I was flabbergasted, as I think most of us were, to read of Prince's death. Like Bowie, I wasn't a huge fan, but it feels as if an important cultural influence has gone. In some ways, Prince was the cultural touchstone of the 1980s into the early 1990s in the same way that Bowie was to the 1970s-80s.

The song that I'm playing is Baltimore. It was performed publicly for the first time last year in Baltimore during the Freddie Gray riots. I'm still amazed that the Crips and Bloods did more to keep the peace during that week than the government did.

But the line that grips me from the song is "Peace is more than the absence of war."

In the mid-1980s I was working toward a Master's in International Relations and was required to take International Systems. One of the central texts was On the Causes of War by Michael Howard. In it, Howard argued that peace wasn't merely the absence of war, but absence of the threat of war. I was mocked by the professor for agreeing with Howard.

I still think it's one of the most important points, and may be part of the disconnect on "Black Lives Matter." Too many white people don't feel the threat of daily violence and so don't grasp that even when things are quiet, the neighborhoods aren't at peace.

On the floor of the House

Congressional Staffers yesterday

Yale Black Men's Union

I have a hard time talking about this. I am a white person working in a predominantly black environment. It amazes me how many people assume that, because I'm white, I share their retrogressive or downright bigoted opinions.

So let me tell you that I am so proud of my colleague's son, who is number 22 on that Yale Black Men's Union page (look for the word "Minoritized"). Let me tell you that I'm angry that not one white colleague joined in the silent witness on the floor of the House. Let me tell you about the friends who've been stopped because they're driving a nice car or driving through a neighborhood the cops don't expect a person of color to live in. Let me tell you about my friend whose son was beaten so badly at a traffic stop that the policeman in charge of lock-up refused to let him in and immediately called an ambulance (and bless him for doing so). It's harder to find these stories among my friends and acquaintances who share my skin color.

Lives matter. All lives matter. Black lives matter.

When 60 Minutes went on the air, we watched it every Sunday. It was similar to the weekly newsmagazine we'd watched while living in London, and in the winter it was almost a ritual -- a fire in the fireplace (sometimes with bonus popcorn) and 60 Minutes.

My nascent political world was formed, at least in part, by the Point/Counterpoint section of the show. James J. Kilpatrick was the Conservative speaker.

I generally sided with the more liberal person, though not always. My father and I would occasionally get into discussions based out of it, but not once did he tell me that Kilpatrick was a racist whose writings acted as the intellectual underpinnings for segregation. Reading Mr. Kilpatrick's obituary has been a real eye-opener.

Sometimes it's good to see the old guard passing.

Representative Paul Kanjorski said (via The Washington Post's political coverage):

"We're giving relief to people that I deal with in my office every day now unfortunately," Kanjorski said. "But because of the longevity of this recession, these are people -- and they're not minorities and they're not defective and they're not all the things you'd like to insinuate that these programs are about -- these are average, good American people." [emphasis mine]

You'll be happy to know his office is affronted to think anyone could construe these remarks as racist.

From their release:
Anyone trying to politicize this issue clearly doesn't get it. Congressman Kanjorski is fighting for all Americans who are struggling. Any statement saying otherwise is grossly misinformed.

In fairness, Representative Kanjorski is trying to protect a program for homeowner mortgage help that is currently available in Pennsylvania through state funding and creating something similar nationally. He's defending it as not helping the "imprudent, the wasteful."

While I can admire him for thinking of this type of program and trying to help the unemployed, it doesn't change the fact that his remarks are, in fact, racist.

On the internet, no one knows you're green.

But, privilege will out and right now, last night's Glee has prompted some discussion in the episode thread there that is frosting my cookies.

The character of Mercedes made a couple of remarks about white people not being able to do funk during one scene. Now, there are exceptions -- I personally think Harry Connick Junior's "I just whisper your name" is pretty funky -- but in general, I don't disagree. Funk is culturally African-American, and DC was, in the 1970s, right in the center of the phenomenon. Hell, the fracking Mothership may be buried around here.

So.

The some of the good folks at TWoP have accused the character of racism, for saying white people aren't funky. I cringed a little, but I can understand the perspective if I squint. But to say, "It's not like she's black in the 60s" or "Then we have Quinn aplogizing to Mercedes for apparently being black and having a hard life as if being black is a handicap and we've had even one scene of her being an outcast b/c of her skin color. Somehow being black which has never been an issue for Mercedes in a clearly diverse school ... "

This "clearly diverse school" has a couple of people of Latino heritage, a South Asian principal, several Jewish students, several Asian students, and Mercedes. I can't think of a single other African-American student we've seen at that school. Is she oppressed? Canonically, her parents are dentists, so she's middle class. But she's still the only black kid at her school. Day in, day out, she sees no one else who looks like her, not a teacher that we've seen, not a fellow student, not even a janitor. It's her and her parents in all of West Lima, Ohio (I doubt its truly representative of the region, but, within the show's universe, this is the case.).

I'm so damn furious with these people. Yes, things are definitely better than they were in the early 1960s for African-Americans. What does that have to do with the underpinnings of Funk as a movement and a music? Yes, Mercedes is middle class. How does that help her to feel connected in a high school where there's no one else who looks like her? In Britain, I think class, as documented by accent, outweighs skin color, but, culturally, in the US, race is the identifier.

I don't feel I can talk about this at TWoP. I may not have the right to speak up on this one. I like the boards and much of the community I've found there, but the level of privilege these people are assuming is just putting me into perma-cringe.

So, several months ago jedifreac started the Racebending website and community. She's been posting about yellowface and why it's even worse than usual with The Last Airbender movie due to the original source material.

When an article went up, I posted a comment about the problems with the casting, and I was quoted in today's follow-up article. *G* Admittedly, they didn't use my handle, and I assume my quote was chosen because it was brief (or that they only read the first ten and mine was number three). Still, I feel like I've made a contribution.

The jobless rate among young, black men is 34.5%

Read the article.

I would love to make it a requirement that freshman Representatives and Senators be required to live in the District. Maybe then they could see the city.

Race Fail 2009 and the current "yellowface" issues surrounding the Avatar: The Last Airbender movie have opened my eyes to assumptions. Living in DC has opened my eyes to assumptions.

My future was never white. I want that clear from the beginning. The first book I read that I identified as sci-fi (A Wrinkle in Time didn't count because I didn't think of it as science fiction. They traveled to another planet by tessering, and it never occured to me I was reading science fiction.) was Podkayne of Mars. Podkayne was clearly non-white. She and her grandfather used a Maori gesture with each other to indicate people they thought were stupid. I read the book now and cringe a bit at the sexism, though I know Heinlein was actually ahead of the game by having a female protagonist, but Podkayne was never white to me.

This is where growing up in greater DC comes in to play. The DC I currently live in is nearly 60% black with a population just under 600,000. The DC I went to when I lived in the suburbs as a kid was 90% black with a population of over 900,000. It was called Chocolate City for a reason. If I went to my mother's office, chances were good that every security person or policeman that I saw would be black. More than half of my mother's co-workers were black. The higher up the government chain of command you went, the more likely it was the person was male and white, but it was already beginning to change. Any time I thought about the future, it was a mixed future. In my head, I used terms like mixed and mulatto. I can define all the shades that my southern ancestors used derogatorily. But until I went to boarding school, it never occurred to me to think in terms of race.

Class was an issue, but my mother, for all her prejudices made it clear that race wasn't. If I married the son of a black officer, it would be a little odd, but fine. If I married the son of a white enlisted man, I would be shunned. (Sadly, sometime after returning to the US in the early 1980s, Mom drifted into an easy racism that truly surprises me. My sister occasionally picks up on it. Sis, I can call on it. Mom I can't. Dad does though. Considering Dad's the one who grew up in the segregated South, it's funny that his example is the one I follow.)

At my very first mixer, I danced with a guy from the Middle East and got teased about it. At my second high school mixer, I danced with a black boy from another boarding school. During study hall the following Monday, a couple of the upper classmen threatened me with bodily harm if I ever did it again. I was enough of a coward that I stopped going to mixers. I didn't stop hanging out with my friends, though, and many of them were black. That probably sounds like the old liberal, "but some of my best friends..." racist excuse. I didn't realize that black students had only been accepted four years before I started there. I just knew that these girls accepted me for who I was without trying to put me in a compartment. That was more than I could say for the majority of girls. The first Jewish girl at the school started the same year I did. For me to be able to hang out with the students I liked was a big thing then.

But the future was going to be better than that. In the future, it wasn't that we were colorblind, it was that color didn't matter. The differences would be celebrated and acknowledged, but they wouldn't kill someone's chance at a career. Uhura's earrings made that point for me. She wore distinctive earrings, and, when we see her cabin in Elaan of Troyius, there are African art works shown. Uhura was cool. I wanted to be like her when I grew up. I just knew I wouldn't have the tan.

Tonight was the eighth grade graduation for the kids in the program I mentor with. The Secretary of Education gave a nice little speech (and is tall enough to confirm my suspicions that Obama wants to change the sport of official Washington from slo-pitch softball to basketball). One statistic he quoted that stayed with me: 66% of the eighth graders in Detroit drop out of high school. It's chilling to me.

There were no white faces among the graduates. These kids feel like they are on a path toward a brighter future. But when I give them a science fiction book, I want them to see the world, not just this one, as a place where anything can happen.

I gave my students (fifth graders) the books that revenantrose was generous enough to help me purchase. Three of them were science fiction books and one of them deals specifically with the entitlement the British felt to cultures they thought were uncivilized. (Nation by Terry Pratchett which is technically a sci-fi fantasy book even though it's more of a riff on colonialism and Robinson Crusoe types of stories.)

How dare publishers and movie producers think that a protagonist needs to be shown as white to be "universal"?

The one friend I've had since high school works four blocks from where I live. She won't walk to my apartment building because it's not a good part of town. What she means is, by crossing under 395, she goes from Washington to DC, from a place where she sees primarily light faces to an area where she sees mostly dark ones. It saddens me.

I love my city. I want the future that I see when I read science fiction. Hell, I want the past that I see when I watch I,Spy on Hulu. I sure as hell don't want Jesse McCartney playing an Asian lead.

What I want is a future where we go to Mars or Mirabile and everyone who has a skill or an education can find their way into the deeps of space. I want the kids of Detroit to read science fiction and choose to stay in school so they can go into "Space, the final frontier."