Alert The Media! Rich People Are Cheating At The Game Of Life!

Some clever law enforcement professionals recently, belatedly, became aware that certain rich Hollywood types were doing more than pulling strings and waving their eyelashes to help to get their children into elite schools. They were applying money to the problem. This has, of course, been going on since rich people and elite schools have existed in America, and that makes me wonder. Why finally notice and take action now? What's so special about now?

I haven't seen a complete list of the poor defendants who were sucked up in this dragnet, so for now I remain merely suspicious. The poster children for this new class of criminal masterminds are Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin. If the other thirty-three (!!!) arrestees are also prosperous entertainers, I'm going to get much more suspicious in a hurry. I hope that no one believes that people who made their money either in business deals or in stock manipulations are above this kind of behavior.

Ms. Huffman and Ms. Loughlin's cases are as different as night and day. The former's case is very simple, and the methods used were inexpensive. The later was much more ambitious, and the whole thing cost her over half a mil. To my knowledge, the dragnet completely ignored the very rich who cheat their children into elite schools by simply throwing huge sums of money at the target school. There is a quid pro quo, but it remains discretely in the background. The school gets a new pool and a new floor on its basketball court, and some undeserving brat goes to Princeton. The law enforcement professionals were probably warned off by the schools, who naturally want to see that kind of largess continue.

Ms. Huffman is alleged to have paid $15,000 to improve her daughter's SAT scores. I've seen the methodology described in two ways in our modern, less than reliable media. Either: 1) someone with access to the tests changed many of her answers from wrong to correct; or 2) someone was paid to pose as the daughter and take the SAT again after a miserable showing by the real daughter. Either way, it is alleged that for a mere one-time payment of $15,000, the daughter's SAT score was raised by 400 points. That, my friends, would be the greatest bargain in the history of fraud.

On a sadder note, it is also alleged that Ms. Huffman paid a sympathetic medical professional to prove up some kind of learning disability for the daughter. This kind of thing buys them more time for taking the test itself. Therein lies a tale.

When I graduated from law school, several of my classmates mysteriously came down with bad cases of dyslexia, you know, before the bar exam. They hadn't had any trouble with passing law school classes, and I can tell you that I went to a school that believed in extremely difficult tests. Those crooked students could hardly contain their delight at these diagnoses. One guy was being so obnoxious about it that I came dangerously close to throwing him down a flight of stairs.

Ms. Huffman has pleaded guilty to one count of something relatively insignificant, but just for the optics I'm sure they'll put her behind bars for a while. This kind of demonstration is common with celebrities. Make a fuss about sentencing them and putting them in orange jumpsuits, and then quietly let them go after a matter of days or weeks.

Ms. Loughlin's case is far more serious, although, strangely, she does not seem to be taking it very seriously. She is alleged to have paid an employee of the target university to dummy up an acceptance for her daughter. The employee works, or “worked,” more likely, as a high-level coach for a lesser sport. That one cost a cool $500,000, an amount that generates a lot of interest among prosecutors and juries. Ms. Loughlin has very casually turned down a plea deal that would have put her in prison for a couple of years. I read somewhere that the prosecutor has left the plea deal on the table as is, which surprised me. More often they bump up the years in the offer. They claim to have her on the hook for twenty, or forty, or something. When that much money changes hands as part of a criminal enterprise, all kinds of peripheral charges are triggered. For instance, money laundering.

If she keeps shining them on with that confident smile, she could really piss them off. If that happens, she could do some real time. Somebody needs to explain to her that this is not a Hallmark made-for-TV movie. These people can hurt you.

On the Other Side of the Tracks!

All of this is very nice, but, as usual, the devil is down in the corners somewhere. CNN dot com was kind enough to write up a story about what happens when black women are charged with crimes that bear surface similarities to those described above. That, my darlings, is not a pretty picture, but you probably knew that already.

Kelly W-B, of Ohio, used her father's address to get her child into a better school that was outside of her assigned district. I'll bet that most of us know someone who has done that, or something similar. Well, Miss Kelly got caught, and the full force of the law was brought to bear not only on Miss Kelly, but also on her father. Kelly did nine days in jail, just to make sure that she understood the gravity of the situation, and she had to pay a total of $36,000, mostly to the school in her assigned district which had lost government revenue for having one less student. Her father, hold on to your hat, was sentenced to prison, that's where you go when you are convicted of a felony, and he died in prison.

Tanya McD of Connecticut was arrested on the same charge, using a false or fraudulent address to get her child into a school outside of her assigned district. This one gets poignant in a hurry, so get a tissue handy. This is a tearjerker. Ms. Tanya was homeless at the time, so she didn't have any damn address. She used an address that she knew would get her child into a better school. She did a lot more time that Miss Kelly did, but that's apples and oranges because Tanya's case had drug charges attached to it by the time the prosecutors got rolling. Unless there was a suitable relative to take the child, it's a sure thing that Social Services took away Tanya's parental rights and put the child in a foster home.

Back to Hollywood!

Felicity might get off with some community service or something. She's cooperating, and her crimes are not great. If Lori's not careful, though, she could get some of that Martha Stewart time. She could miss a few holidays, maybe even a couple of birthdays. I won't cry for either of them, but Kelly and Tanya have my deepest sympathies.

The Black U.S. Navy Experience

Destroyer (1943, Columbia Pictures)

Happy Memorial Day, everybody! 

This is a lovely movie starring Edward G. Robinson and Glenn Ford. It’s fairly entertaining as a patriotic wartime Navy movie, but it’s more interesting for what it does not show. In the movie, the crew of the ship is all white, whereas in the real Navy in 1943 that would not have been the case.

Even before World War II there were black sailors on almost all Navy ships. They became more numerous as the war progressed, because there were a vast number of new ships that needed crews.

The American military was still segregated at the time. It was possible in the Army to keep the troops separated and assign them tasks that would prevent them from rubbing shoulders, but that luxury was only partially available to the Navy. A Navy crew all live in the same house, so to speak, and they are forced to rub shoulders every day. They could still be segregated as to their tasks, though, and that much was done.

Blacks in the Navy only had a few rates available to them, all involving the preparation or serving of food. They could be cooks, commissarymen, or stewards. The special nature of Navy life at war meant that this attempt at separation would routinely fall apart in a war zone. Everyone on a ship was assigned to a battle station and drilled in tasks associated with actual sea battles. The black sailors were most often assigned to help with treating casualties, becoming assistants to corpsmen and pharmacist’s mates. Some were assigned to helping with the flow of ammunition to gun positions, which was a busy situation when the shells started flying.

In other words, the black sailors were not on the ships only to handle food and say, “yes, sir.” They were actively engaged in battle when the time came. They had a clear role in “fighting the ship.” Under threat of death, the crew suspended animosities and temporarily overlooked race as an issue.

It is to be assumed that many of the white crewmembers would be ill disposed to their black shipmates under ordinary circumstances, like back at home. But the crew of a warship in a hot-zone is operating under the most unusual of circumstances. It has been said that going to sea in a ship, even in peacetime, is like being in prison with the additional danger of drowning. Multiply this danger by a thousand when enemy submarines, aircraft and surface combatants are making every sincere effort to destroy your ship, with you in it. The crew literally has no one but themselves to rely on in that situation.

I’ve read a lot of books about the Naval aspect of World War II in the Pacific, and I have never come across an episode of tension between white and black sailors when they had to work together in battle. On the contrary, more than one writer has commented on the fact that there was never a drop of animosity when a black commissaryman was performing duties like applying a tourniquet to the stump of a blown off leg and administering a shot of morphine to a white sailor from Alabama. In fact, it is noted that none of the white boys complained and that the black sailors generally acted with great kindness and gentleness. Up to and including one reported scene where a delirious, dying white sailor begged his black shipmate to, “hold me, momma!” The black cook held the man while he died, and survived the war to report this incident to a historian.*

Hollywood missed a small chance by leaving the black sailors out of the movie “Destroyer.” I’ll give them a pass, though, because they did step up to the plate on many opportunities. Like they did in “The Bedford Incident,” which I’ve also reviewed up on this blog. (Word search available.) The role of Life photographer in that movie went to Harry Belafonte after it had been written for a white actor. They didn’t change a thing, so the effect was that there was a black man on the ship being a bit of a pain in the ass and no one mentions that he’s black. That was cool. Also in that movie, the officers’ wardroom is correctly shown to be served by numerous Filipino stewards. In 1970, seven years after the Bedford Incident was released, 80% of Filipinos in the U. S. Navy were still stewards, dressed in white linen and serving the officers’ meals. (Sorry, I forgot to write down the citation for that number. The phenomenon is described in detail all over the Internet, though.) I should try to find something about the role of Filipino stewards at general quarters.

*I’ve read five substantial books recently about the Pacific war, but I can’t recall exactly where this incident was described. It’s hard as hell to find specific passages in Kindle versions. The authors were James Hornfischer and Ian Toll. All of the books were terrific, perhaps especially “Neptune’s Inferno” by Hornfischer.  It’s in there somewhere.    

Are Americans Nice People?

I like to think that Americans are a friendly, cooperative people, fair minded and good, but is that all really true?  It’s more or less true, I believe, but the question is:  how much more, or less? 

We all have things that we keep carefully hidden from ourselves, and opinions that we wisely keep to ourselves.  It may not even be a good idea to dwell too long on the subject of America’s true character.  We all have a vested interest in the myths, and we all would prefer to believe that America is, on balance, a positive force in the world.  My attitude, like the good Irishman that I am, is that America is not better than other countries, but it’s probably as good as any of them. 

But Americans themselves . . . are they nice?  Are they good? 

D.H. Lawrence is quoted as saying that “[t]he essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic and a killer.”  The truth may lie somewhere in between.

My Grandparents’ America

This was really the pre-ironic America, a society without Freud and free from self-examination.  This generation, born in the late Nineteenth Century, went through their lives believing that America was literally the America of Saturday Evening Post covers.  They knew that that wasn’t true, because they knew their lives to be desperately hard.  They believed it anyway, maybe just for public consumption or maybe because they had convinced themselves that it was so.  It wasn’t like a Norman Rockwell painting at all, though.

That was America, pre-workers’ rights or civil rights, the America of Jim Crow (and the north wasn’t a whole lot better either), a time and place of grinding poverty and epidemic infant death.  My maternal grandmother experienced five pregnancies that resulted in three live births.  My paternal grandfather’s first wife died along with their first child, in childbirth.  There was a lot of early death in general.  Disease was rampant, antibiotics hadn’t been invented yet, and people had no insurance and no money for medical care.  My maternal grandfather died, overworked and under-appreciated, of pneumonia, at the age of about forty.  There was also a lot of fighting among the men.  My paternal grandfather participated in a great number of these fights, and started most of the ones he was in.  And there was a lot of rape, too.

My maternal grandmother’s sister was raped, and it was a particularly terrible example of the practice.  It was 1918, and she was tricked into a private space and gang raped by a group of Doughboys shortly before they shipped out for World War I.  Her great beauty and outgoing personality were her undoing.  She got pregnant and had the baby, a well-loved aunt of mine. This kind of thing was much more prevalent than is understood or remembered, because the shame of it all drove most women to keep the act a secret.  If my aunt hadn’t gotten pregnant, I would certainly not know of the event.

The point is, America has never been the sunny place that appears in its own self-aggrandizing public relations materials, or should I say propaganda.  In reality, no segment or demographic of American society could stand any of the others during this period.  Some would say that it is no better today.

Those were rough times.  They were rough people living rough lives, in the midst of great economic achievement and obscene wealth.  Not nice at all, and with very little good to recommend it, with the possible exception of jazz.

My Parents’ Generation

The greatest myth of all surrounds this generation, born, let’s say, around 1920.  That’s the myth of the “Greatest Generation,” so-called mostly because they are credited with having won World War II.  For one thing, they had help, you can ask the Russians and the Chinese about that.  For another thing, their conduct of the war was less than great.  It was less, indeed, than admirable in many cases. 

Prisoners of war?  Well, forget the Marines’ treatment of the Japanese soldiers that they met, there was no taking of Japanese prisoners, by their own choice.  And the Marines get a pass, because they had been roughly handled by the Japanese soldiers and they could say that they were responding in kind.  In the European Theater of Operation the worst prisoner abuse took place in the war between the Russians and the Germans.  On the Western Front, the American armed forces committed many of the more egregious excesses.  Many, many prisoners never made it back to the lock-ups, and “die-hards” were simply killed.  SS troopers, and many ordinary German soldiers, were all treated as die-hards. 

Terror bombing by American air forces started a long time before the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  It was, in fact, old hat by then.  Every German city of any size at all was leveled, and towards the end this was done by fire-bombing.  Every single Japanese city was leveled.  Nagasaki completed the set.  The loss of civilian lives in Germany and Japan was huge.  (Other countries suffered greater losses, but not at the hands of Americans. Rather, at the hands of the Germans and the Japanese.  That's another story.)  

Racism was rampant all through this period.  During the earlier, simpler times, racism was casually accepted and almost universal.  By the Thirties and Forties, civil rights were beginning to be discussed, and black Americans were beginning to speak up a bit (they had to be very careful about it, you know, or they’d get themselves hung from a tree or something).  In these discussions, the vast 

majority of white Americans gave a resounding HELL, NO.  That’s not very nice.

Over in California, there were the Zoot Suit riots.  White people were furious to see Chicanos getting decent jobs and wearing decent clothes. 

And let’s not forget the internment of Japanese AMERICANS during the war.  Those poor souls lost all of their stuff and spent years in dusty desert shit holes before the Supreme Court decided that it was all illegal, done because they happened to be members of a group of Asians that we didn’t like.

The “Greatest Generation” were themselves, almost to a man, a bunch of racists and xenophobes for the remainder of their lives.  Thank you for your service!  But a little more common decency would not have been out of place.

More Recently

My generation wasn’t much different, not much better.  We had a few things happen that started to open some eyes, things like the integration of baseball and rock and roll radio in the Fifties.  (By the Sixties, radio was segregated again.)  Most young people were still ill disposed to black Americans who did not play baseball or make hit records.

It’s possible that we fought a bit less than previous generations as boys, but we fought a lot.  There was a lot of bullying, and a lot of rough teasing of the handicapped, especially the mentally handicapped.  There were good boys and bad boys in my milieu, but the bad outnumbered the good.  We who found ourselves somewhere in the middle were a mixed bag of tricks with little to recommend us.

As adults, we hardly fight at all, for the same reason that children don’t fight much anymore.  These days, fighting is very likely to result in one’s getting shot, either during the fight or afterwards.  America is a violent place, senselessly so. 

Regarding racism, things have always been terrible and it would be ridiculous to suggest that they have gotten much better.  The furious row over our Kenyan Witchdoctor President and his Wookie Wife preclude any hosannas at all.  What could have been a moment of triumph has proven to be a moment of shame.  Not to mention that police shootings of black Americans now make the old school lynchings seem almost quaint.  The situation now may be even more horrible and discriminatory for blacks than at any time since the abolition of slavery, because it’s all so out in the open again and it’s obviously sanctioned by a substantial part of our government. 

Not only blacks are getting shot, and it’s not just police doing the shooting.  Everyone is shooting everyone these days.  It’s the new national sport!  Mass shootings; grudge shootings; ambush murders; accidental shootings; suicides; shootings incident to crime.  Children find guns and shoot other children, and then get charged with murder as adults (this is a way that our sick society attempts to exculpate itself). 

And we are as xenophobic as ever.  Just ask any Muslim.

Conclusion

But what about those Americans, eh?  How about that American character? Over-rated, at best.  And certainly not in the mold of so-called “American Exceptionalism.” 

Was D.H. Lawrence right about us?  He was close, at least.  We are a hard bunch, and stoic, and proud of our isolation (we call it, “independence”), and there are lots of killers among us, more, it seems, every day. 

   

I do think of us as a friendly, sociable people, though, which is a positive.  We’re direct, I guess that one can cut both ways.  We’re undeniably hard working, our government and our Galtian overlord super-rich masters do make sure that we keep those hamster wheels spinning.  We’re creative, that’s another positive.

 

But . . .

Cooperative?  It happens, but not always.  We hold grudges, and we’re still very selfish, xenophobic and racist. 

Fair minded?  Usually, but only if times are good, and not at all if a minority is seeking to level the playing field.

Nice? That may never have been in the cards, except for some blessed individuals.

Good?  That, dear reader, is probably out of the question.  

City of Cleveland: 12-year-old Tamir Rice caused his own death by failing to ‘avoid injury’

City of Cleveland: 12-year-old Tamir Rice caused his own death by failing to ‘avoid injury’

This is all a story of how times have changed in our shiny new, modern world.  This boy is alleged to be responsible for his own death at the hands of police because he was playing guns in the park.

I say, "playing guns," as though everybody knows what that even is anymore.  In the 1950's, all boys played guns, extensively and enthusiastically, sometimes with real guns that our dads had brought home from the then recent war.  More likely with more or less realistic cap guns.  We ran around the neighborhoods, or the park, and we played variations on war, cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, different scenarios, but all included us running around with pretty realistic looking guns and "shooting" each other.  To my knowledge, none of us were even so much as scolded for such behavior, much less shot by police, or shot by neighbors "standing their ground."  So many of our parents or uncles had been so recently off somewhere actually shooting people with real guns, or more likely facilitating the shooting of real people, that it all seemed very normal.  No one ever called the police to report an armed gang roaming the area.  It was normal for us boys too, somehow.  I'm not here to judge it now.

This game of "guns" may have died out by now, but it's not that long ago.   In the 1980's in Los Angeles, the most popular game on my block was "Hide and Go Seek Guns."  My own sons played, with lots and lots of other boys.  I chose that block because there were already a vast hoard of boys the same age as my boys on the block before we arrived.  They played with realistic guns, and some of the boys wore camo fatigues too.   It was, perhaps, a bit odd by then, but still more or less normal.  Boys play guns, it's a fact!  Get over it!  If you try to prevent a boy toddler from playing any kind of gun games he'll pick up a piece of spaghetti and it will magically become a gun . . . and he'll shoot someone with it.  It's a boy thing.   A few of the boys on the block later played a lot of paint-ball; most of the boys gave up all aspects of the activity with no prompting from parental units whatsoever.

But now, in our glorious, exceptional! post 9/11 world, in our "let's make everything illegal and let the District Attorneys work it out" world, in our "let's be so afraid of a vast laundry list things that we can hardly function" world, in our Brave New World of takers and makers, it has somehow become a Capitol Crime to be a boy, to be interested in Boy Things.  Now, the simple act of "playing guns" can easily lead to a boy "causing [his] own death" by "failing to avoid injury."  ESPECIALLY IF THE BOY IN QUESTION IS BLACK.

So yeah, our shiny, new modern world.  How safe do you feel?  How safe are your children? Where do your kids hit the Bag Test?  These are important questions.  This kid in Cleveland, doesn't he look like a sweet boy?  As they say in the newspaper business:  who, what, where, why and how. 

We need to ask ourselves who is at risk of what right now, and why, and we need to know ASAP, and how!  The only thing that we know is where, and that's EVERYWHERE. 

My Life Amongst The Races

It would be too much to say that I have always been a great friend to the races, but I hope that a casual observer would at least admit that I have, on balance, done alright.  Okay.  Something like that.  Mediocre isn’t always a bad thing. 

I do try my best to be reasonable about matters of race in America.  I do think about it, and I always have.  Sometimes it sneaks up on me, like this time.

In my early 20’s I carried the mail in New York City’s borough of Queens.  It was hard work then, most routes were carried in a bag on our shoulder.  It probably still is hard, even with the little vans they use now.  I was a substitute carrier, a sub, a “floater,” meaning that I had no route of my own.  My days started variously at five, six, seven or eight o’clock, and they could really stretch out.  I usually took out a route and a half, often two entire routes.  It could be a long day.

Thinking about this the other day, I recalled one evening when I punched out at about 6:30 after twelve hours of humping the boonies.  The bus that I caught to go home was almost empty.  I took a seat near the back and opened the window.  The breeze was like a tonic.  Another young man got on the bus and took the seat in the back, left corner, directly behind me.  “It’s freezing in here,” he said, “shut that window.”  I had long hair at the time, and maybe he had mistaken me for a peace loving hippie that could be pushed around, willy-nilly. 

Now you should know that I had grown up in a very tough part of Queens.  There was always a lot of fighting, and we got hit by the nuns, and we got beaten by our parents too, most of us.  I was never one of the really tough boys, nor was I particularly big or athletic, but I was in the mix and I had learned the dance.  One of the rules was:  never even appear to be backing down from an even fight.  No good could come of it, and it would probably lead to bullying.  No, if the other boy was about your size and seemed to have about your capabilities it was best to get up in his face and fight him if necessary. 

So I turned in my seat and gave him the eyes.  We all knew how to do fifty shades of gathering storm with our eyes.  And not like Steven Seagal either, with all of that ridiculous brow knitting.  All eyes.  The look that I gave him was somewhere between “you’re on my radar” and “are you sure that you want to do this?” 

“I’ve been working since seven this morning, and the breeze feels good,” I said, “I doubt if I’m closing this window.”  Then I just turned my back on him, like the matter was settled.  And it was, too.  The window stayed open and the rest of the ride was quiet. 

This particular young man was white, like me.  I could read him like a book, I knew him even though we had never seen each other before.  Recalling this incident recently, I wondered what difference it would have made if the young man had been black.  Same size and age as me, also not particularly tough or athletic, but black.  I had to admit that it would have made a big difference.  I would still have given him the eyes, that much was habitual, but I don’t think that I would have said anything.  I think that I would have simply closed the window and moved to another spot on the still almost empty bus.  The question becomes:  would I have been acting out of fear? 

Honestly, I don’t think so.  It would have been uncertainty, not fear.  Fear would be too strong a word.  I just didn’t know enough about black people to be able to read them with any confidence.  I was ignorant on the subject.  It occurs to me that in some people this uncertainty may turn into fear, but somehow I got lucky.  All it made me was curious. 

Up until the age of fifteen I don’t think that I had ever interacted with a black person, maybe a few clerks in stores, that’s it.  Black singers and baseball players?  That’s another story.  But no interaction.  After that I had black school chums, black friends in the Navy (which pissed the white people off!  Go figure!), and I had worked with black men, but still, what did I really know about them?  About their lives?  On what would I base predictions about black behavior?  The ice was forming, but it was still too thin to trust by walking around on it.  My understanding of black people was woefully inadequate.  It probably still is!  "Probably" my ass!  It still is!  Even less then.  Hence, that uncertainty that would have occurred on the bus, if that young man had been black. 

It’s important to consider these things.  One of the more disagreeable aspects of our shitty world is the myth that America has become some kind of “post-racial” society.  Only a charlatan trying to sell a flush that included four hearts and a diamond could even say the words “post racial” with a straight face.  Maybe I should write more on this subject.  Maybe it would be helpful, and you know how much I love to be helpful!  Maybe.  It could happen. 

It Could Happen: Levar Burton's Traffic Stop

This may or may not have ever happened to Mr. Burton, but it is an "after the fact" story.  It follows in every detail a story that a friend told me in the 1980's. 

Once upon a time, Levar was driving to have lunch with a producer at the producer's home in Beverly Hills.  Levar was driving his own car, a late model BMW 528M.  He's a conservative driver, no flashy stuff, and he wasn't expecting any problems.

He was spotted by Beverly Hills police, a team of two in a marked car.  They noted the car, and they noted the color of the driver's skin.  The car was a perfect fit for Beverly Hills; the driver, in their eyes, was not.  They pulled him over. 

Levar knows what to do in those situations, and he went through his own drill.  He took off his sunglasses and hat, put his wallet on the seat next to him, and put his hands on the wheel, at ten and two o'clock.  One of the policemen approached the driver's side. 

Levar smiled and made eye contact.  "Good afternoon, officer." 

"Please exit the vehicle," said the officer.

Levar took his wallet with him and got out.  "Please step to the back of the car." 

The policeman asked to see Levar's license and registration.  Levar took the license out of the wallet and said to the officer, "the reg is in the glove compartment, should I get it?" 

The officer called his partner over.  "Is it okay if my partner retrieves the registration from the glove compartment?" 

"Sure," said Levar, "help yourself." 

The partner approached the car.  He closely examined the interior and opened the passenger side door.  He opened the glove compartment and took all of the contents out, putting them on the passenger seat.  He went through everything, found the registration, and returned to the rear of the car. 

Levar was a little annoyed, but he made every effort not to show any feeling about it.  He figured that this would be a short stop and everything would be fine.  After all, he was actually Levar Burton, the name on the license, this was actually his car, the license plate of the car was a vanity plate that said, "LEVAR1," the picture on his license was a good likeness, and he was on a legitimate mission to visit a resident.  Maybe they'd even recognize him from his film and TV work. 

"Please put your hands on the car and spread your feet." 

"Is this really necessary?" 

"Sir, put your hands on the car." 

The officer frisked Levar comprehensively while his partner took the license and registration back to the police cruiser to call in a document check. 

"Please sit on the curb, and put your hands behind your head." 

"Officer, really," he said, sitting down on the curb, "obviously this is my car.  I have a lunch appointment at the home of (redacted), he lives over on (redacted)." 

"Sit quietly, sir, and keep your hands on your head." 

The officer thought for a moment and took out a pad and a pen.  "What was that name again?  And what is the address of your destination?"  Levar repeated the information and the officer made notes.  He took the pad to the car and handed it to his partner, who got back on the radio to check the information. 

"Officer, how long is this going to take.  I have somewhere to be." 

"We're checking now, sir.  Please remain seated." 

Some time went by. 

"Is there a problem, officer?"

"There's no answer at the home with the address that you gave us." 

"I have his office number, if you'd like to try that." 

"Please be patient, sir."  The officer stood a few feet from Levar with his hands on his hips.  He was a tall, well formed man in a sharply pressed uniform.  He was wearing mirror shades. 

After almost a half hour, Levar was getting angry.  "Officer, this is ridiculous, there's no problem with my paperwork, you can follow me to the house if you like, I don't know why they're not answering the phone but they are expecting me.  Haven't I been sitting here long enough?" 

The officer put the heal of his hand on the handle of his pistol and flexed his fingers.  "Just sit tight," he said, "you don't want to have any accidents." 

The partner took a radio call and then got out of the police car.  The two officers spoke briefly and the first officer said, "you can get up now.  Thank you for your cooperation.  You're free to go." 

"About God-damned time," Levar mumbled as he rose from the curb.  The officer gave him back his license and registration. 

"Have a nice day." 

"Humph!" 

This actually happened to that friend of mine.  The BMW, the vanity plate.  My friend was going to the home of his parents, his dad was a doctor and his mom was a lawyer, a real-life Huxtable family.  Black, though, which was and remains a problem. 

A deadly problem for the Trayvons of the world. 

Black readers know all of this already, but you white folk, you should really try to walk for a mile in a black man's moccasins.  It's a trip. 

Black And White

Or should I say, “black and white.” It turns out that, when one is referring to the racial information of various citizens of America, the decision to capitalize is somewhat controversial.

I cherish my time on the blog site, “We Are Respectable Negroes.” Chauncey DeVega, the pseudonymous writer of the blog, is a fourtyish academic who teaches subjects related to race and culture at a mid-western university. He’s a lucid, generous minded man who values diversity on the site and has tolerated my sometimes misguided comments for many years now. He tends to step back a bit and let other commenters school me when the opportunity arises, like it did recently with the black and white thing.


Thanks Nomad

When I write in English I consider it to be “my” language to a degree that can become unwarranted. For instance, I tend to capitalize more than the style books recommend. I do this for the sake of Clarity and Readability, to place an emphasis, as it were, in print where I might provide an audio cue in speech. Or maybe to call attention to the key words. Either way, I do it. I’m confident that this is my prerogative, because language is not a static concept, it is a living, breathing, ever changing thing. Changed by our usage, individual and collective. So, my English.

One example of my liberal use of the capital letter was in my usage of “Black” and “White.” I say “was,” because Nomad is the one who pointed out to me that it was a bad idea. Nomad suggested that I stick with black and white, not perhaps at the risk of my immortal soul, but at least in order to avoid some misunderstandings with my black fellow travelers.

My habit arose from the use of “Black” more than anything relating to whiteness. In my opinion, America blacks are so much more than just black, and so deserving of respect for their amazing accomplishments in surviving life in America, that Black had a much more dignified look to it. Black (small “b”) is a color; my thinking was that Blacks were a people, and a great one, not just a color.

Maybe the term “Black,” in a vacuum, isn’t so bad, not objectionable in itself. Nomad suggested that I was really out on the thin ice when I also referred to “White” Americans. Writing about “White” anything, he said, and I believe him, would be read by many people as having been written by a racist, White Supremacist individual. So it became something similar to ethics violation in the law, avoid them, sure, but it is also important to avoid even the appearance of them, just. Certainly it’s not a brush that I’d like to be tarred with. I’d only gone with “White” to achieve equivalence with “Black.” So they both had to go, it seemed.


The Research Situation

I went to my Concise Oxford Dictionary. Not the Unabridged, but still very complete, with almost two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand words , full etymological information and usage notes. The Oxford is an English publication, but eminently fair when it comes to Colonial English.

Black is black, small “b,” when applied to a racial group, and is “the preferred term in Britain; in America the preferred term in African American.” African American is capitalized, of course, being both African and American.

Colored, interestingly, is given as “colored (or Colored).” So with colored, you’re on your own, it’s discretionary.

Negro is capitalized, as is Caucasian. “Negro,” however, is considered “old-fashioned or even offensive.” So I guess the smart money is to stay away from that one.

My reading on the subject has not been exhaustive, but I can tell you that W.E.B. DuBois sticks with “black” and “colored.”


My Bony Old, Abrasive White Ass

Incidentally, I have never cared for the term “African American.” Probably due to the fact that many, if not most Africans, the ones in Africa anyway, seem to treat American blacks with less than fraternal devotion. African American seems more appropriate when describing President Obama, or my daughter-in-law for that matter. I love them both dearly, and in their day-to-day lives then share many experiences with American blacks, but they have very little history in common.

Maybe it would be a mistake to use the terms “black Americans” and “American blacks” interchangeably. The former would include the many recently arrived Africans, fine people who have chosen to help us build Twenty-First-Century America; the later would not. That would leave African American for the Africans. How would that be? Boy, I can be annoying without hardly trying.


Conclusion

I’ll be sticking with “black” for things like black culture, black people, black music, etc. I will be continuing to avoid “colored,” which I have always thought sounded condescending, and “Negro,” which I agree is old fashioned. In the course of considering this matter I have wondered where the future will take us in terminology for various racial groups, but I decline to share my speculations.

Thanks again, Nomad, for the gentle schooling. As you said, we Irishmen have to stick together. (Proud to claim you, brother!)