MaDD Blogger

Ketchup on eggs

This one has been a difficult one to write. It has gone through several name changes but the theme and tone has consistently remained the same. In one of my first entries on Katrina I jokingly wrote that since the ability to control the weather came with the Oval office I was running for President in 2008 and in that thought I felt that there was a great idea for a piece on myself and my beliefs as I often get asked why I am Republican as it is a well known fact that 90 percent of blacks in this country vote Democrat. But in the aftermath of Katrina I found myself in more and more conversations on race not only from white friends but from white strangers and acquaintances. I've often been told by both whites and blacks that I'm not "really black". I even had a long time friend of mine whose getting married tell me that she likes talking to me because I'm not like other blacks she knows and that I "act more like a white person".

My schedule is often hectic and even if can make her wedding I will be one of only two blacks invited. I often feel the reason why I get so many questions on race is because for many of my white friends I'm one of the only blacks they know or hang out with socially so when something that is racially charged happens in the nation I often find myself as a kind of spokesman for my entire race, something I have no desire to be. I have no problems discussing race as long as the other party agrees to accept the fact that there are truths that will be spoken that they may not want to hear. The result is what I like to call "ketchup on eggs" syndrome something that I used to believe was disgusting until I actually tried it. I had no basis other than my own perceptions to believe that adding ketchup to eggs was bad, I simply thought it was. But in the 3 years I spent at TPS we ate a lot of eggs and with that in mind you find yourself willing to experiment if for no other reason than to add some variety to your diet, so when I tried it it was surprisingly good and I find myself continuing the habit even to this day. I feel that the racial problems in this country are like ketchup on eggs, with people on both sides mistaking opinion for fact. The following are my opinions on Katrina and race.

What do you think went wrong with Katrina?

I've wondered that myself over that last few weeks but as the Democrats spin and say that President Bush and his staff were simply out of touch with the depth of poverty in New Orleans you can't ignore the fact that the local government is run by blacks and has been for decades. New Orleans is what's known in black circles as a "Brown Town". A brown town is a city where blacks are the majority population and as such  control the direction of the city and it's government. Some of the most well known brown towns are Detroit, Atlanta, Memphis, Baltimore and Washington D.C has been known as "Chocolate City" for as long as I can remember.

The idea of a brown town is that it is more "black friendly" so it's like taking a vacation from living in America as a whole. The truth is that a lot times these cities have some of the highest violent crime rates in the nation. Of all the cities above Atlanta appears to be doing the best but even it's violent crime rate is high. You would think that in cities that are run by black leadership that they certainly would be more in tune with what black people need but in some cases poor blacks in these cities are even poorer than in cities not lead by blacks. Why the failing?

Some have speculated that if more whites were in the New Orleans city government that a lot of the problems that happened wouldn't have occurred. I also hear a lot of Rudy Giuliani references as if to suggest that had he been in charge he would have repeated his masterful crisis management skills from 9/11. Bill Marr coined a great phrase the other night when he said that a lot of white people suffer from UR or "Unintentional Racism". It is often implied that when whites make mistakes that it is simply because they are human beings but when blacks make mistakes it is because they are black. More went wrong in New Orleans than who was in the White House or the color of Ray Nagin's skin. The city's emergency planning was inadequate and it appears that there was a poor co-ordination between FEMA and state government and some people didn't take the order to leave seriously as demonstrated by this quote:

"I had lots of time to get out. So did most of my neighbors. But we were too smart. We were going to ride it out because we'd all seen these storm threats before and we were always fine when they were over. We thought we'd be fine this time. This time we were wrong. And this time many of us have only ourselves to blame."
Keith Anderson Hurricane Katrina Evacuee

Too bad we can't interview the hurricane.

What can we do to improve race relations in this country?

The answer to this question lies not in the present but in the future. The young people of today don't seem to have a lot of the racial hangups that their parents have and as the old die out the young will replace them and so the circle of life continues. I can see a future where programs like affirmative action are no longer necessary. We have made great strides in this country to improve race relations in the last 30 years and if we continue on this route there may be no racism in 30 more.

Why do you think blacks should vote Republican?

Here's a shocker, they probably shouldn't. I don't believe poor blacks are properly prepared to embrace the reforms that Republican leadership offers. Democratic initiatives like welfare were meant to offer a leg up to people who were struggling just to get by. The problem is that there was never a plan to help get these people off public assistance and decades of people on welfare rolls have created a generation of people that cannot properly fend for themselves. They lack proper education and job skills to function in todays marketplace. I'm not talking out of my ass here folks. I live in the hood right now and my family has been on public assistance before. You cannot live in worse places than I have lived at in this city.

My mother has always seen welfare as medicine meaning that you can use it for a while to get well but if you use it for too long you can get addicted. This is why I always laugh when I hear that the only party for the black man is the Democratic Party. Democratic reforms meant to help have destroyed the black communities in the inner city. I know a woman on welfare that has 5 kids by 3 different men. I've seen 3 generations of women all living under the same roof and the eldest woman in the house is under the age of 40 and the youngest has her own child on the way. I liken welfares effects on the black community to a wild animal that has been maimed and slowly nursed back to health by humans. They are careful not to keep the animal in captivity for too long or he will lose all of his natural instincts and not be able to care for himself. Our community has been on welfare for too long, so long in fact that if you remove it now it will devastate an entire generation of people but we will never reach our full potential as long as we are on the dole.

Voting along party lines is pretty much split down the line among white voters and Republicans are able to get as much as 35 to 40 percent of Hispanic and Asian voters in other parts of the country. The consistent 90 percent Democratic vote is nearly a given especially among poor blacks because the Republican platform doesn't favor their current lifestyle. Republicans have to offer something more than welfare reform to reach black voters. Better education, opportunities, a better standard of living. You're not going to get as high a percentage as the Democrats but it will fall in line with other minority voting blocks. Bush got around 18 percent of the black vote this last election. I'm sure that made some Democrats nervous but it gave me hope. Pass the ketchup please!

Time and Change...

{ 3:46 PM, September 27, 2005 } { Posted by almightyman }

Nice Blog.

Though I reamain a critic of Bush and the current administration, I can see a bit of what you believe in, and can't really blame you for your ideals.

I by no means think GW should be held responsible for the hurricane or much of the suffering that followed. It was an unprecedented event, that even he admitted he didn't grasp right away. But I am perturbed that he claims to be doing so much to protect us from catastrophe, then the first test proves to be a national failure. He plays games with our security by appointing someone like the woefully underqualified Michael Brown as Director of FEMA. I have a hard time forgiving things like that.

In regards to race, I don't really believe that implicit racist beliefs led to the botched decision-making after the hurricane. But it is clear that the subset of people who suffered the most poignantly in this disaster were of a particular skin color. This is a phenomenon we didn't really see with 9/11, as the cultural diversity flowing through the World Trade Center claimed victims of every creed, race, or background.

Since Columbus set foot on this continent in the 15th century, there has been a perpetual trend of racial clashing. It had led to a lot of the social problems we have today, but has undoubtably been intertwined with whatever successful strides our nation has made. Regardless of the history, you are right when saying we can only change the future. The future is bright though, as Americans are starting to really live the diverse melting pot that the US is. No single nation could declare war on this counrty, without alienating and attacking a certain subset of its people. This is really an inadvertant defense mechanism that no previous world power has posessed.

Young people do seem to be taking the reigns, at least the ones beyond the reach of suffocating, narrow-minded parents. While we'll all continue to look different, we can't help but work together to truly appreciate what America can do. We've given the world penicillin, electricity, and the telephone. Automobiles were first mass-produced in these great states. The invention of flight? Proliferation of The Internet? Americans have given a lot to the world, and as long as we don't hit some big setback, there's really no limit to what could lie ahead.

We just have to keep burshing off these small setbacks like hurricanes, terrorists, and war. Keep your eyes on the prize America. The world is ours to make.

A few points....

{ 6:09 PM, September 27, 2005 } { Posted by maddhatt }

You have every right to disagree with the Bush administration. Thats how the process works.

Brown was under qualified that much is clear and believe me I can't help but notice that most of the victims were of a certain skin tone, I see it every time
I look in the mirror. New Orleans city government has been corrupt for years. They have been trying to fix that levy for over 20 years now but somehow or another the funds were "diverted" into other projects.

You have a major US city with a 67 percent black population and black leadership yet 20 percent of that city's population live below the poverty line where other cities of the same or larger size maintain numbers as low as 5 percent.

How can black leadership fail it's own so poorly. It's easy to say that someone was out of touch with the real face of poverty in this country but shouldn't those leaders have known that their citizens would need help evacuating? The relief effort starts on state and locals levels first with FEMA coming in to help co-ordinate things. I've found that when I've talked to people who think FEMA is solely to blame that most of those people have no clue as to what FEMA really does.

Ray Nagin doesn't live in the projects and I'd wager that none of the city council does either. It's easy to say that rich whites are out of touch with poverty but it looks to me like they may have been out of touch themselves with so many poor people living right next door. The murdering, raping and looting were all signs of object poverty but most will never realize that because they cannot conceive of it. I hope that the new New Orleans serves it's citizens better and they are going to get the chance. Surveys among evacuees show that only around 40 percent plan to return. I actually talk to one of the evacuees a few times a week and she has no plans on going back and in fact she said that the city was so dangerous that she was glad to be out of there.

Beam me out Scottie

{ 12:28 AM, October 3, 2005 } { Posted by Anonymous }

"What can we do to improve race relations in this country?"

The first thing is to realise that culture is a function of the state of technology of a particular time and space, amongst others. Thus, the cultures of today, or rather, efforts to maintain cultural distinctiveness via practice of a particular culture, flies in the face of present technological realities that frees the human persona from its previous spatial confines.

This has become what i term as a 'culture of practice'. These cultures are unnatural in the present context as they were actually formulated to contend with experience within a particular time and space. When we transcend this time and space, as evidenced by globalisation, a new culture should naturally form provided we do not, in the confusion ensuing from being confronted with the novel, scurry back to the familiar - the chinese, for instance, are ridiculously adept at this. Attempts to follow in the ways of our ancestors would be best observed with the aid of a time-machine by taking us back to the place where such cultures actually made applicable sense. This does not mean that cultures ought to be discarded in its entirety. We ought to scrutinise inherited customs and conventions and extract that which would enable a harmonious co-existence with expanded surroundings. This, however, does not mean we have to assimilate with the majority but rather educated them in ways that will aid in the realisation of harmony. For instance, the fusion of buddhists with protestant-capitalist culture ought to see the former instructing the latter since it is more in tune with the idea of harmony rather than the latter which sees harmony in mutual animosity.


http://the-heretic.blogspot.com

I think we agree...

{ 1:05 AM, October 3, 2005 } { Posted by }

As I said before I believe the younger generations with their willingness to embrace other cultures will end racism as we know it in this country. I think technology will serve more to improve relations with our neighbors abroad.

Edited by maddhatt on October 3, 2005 at 2:05 AM