting with several members of the public.
An anonymous informant who works for the library claims that the suspect left several notes in the suggestion box, demanding the library, quote:
“…rectify the deafening void of Black autobiographies in the library’s Great American biographies collection.”
The anonymous library informant said that the suspect always sat at the same table near the ‘African-American literature’ section,
And had been seen furiously taking notes while going through stacks of books.
The anonymous informant says that the library received
“Several complaints about these disturbances.”
None of the complainants ever went on record.
News at 5!
This station’s investigations have also uncovered the Central library’s exclusive files on the suspect.
The suspect joined the library on September 11th of 1984 under a student account and a different name. That’s right.
We’ve obtained an exclusive ‘News at 5’ interview with the suspect’s fourth-grade teacher who initially helped the suspect set-up the library account.
The teacher describes the suspect as quote disruptive and “radical to the core,”
The teacher claims that during a history lesson, the suspect once referred to this nation’s founding fathers as “Unpatriotic, patriarchal, racist oligarchs with a God complex.”
Indeed, this suspect has a pattern of radical, anti-American sentiments.
While these troubling incidents were well before the terrible radical Islamic attacks of 9-11,
The pattern suggests early radicalization!
Authorities are still trying to understand why the suspect checked out a Koran,
And other books on Islam,
Just days after those terrible, Islamic attacks.
The suspect visited the library regularly and checked out biographies of other known negro Muslim radicals such as Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali.
Experts believe that reading these texts lead to the suspect’s radicalization.
From 2006 to 2007,
The suspect checked out every collection of essays by James Baldwin.
This triggered the FBI’s terrorist watch protocols.
Nightly news flash:
New evidence has surfaced regarding today’s tragic case of domestic terrorism.
Authorities have found that the suspect was quote very active
In the known radical hate group Black-and-Proud.
Our investigative reporters have uncovered proof that
The suspect was a key member of this radical hate-group.
Apparently, authorities had infiltrated Black-and-Proud’s on-line forum as early as 2006.
An anonymous police informant closely tied to the case believes that the suspect may have worked within an organized cell within Black-and-Proud.
Authorities are not calling it a terrorist plot,
But are calling on the public for any leads.
This station has obtained exclusive footage of Black-and-proud operatives conducting an indoctrination program for kids as young as five.
In this newly obtained footage from Black-and-Proud’s own website,
The suspect can be seen reading portions of the autobiography of Malcolm X to what looks like a negro kindergarten class.
Authorities are calling it a justified homicide.
Case closed.
—
Photo credit:
The most powerful art from the #BlackLivesMatter movement, three years in
Washington Post, July 2016
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A Walk in the Park. #Hanoi #VietNam #BlackenAsiaWithLove
A Walk in the Park.
Yesterday I decided to go for a walk. The third-largest park in Hanoi sits just across the street from my flat, and by crossing I’d walk right into the central district., heading straight along one large avenue on the other side of the park, I’d hit the old town. Taking another avenue, I’d reach the famed Hoan Kiem Lake. I could even pass the luxury mall along the way, plenty of coffee shops, and a diversity of street-food stalls en route, too. That is how I’d planned to spend this Saturday. But, I got entangled in the park.
During the day there’s plenty of hustle and bustle in the park. As a backdrop, the grounds are meticulously maintained by a large team of workers. There are motorbike parking-lots just inside each entrance, where an attendant is stationed well into the night. Plus, there’s always some tidying up going on, such as blowing leaves, trimming trees, gathering rubbish, and planting. Each dawn and dusk the park fills with patrons doing an array of physical exercises, from running and walking to groups of ladies doing aerobics. There are people fishing, running, gyming, napping, skating, skate-boarding, dog-walking courting, gaming, etc. Periodically, there are a range of festivals in the park, including the vegan fest just a few weeks ago. Late nights, I’ve even seen large-scale fishing with huge nets dredged out by boats across the entire lake.
Two nights ago, I got to see my first Vietnamese chess match. Two older men played while hosts of folks looked on. Sat beneath one of the park’s large lamps, they used a canvas ‘board’ rolled out on the ground, and round chips of wood (plastic?) painted with Chinese characters to mark each position.
There are plenty of tea kiosks and stalls serving everything from fresh coffee and ice-tea to bottled drinks – including beer – and packaged snacks to charcoal roasted sweet potatoes. This only increases with moderate weather throughout the year.
During the day, there’s loads for kids of all ages. There are playground areas for different age groups from toddlers to adults. Heck, there’s an entire set of bright yellow outdoor gym equipment for adults bordering the huge sand playground for the smallest kids. Featured in the park’s online advertisements, there’s a merry-go-round, paddle-boating on the lake, bumper cars and a toy train around the park with stations named after each large Vietnamese city. Day or night, there are generally people wandering. Notably, however, there are always plenty of men and women walking in the park at night even late-night, including women walking alone – a sight I’ve rarely seen in most parts of the world. The park has its own sense of time and it don’t cost a dime.
This Saturday, it was already after 2 o’clock, and I had arranged to meet the B-boys at 7:30 in a corner of the big amphitheater at the center of the park. So, time was limited. It’s a large park and without thinking, I started along my regular walking route, as opposed to heading directly across through town. I was operating on autopilot from my regular after-dinner walks in the park, and turned left when I should have turned right. This detour lasted 4 hours.
My daily walks are awesome. I get to pass a plethora of healthy temptations as this park is an authentic site of sociality and physicality. Schools are closed due to Corona virus so the park was eerily empty the first few days at one point. Now, the park’s chock full of folks.
The first pause at the exercise areas so took a few moments to stretch. My muscles were all aching from my first B-boy tutorial the night before, so this was more of a compulsion. They have two parallel bars that are a great height for Barre. A dancer can’t pass up a good Barre. That lasted another half hour, then I was on the go. Just a few steps away from this exercise area are the hacky sack courts.
The courts were full, so I couldn’t resist catching a few matches. The game fills me with sheer wonder, not least of which due to the athleticism. When the area around the lake in the central district (Hoan Kiem) is pedestrianized on weekends, circles of hacky sackers form in the middle of the wide avenues. There’re typically teens of all ages going ‘round and round. In the park, however, there are courts painted on the ground at many of this park’s nooks and intersections, extending far beyond the biggest collection. The courts allow for a whole host of net games from badminton to volleyball, and of course hacky sack. Though none of the regular players I watch on my morning walks was around, the courts were filled with people of all ages playing doubles or triples. Age is no bar in this game!
Bridge to one of the islands in the lake during Lunar New Year
After a few matches, I moved on towards town. Along the way, there is a long straight stretch of the park along a major avenue bordering the lake. Where this stretch finally bends, there is another outdoor theater area, complete with a raised stage. Between uses, the stage area houses giant animal sculptures made of plants, which decorate the park during Lunar New Year.
The animal figures are revived annually in rotation. A monkey, snake, rat, dragon, pig, tiger, giraffe and more all stand at least 3X3 meters. Their large bodies are often covered with ever-greens, while the faces and other features are filled in with different coloured/textured plants each year. The large, organic animal sculptures provide a wonderful backdrop for dancing on the stage, but also, they are evidently an apt obstacle course for drones.
Droning is incredible! There were both kids and adults practicing navigating drones using the Virtual Reality head-gear. It was mesmerizing, so I ended up sticking around for nearly an hour. One guy was practicing loops between the giraffe’s legs, then free-falling over the surrounding high canvas of trees. A little girl was using a visually controlled drone. Whew!
Time was ticking, so I decided to give it a go and at least make it to the nearest coffee shop to sit and write. I continued on my way along the shortest route towards town and along the way, were more courts, two large rectangles painted on the ground. In passing, I approached 3 boys playing badminton on another court. One of them, the shortest, approached me holding out a racket and birdie, as if to say: Wanna play? Why not, I thought, how often does one get the chance? Then, the little dude placed the racket on the bench atop the others and gestured towards them for me to choose. I hadn’t played this game in decades.
At first, the short dude and I played while the other two watched; after displaying my lack of skill, I gestured for the others to join in. We played doubles for a while, again, my first time in decades. What surprised me was the level of instruction each boy offered me. As we played, my teammate would call at me, then demonstrate different ways to serve. Our teams even swapped players, my new teammate offering more pointers. There were no rules and we didn’t keep score; the objective was to keep the birdie in play. We all laughed at each other’s mistakes and cheered at each one’s wins. When I passed a group of adults playing on the next court, I was reminded that I am a genuine amateur!
Badminton is a popular game here. At the very moment that I am writing, I am sitting on one of the concrete benches just eyeshot from my exit towards town. The benches encircle one of many large gazebos in the park, where a family has just shown up and set up a net. I didn’t even notice that there were three courts painted around the gazebo. Two older guys quickly get a match going, and on the other court two women get warmed up, while 4 kids play under the gazebo. Then, the older woman hits the birdie back-n-forth with the smallest kid, while on another court, the younger woman plays doubles with the other three kids. Now, a middle-aged man approaches with more rackets in tow. He quickly puts down his bag, strips off his jacket, grabs his racket and jumps in the match. Others filter in and eventually all the courts and benches are full.
By then, I was at another cross-roads. I had eaten up nearly all my time. How could I have spent the whole day in the park? Now, I barely had time to eat, as the B-boys said that I should do so at least 2 hours before practice. I headed home, had a beef Pho along the way, dropped off my backpack, and got changed to go back to the park and dance!
—
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Happiness is, happiness ain’t. #BlackenAsiaWithLove
Outside of ecumenical discussions, far too little is said about the subject of happiness. This is a drawback of western secularism, as discussed below. In the world of work, Occupational Health and Leadership have taken up this mantle, yet still only manage to approximate happiness through measurable factors that contribute to increasing satisfaction and decreasing dissatisfaction (i.e. Herzberg’s 2-Factor Theory). Taking Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs into greater account, that understanding eventually incorporated terms such as wellbeing. Yet, again, outside of ‘continuing professional development’ aimed at improving workplace efficiency and effectiveness, far too few resources seem devoted to higher needs such as belonging, esteem and self-actualisation.
Those management terms all circle back to mindfulness, to personal empathy and the ability of both the individual and environment to foster dialogue in order to transform conflict. Be it conflicts or differences in needs/wants between co-workers – or across the bargaining table – the ability to communicate and find common ground is increasingly the skill that distinguishes human talents from Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Now, at least, there is a greater focus on developing so-called ‘soft skills’. This trend responds to our failure to contend with an increasing reliance on, and addiction to technology. What’s more, still, as technology increasingly supplants entire portfolios of routine management duties, how will future workplaces valorise empathy within known matrices?
How do we teach students the value of happiness, the practice of compassion and the skills for effective communication, negotiation and conflict resolution? In so far as leading culturally diverse workforces, the research is as clear as a prayer bell: Innovation requires dialogue – actual talk between equals. Innovation is therefore built on collaboration. Collaboration requires cooperation. Cooperation requires commitment. Commitment cultivates inclusion. Inclusion fosters commitment. Commitment depends on trust-building. Trust-building requires dialogue. Cooperation must be practiced and rehearsed, in addition to celebrated and applauded. We are effectively teaching how to work within a community. Those tools must play the greater part of management toolkit, over and well-over more punitive means of enforcing compliance to rules.
“I’m not here to be your friend.”
Those are words I hope no one would ever hear neither in the classroom from educators, nor in the workplace from managers. It implies the speaker’s inability to distinguish friendliness from being friends. It is indeed a thin line. Social media interactions with colleagues have virtually erased that line – at least re-drawn it. Irregardless – as we say in Kentucky for emphasis – kindness matters! I genuinely pity those who have not learned kindness at home or school; it’s traumatic.
In order to collaborate, to genuinely work together, requires some level of friendliness, beyond cordiality. It is irrational to lead through control and project the image of being in control through distant, dispassionate unfriendliness. BTW, the notion of dispassionate rationality and objectivity have been historically valorized academia even when it was clear.
I would not be the first university student to observe (though lacking the skills to explain): “The professors who prided themselves on their capacity to be objective were most often those who were directly affirmed in their caste, class, or status position” (hooks, 2003: 128). Their inability to connect, acknowledge and come to peace with their own emotionality and spirituality. “At times objectivism in academic settings is a smokescreen, masking disassociation (ibid: 129). Objectivity is a crutch:
“Denying the emotional presence and wholeness of students may help professors who are unable to connect focus more on the task of sharing information, facts, data, their interpretations, with no regard for listening to and hearing from students. (ibid: 129).”
The smoke and mirrors masks a pain so cutting so deep that skilled educators carve it out of their work, and further discourage it in peers and students. Sadly, I believe that managers have been taught to operate under the same logic. Hurt people hurt people.
Hurt people hurt people.
Today, we’re better able to acknowledge the maturity needed to reveal both one’s strengths and weaknesses – including with subordinates. The key skill is emotional flexibility and consequentially, the ability to seek and offer support. Failing to do so reduces opportunities for team members’ whole-hearted contributions of knowledge and skills. While it is still professional to keep some amount of distance between one’s private and personal lives, social media is a typical example of how those norms no longer apply. Yeah, it’s weird if you’re not Facebook friends with at least some of your colleagues.
What are responsible ways to use one’s public image that aligns with our own personal ambitions and goals? This was simply NOT an area of thinking in the classroom prior to social media. Yet, ‘bullying’ is a relatively modern concept brought to light by the LGBTQ community response to the suicide of a university student as a result of cyber-bullying because he was gay.
In 2010, Tyler Clementi, a first-year university student in America, was secretly filmed being intimate with another man by his roommate and a mutual friend, (or so he believed). The two colluded to threaten to out Clementi in what they all knew as a homophobic (university) environment. This resulted in Clementi’s suicide. Imagine such blackmail, bullying and harassment at work! What skills should the educational environments have provided Tyler and his roommates?
The response from the queer community was clear: Hope. For example, activist/journalist Dan Savage launched an internet campaign that encouraged LGBTQ+ youth, which was picked up by mainstream media outlets and entertainment. The #ItGetsBetter campaign quickly amasses hundreds of posts by celebrities of all flavors to combat anti-gay bullying. Things did get better. We put bullying on the map! Be it work or school, bullying is no longer tolerated…at least formally.
Yet, what of genuine happiness, not just survival? While I can’t speak for every faith, the notion of happiness if central to Buddhist philosophy. “The gratification of desire is not happiness,” writes Buddhist teacher Daisaku Ikeda in his 2017 essay collection, Hope is a Decision. What’s more, individual happiness is tied to our interconnectivity. The Soka Gaikkai, a global Buddhist organisation mentored by Ikeda, operates under the slogan “World peace through individual happiness” to acknowledge the interconnectivity of both humanity as a whole, and the place of happiness with the broader objective of peace.
Seen one way, happiness is neatly balanced at the tip of the pyramid of needs, and its inverse: wants and desires. For clarity: While adults may scoff when a teenager says they “need” the latest iPhone or they’ll ‘die’ we responsibly know that those youthful aches and pains are as real to them as any physical trauma one might suffer. We know that showing up at school with the latest cool gadget has as much to do with the higher-order needs for them as we may wish them to perceive their basic needs such as food, shelter and security. Hence, the parenting task becomes one of teaching skills to contextualise such desires and value delayed gratification.
These lessons are too often relegated to parenting due to the secularisation of schooling and workplaces in the west. Western secularism often fails to distinguish religion from spirituality, to the detriment of the latter since we remain staunchly Christian societies, especially to the extent of chauvinism when faced with an ‘other’. Any non-Christian in the west can see the secularism is superficial – even Stevie Wonder can see that. Echoing her own call for greater attention to spirituality in secular education bell hooks quotes HH Dalai Lama’s thoughts in the need for the distinction in the second installment of her seminal teaching trilogy:
Spirituality I take to be concerned with those qualities of the human spirit—such as love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony—which brings happiness to both self and others. … (hooks, ‘Spirituality in Education’ in Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope, 2003 pg. 157-164)
Makes place in and around the classroom. As a lecturer, I am a coach, guide, mentor, leader and have even befriended students (particularly after their graduations). One primary aim and source of satisfaction in the classroom is facilitating values-based dialogue across differences in perspectives. My role is not just to dump selective parts of my knowledge into students’ heads, nor simply to train certain skills. Nay, we’re always teaching how to live in a diverse community.
To get more in-formation:
- hooks, bell. Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. New York: Routledge, 2003. Print.
- Ikeda, Daisaku (2017). Hope Is a Decision: Selected Essays. Middleway Press. ISBN 978-0-9779245-8-5.
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Surviving Corona. #BlackenAsiaWithLove
In my Sabbatical year spent here in Vietnam, it would be disingenuous NOT to speak about the Coronavirus. Without being hyperbolic, this is a crisis of every proportion. Here are a few of my observations.
Today it was reported that the Whistle-blower, Dr. Li Wenliang, died of the virus. At the epicentre, Chinese health officials initially claimed the virus would peak and subside within a week’s time. There are claims that those predictions were made due to reticence to pass bad news up the political chain. Undoubtedly, we will celebrate him as a hero, for his efforts to alert the world while Corona was just an epidemic. For context: This same week, one of my state’s senators outed the whistle-blower who originally brought to light the massive corruption of the current White House occupant who was just acquitted. At the same time, in the middle of the (illegal) trade war between these two nations, Chinese health officials reference American health standards to legitimize their efforts to control this pandemic on the international stage – not the W.H.O. If my head weren’t spinning from all this news, then certainly even I am suspicious of my every cough or sneeze to the level of paranoia. Or, perhaps this pseudo-medical mask I am wearing is just rather annoyingly pinching my ears.
M-m-m-my Corona!
Sitting on the ground, people are handling it reasonably well. That is to say, no one is running around screaming or losing their heads. Logistically, the virus could hardly have come at a better time. The city was already emptied out by those who had returned home to celebrate the Lunar New year, known in Vietnam as Tet. The weekend folks were set to return, orders came from on high to close all educational institutions, due to the obvious fact that classrooms huddle groups of people into close, closed quarters – infection heaven. Heck, classrooms are built as fertile grounds! Morally, it’s the exact opposite: What an unsettling ending to the region’s most festive season!
Worse still, there is a travel ban from China, while estimating that “Chinese visitors comprised almost 30 percent of the approximate 15.5 million international travelers who arrived in either Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City last year and translated into $30 billion from both the domestic and international market.” Who really can imagine the wider economic impact!?!
On my sabbatical, I am working in the language centre of a partner institution of my home university in the UK, which I got to know in my role as Senior Lecturer in International Business. Here, my desk is merely 15 feet away from the customer service desks where students come to register from the language classes, or any one of the ESL tests they must pass to graduate. Basically, at some point, every student at this university must come into this office. Additionally, we are a regional German-language testing centre, garnishing many folks from China (recall that travel ban!). While there are usually 6-7 ladies manning the kiosks, only two to three were called in the first few days to address students’ needs. Now, each day there is only one. Yesterday afternoon, it was announced again that all educational institutions would be closed for yet another week. Since I know that only a few of my colleagues are from Hanoi and are here with their parents, I suppose most of these ladies are home looking after their kids. I cannot imagine how other parents without grandparents nearby are dealing with this crisis.
A colleague told me last week that universities always reserve time within the term for such contingencies, but I imagine two full weeks of cancelled classes is a stretch. Certainly, my concerns have shifted towards the graduating seniors this term. Then, there are also the hourly-paid language teachers our/any centre hires. What about their labour? What’s more, our university is huge and sits next to at least 3 more universities, not to mention the 3 pre-schools I pass on my walk home. Again, all primary, secondary and tertiary schools are all closed for a second week after Tet. There are over 30,000 students, lecturers and staff. My husband has a similar gig down the road which boasts many, many more.
There are entire food and transportation economies woven around all these campuses. Most visibly, there are a host of corporate café chains, as well as typically Hanoian tea-stalls and street-food kiosks selling fast-food ranging from variations of noodle soups, to anything that can be deep-fried, steamed or cooked over a charcoal fire. Naturally, this Kentuckian spends way too much time at the grilled chicken lady. She does feet, as well as drumsticks and wings which she stretches out onto skewers and serves with hot sauce (so there’s no need to carry any in my bag). Most of these food outlets closed for Tet, but many simply have not re-opened since. The few that are open are virtually empty, save for the few pedestrians and commuters passing by, or the motorbike taxis that station themselves around each entrance to the campus alongside the tea-stalls. At least apparently, their persistence offers moral support, though it is possible that economically, there ain’t enough business between them. Enough?
Since the outbreak, I’ve regularly received text messages from the Ministry of Health, as has been widely reported in global media. The messages are in Vietnamese, which Google translates in 1-click just by copying the text. This is all –perhaps strangely- reassuring. No, it is very reassuring. The same messages are also sent straight to my phone via regionally popular chat programs such as Zalo. ‘Google Translate’ is integrated into that programme, too, like a virus. There, MoH’s chat messages include links to extended articles, especially details on how individuals can protect themselves, plus further info such as: “All hospitaliszation costs, medications, and testing costs for nCOV-positive patients are free.” There are layers of ways of spreading knowledge about the impact of potential outbreaks of disease, especially since SARS. It’s refreshing to see social media used so purposefully.
The streets are vacuous and quiet. Ordinarily, Hanoi is a loud, crowded, motorbike ridden city, so this peace is…(sigh)…morbid. Again, there are no visible signs of panic on the streets. It’s lunchtime here in the office. While I was engulfed in writing this blog-post, everyone else has quietly slipped away. This is the first time that I find myself alone in this building. All I hear are birds chirping outside, and a few horns blowing in the distance. The parking lot is empty. I’m going home.
For the courage of Dr. Li Wenliang (Photo from TheGuardian.com). May his family and friends at least know that his courage to speak truth to power has saved lives. May he Rest in Power.
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The Invisible Knapsack of Patriarchy: A Thought Experiment that totally plagiarises Peggy McIntosh. #BlackenAsiaWithLove
It’s frustrating dealing with liberals, fighting over the word ‘feminist’, when we’re all clearly united against patriarchy. Who are these man-hating feminists denouncers speak of? I have nothing against the term “womanist,” coined by my favourite novelist Alice Walker. This is especially true since I have familiarized myself with generations of earlier feminist work by elite, white women who seemingly ignored the women of colour whose labour gave them the leisure time to write and publish those works (for more on this, see bell hooks’ iconic 1984 Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, or Patricia Hill Collins’ ground-breaking 2000 Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment ). Yet, why do we allow ourselves to be so split? As early as 1851, proto-feminist Sojourner Truth delivered the words ‘Ain’t I a Woman’ decades before Suffrage, yet we allow illiberals to divide-and-conquer – us! We, liberals, split hairs with one another at every turn, meanwhile right-wingers organise towards our total demise.
So, for your reading pleasure, I’ve totally copied Peggy McIntosh’s Invisible Knapsack of White Privilege (1989). I’ve inserted “gender” where she originally wrote “race,” inserted “patriarchy” to speak of culture, and used the F-word – “feminist” – where she speaks of people of colour. Here we go:
- I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my gender widely represented. Unless the topic is gender, most of the coverage in entire sections is devoted to my gender, such as sports and economics.
- When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my gender as leaders of policies and thought.
Sojourner Truth, proto-feminist!
- I can be sure that boys will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence, relevance, intelligence and dominance of their gender.
- I can be casual about whether or not to listen to a woman’s voice in a group in which she is the only member of her gender.
- I do not have to educate boys to be aware of systemic sexism for their own daily physical protection.
- I can be pretty sure that my male children’s teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not concern others’ attitudes toward their gender, because ‘boys will be boys’.
- I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my gender.
- I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, illiteracy or lack of beauty of my gender.
- I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my gender on trial.
- I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of women who constitute the world’s majority without feeling in patriarchal culture any penalty for such oblivion.
- I am never asked to speak for all the people of my gender group.
- I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my gender.
- I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as an outsider to patriarchal culture.
- I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the “person in charge”, I will be facing a person of my gender.
- If I declare there is a sexist issue at hand, or there isn’t a sexist issue at hand, my gender will lend me more credibility for either position than a woman will have.
- I can choose to ignore developments in feminist writing and feminist activist programs, or disparage them, or learn from them, but in any case, I can find ways to be more or less protected from negative consequences of any of these choices.
- Patriarchal culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of women.
- I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children’s magazines featuring people of my gender in a non-sexual way.
- I can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another race is more likely to jeopardize her chances for advancement than to jeopardize mine
- I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing or body odor will be taken as a reflection on my gender.
- I can worry about sexism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.
- I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my gender.
- If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it had sexist overtones.
- I can think over many options, social, political, imaginative or professional, without asking whether a person of my gender would be accepted or allowed to do what I want to do.
- I can arrange my activities so that I will never have to experience feelings of rejection owing to my gender.
- If I have low credibility as a leader I can be sure that my gender is not the problem.
- I can easily find academic courses and institutions which give attention only to people of my gender.
- I can travel alone without expecting embarrassment or hostility in those who deal with me.
McIntosh notes, and I concur: My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will.
“Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender” affirms Alice Walker in acknowledging the interconnectedness of gender, race and class theory and oppression. Sit down when feminists rise at (y)our own peril. Please, dear liberals, let’s stop playing the who-more-woke game and get in-formation!
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Someday at Christmas. #BlackenAsiaWithLove
Now that folks have returned to their normal lives, and the Christmas credit card bills have arrived, let’s reflect on the reason for the season. To get you in the mood, the writer suggests listening to Stevie Wonder’s Someday at Christmas alongside this read; lyrics included here.
Someday at Christmas men won’t be boys
Playing with bombs like kids play with toys
Today’s divisions are so profound, and illiberal tribalism runs so deep, that I believe only art can speak to them – they not hearing me when people like me speak. I’m clearly not an illiberal tribe member, and as soon as I open my mouth, my ‘proper’ American English is dismissed alongside the liberal elite media, Hollywood, etc. The tribe dismisses us, I surmise, due to our training and faith in the transformative power of critical thinking.
“If Republicans ran on their policy agenda alone,” clarifies one article from a prominent liberal magazine, “they would be at a disadvantage. So they have turned to a destructive politics of white identity, one that seeks a path to power by deliberately dividing the country along racial and sectarian lines.” This is lit-er-ally happening right now as the presidential impeachment hearings follows party-not-morality lines. Conservatives are voting along their tribe to support the so-called leader of the free world. Are they free?
Words like ‘diversity’ sound threatening to today’s illiberal thinkers. Those who tout PC-culture as going too far may as well go ahead and admit that they are anti-evolution! Those who denounce implicit racial bias have little to say about any form of racism, save for its so-called ‘reverse’. Those who would rather decry ‘feminism’ as man-hating have little to say about actual misogyny. Yet, it is the liberal candidate/leader/thinker who is held to a higher standard. Are we free?
Someday in a world where men are free
Maybe not in time for you and me
But someday at Christmastime
We are in an era of supreme conservative/illiberal tribalism. That’s the unique We are in an era of supreme conservative/illiberal tribalism. That’s the unique ties that bind America’s 45, to Britain’s BJ to Germany’s AFD, France’s infamous National Front (now in its second generation), Italy’s Lega Nord, Austria’s FPO– yes, the F is for ‘freedom’- all the way to India’s leading Islamaphobe. Let’s not forget Poland’s tiki-torch bearing PiS party that filthy-up the European Parliament joined by their brethren from Denmark to Estonia to Belgium and beyond.
EU’s Right-wingers!
Illiberal tribes are tricking masses of those inside cultures of power into voting against their own interests. This is not, as many commentators have noted, to suggest that their so-called liberal alternatives are virtuous. Of course not, but it’s clear that masses can be motivated through fear of the other, whereas organizing around widening the pool of cooperation and humane concern is simply not sexy.
Someday at Christmas there’ll be no tears
All men are equal and no men have fears
Today’s brand of conservatism is an entire illiberal ethic that clearly must be cultivated from birth. Either you get it, or you don’t. Imagine the folks they’re turning against, and tuning out in order to hold onto those values. Imagine the teacher, friend, colleague, schoolmate, neighbour of ‘foreign’ origin that a Brexiteer must wipe away from their consciousness in order to support the anti-EU migration that fueled the campaign. The ability to render folks as ‘other’ is not an instantaneous predicament. It’s well cultivated like a cash crop, say cotton, cane or tobacco! Going to the ballot box to support bigots can’t be an easy feat when we’re literally surrounded by the type of diversity we seek to eliminate.
Someday at Christmas man will not fail
Hate will be gone love will prevail
There are those who voted for Brexit under some false notion of British independence, despite clear and present evidence of British inter-dependence. Perhaps no nation has been more inter-dependent on its neighbors and former colonies than the British Isles. Yet this illiberal disease is global. Imagine the rich diversity of the Indian sub-continent, yet look squarely at the Hindu nationalism sweeping India right now (as if the Taj Mahal weren’t a global treasure that just happens to have a few mosques on board). Plus, I’m not the first to point out that the Jesus racists celebrate was Jewish and spent most of his life in what we now call the Arab world. No nativity scene without foreigners!
Maybe not in time for you and me
But someday at Christmastime
‘Someday at Christmas’ was written in 1967 for Stevie Wonder, then a 17-year-old bulwark of Motown. Wonder wasn’t yet writing all his songs, yet he was already introduced as the ‘Profit of Soul’. In 1980, he sang: “Why has there never been a holiday, yeah/Where peace is celebrated,” in a song aimed at getting Reagan to declare Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a national holiday. Wonder won. Happy MLK day!
Naturally, looking back we have to wonder if one could have predicted the impact Wonder would soon have on American music. He’d dominate pop music once he set out on his own, set his fingers to funk instead of pop, and began to bare his soul.
Someday at Christmas we’ll see a Man
No hungry children, no empty hand
One happy morning people will share
Our world where people care
In the summer of ‘67, Wonder’d released another record, I Was Made to Love Her, featuring plenty of his infamous harmonica solos. ‘Someday at Christmas’ was released four years before the other most infamous Christmas message song, John Lennon’s War Is Over. SMH, I get goose-bumps hearing a kids’ chorus sing melancholically “War is over/If you want it.” Much of the world was at war then, struggling to comprehend the incomprehensible devastation meted out on the tiny southeast Asian nation of Vietnam, from where I pen this piece – a virtuoso clash of titans. It’s not surprising that those two troubadours began their careers in popcorn pop, yet had to leave the genre to deliver their most potent, fiercest messages.
Motown was decisively a Popular music machine, specifically crafted to appeal to the wider/whiter masses. Motown steered clear away from ‘message’ songs, a real keel in the heal of the likes of Stevie, Marvin Gaye and eventually Michael Jackson. Each of those Motown troubadours has penned plenty of songs of freedom and ecology, and the ethical interdependence between the two. Those guys must be liberals. Ugh!
Thoughts from the criminology team 