October 29, 2013
You Can't Hurry Love
Please check out my review of the new Rebecca Walker novel at NPR Books: http://www.npr.org/2013/10/29/239169796/rebecca-walker-hurries-love-in-ad
October 14, 2013
The Mambo King Says Goodbye
It was an impulse buy.
The year was 1989 and I was walking through Barnes & Noble when I saw the title: The Mambo Kings Play Songs Of Love. The writer was Oscar Hijuelos. As the scion of a family of mamboniks and salseros, I was immediately intrigued. So I pulled the money out of the wallet and bought the book. I started reading it on the subway and didn't put it down until I'd finished it early the following morn. It was a novel of uncommon passion as it dealt with the complexities of lost loves. It was also the rare book to capture the joy of dancing, playing and listening to Latin music. Hijuelos' words - at times - literally sang to this reader. And judging by the success The Mambo Kings had, many others felt the same way as well.
In 1990, Hijuelos became the first Latino writer to win the Pulitzer for fiction. It turned out to be for Hijuelos - who died this past Saturday at the age of 62 - his career highpoint. A few uneven novels followed along with a disappointing 1992 screen adaptation starring - no joke - an extremely miscast Armand Assante. (If memory serves, there was also a flop Broadway show.)
No matter. Hijuelos left the book-reading public one masterpiece and gave this writer in particular the inspiration to pen his own stories. Here's hoping that in the hereafter, he is - like every Mambo King does at the end of a performance - taking a well-deserved bow.
The year was 1989 and I was walking through Barnes & Noble when I saw the title: The Mambo Kings Play Songs Of Love. The writer was Oscar Hijuelos. As the scion of a family of mamboniks and salseros, I was immediately intrigued. So I pulled the money out of the wallet and bought the book. I started reading it on the subway and didn't put it down until I'd finished it early the following morn. It was a novel of uncommon passion as it dealt with the complexities of lost loves. It was also the rare book to capture the joy of dancing, playing and listening to Latin music. Hijuelos' words - at times - literally sang to this reader. And judging by the success The Mambo Kings had, many others felt the same way as well.
In 1990, Hijuelos became the first Latino writer to win the Pulitzer for fiction. It turned out to be for Hijuelos - who died this past Saturday at the age of 62 - his career highpoint. A few uneven novels followed along with a disappointing 1992 screen adaptation starring - no joke - an extremely miscast Armand Assante. (If memory serves, there was also a flop Broadway show.)
No matter. Hijuelos left the book-reading public one masterpiece and gave this writer in particular the inspiration to pen his own stories. Here's hoping that in the hereafter, he is - like every Mambo King does at the end of a performance - taking a well-deserved bow.
September 17, 2013
In Men We Reaped, 5 Lives That Are Far More Than Just Statistics
Please check out my review of the new Jesmyn Ward memoir Men We Reaped at NPR Books:
www.npr.org/2013/09/17/221024438/in-reaped-5-lives-that-are-far-more-than-just-statistics
www.npr.org/2013/09/17/221024438/in-reaped-5-lives-that-are-far-more-than-just-statistics
July 16, 2013
Just Us
“You go down there looking for justice that’s what you find: just us,” Richard Pryor.
For a man of color, life in America oft feels like a frightening rollercoaster ride with dangerous traps awaiting you on every hairpin turn. One thing that is made clear at an excruciatingly early age is that because of color, because of race, not only are you different but you will be treated accordingly. And so you grow up being condescended to in conversations, followed in stores, treated with minimal – if any – respect at work and so on. Just because of the hue of your skin or the broadness of your nose or the fullness of your lips, your day-to-day actions will come under greater scrutiny. You are living life under a suspicious societal microscope and caution is not only suggested but for survival’s sake it’s expected. So you develop a hardened shell as much to maintain your sanity as to ward off any external trouble. 'Don’t mess with me, I won’t mess with you' becomes your credo. And you become content with the tiniest of triumphs. All I want to do is get through the day, you tell yourself. And then in the evening you think that all I want to do is live to see tomorrow’s dawn. When you’re a man of color in America, you believe that each breath you take is a victory.
And when that gift of life is snatched away from another person of color, you acutely – almost disproportionately - feel the pain of that loss. In most of those cases, you shake your head about the senseless loss. Sometimes, you even think how that could have been you. But you try not to linger over such thoughts. After all, there’s enough ache in your life. Why invite more hurt into your heart? So you compartmentalize and move on.
Then one day you hear about a 17 year old Black young man, a child named Trayvon Martin, who trying to return to his dad’s home in Sanford, Florida after a snack run is shot and killed because a White neighborhood watch guy – 29 year old George Zimmerman - deemed him suspicious, followed him and, against police advice, confronted him and all the emotions you’ve kept bottled up – a Pandora’s box of tangled, raw feelings – come flooding back. You think of assorted racial confrontations you had at that age. You think how you never once worried about being shot during any of those incidents. You thank God for growing up in a time when guns weren’t as plentiful. Then you think that if you had a son he’d look like Trayvon. A few days later you hear the President – the country’s first African-American commander-in-chief – say the same thing. For some reason, you take this as a good sign so you decide to follow the trial.
When you’re a person of color in America, the decision to follow a trial like this one is not a cavalier one. All too well, you know the capriciousness of the American justice system. You’ve either personally gone through it or known somebody who has and the results usually range from deficient to disastrous. Yet, we keep getting emotionally invested in these types of trials. Like an abused spouse welcoming home her battering husband, we tell ourselves that this time will be different. Justice is blind, we say while forgetting that that sightless gaze is habitually turned in our direction. So you lie to yourself and insist that this time justice will be surely be served.
Then you hear the stalling tactics by the district attorneys as they debate whether or not to bring charges and you start to worry. You hear about the Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law and shudder. You hear the acronym WWB – Walking While Black – mentioned and shake your head in disbelief. You hear from Geraldo Rivera how Trayvon’s wearing a hoodie contributed to his death. You hear the police tape where Zimmerman profanely describes Trayvon walking through his neighborhood before ignoring their pleas to stay put. You hear about how the arriving police cordially and respectfully greeted Zimmerman, the son of a former judge, just a few feet away from Trayvon’s still warm corpse. Then you think that a person of color would have been cuffed on the spot. You see the videotape of Zimmerman going into the police station later that evening and wonder where are the visual signs of all of these injuries he claimed Trayvon inflicted upon him. You hear about the financial war chest Zimmerman is accruing for his defense. You are told that the jury is made up of all females: five White and one Hispanic. You wonder what you are supposed to make out of such information.
You see Trayvon Martin’s parents and know that you could never demonstrate that much class and calm under such tragic circumstances.
Then the trial begins and you immediately notice the prosecution hasn’t brought their A game. You find yourself yelling at the television about unasked questions and obvious follow-ups. You see Travyon’s friend Rachel Jeantel – the one he was speaking to on the phone while Zimmerman followed him – and share her frustration at both the prosecution and defense. Then you later see Jeantel being unfairly vilified on social media by both Black & White folks for her supposed lack of sophistication and erudition. You think about how she literally heard her friend being murdered and wonder how folks can be so cruel with their criticism. Then you realize that Jeantel is a victim of the most common American prejudice: the bigotry of class. Her sin – in the eyes of many of the trial’s onlookers – was in being Black and poor. What she said may not have been purty but her pain – if you cared to listen – spoke volumes.
You watch the defense do what you expected: trash Trayvon. They show scary, blurry photos of Trayvon while putting on the witness stand neighbors who talked about burglaries in the neighborhood committed by African-American men. (Immediately, carrying such a theory to a logical conclusion, you wonder if President Obama, Will Smith, Prince and Clarence Thomas would also be stopped by George Zimmerman.) You hear the screams on the tape and watch both Trayvon’s mother and Zimmerman’s mother claim the screams belong to their child. For you, the answer is easy. Unfortunately, you’ve heard enough pained screams in your lifetime to know the difference between a child’s yell and that of an adult’s. Then you realize you just heard the death scream of a child and your soul throbs again.
Then the trial wraps up and the wait begins. You see Geraldo Rivera claim that the women on the jury would have shot and killed Trayvon a lot sooner than George Zimmerman did. You read social media and see the same phrase over and over again used by people of color: ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’ Surprisingly, you don’t. You figure that if Zimmerman isn’t convicted of the top charge of second-degree murder surely he’ll go away for manslaughter. You can’t just kill an unarmed child who you stalked and get away with it, right?
Wrong.
You get a call from a friend on a Saturday night. (A White friend, if it matters.) He sounds angry, disconsolate. He tells you the verdict is in. Not guilty. You’re shocked. While still holding the phone, you quickly put on the television. You see a replay of the verdict being read. The first thing you notice is the unnerving calm of the defendant Zimmerman. This is a man with his entire life riding on this verdict. You would think he would be nervous but he was confidently stoic. It was as if he already knew the favorable outcome and the reading of the verdict was a mere formality. Not guilty. You notice that the second charge – manslaughter – wasn’t even read aloud by the court. Why waste the breath? The not guilty statement covered everything.
Then you watch Zimmerman smile as the defense team hugged Zimmerman’s family. You recognize that smug smile. It’s a smile of pride. “The son of a bitch is proud of what he did,” you tell your friend. “Yep,” he agrees. You talk for a while then you excuse yourself to watch the press conferences. The prosecution – unsurprisingly - comes across as bumbling buffoons straight out of a Three Stooges slapstick short subject. Except there wasn’t a single laugh to be had here: just pain and sorrow.
The prosecution was followed by the defense team: Mark O’Meara and Don West. As distasteful as their trial strategy was, you understood they had to vigorously defend their client. But at the press conference, instead taking the high road, they instead decided to take a victory lap around Trayvon Martin’s dead body. You watch them insist that Zimmerman was the aggrieved party here and that if he were Black, he would not have even been charged. You clench your fists and now understand why Trayvon’s parents didn’t attend the sentencing. It would have been like watching their child get murdered yet again.
You spend the next few days watching the Sunday talking heads play Monday morning quarterback with the case. It shouldn’t have been brought, they say. Don’t blame the jury, they insist. They were just trying the evidence in front of them. The verdict was the only possible one considering the weakness of the prosecution’s case. The case had nothing to do with the ‘stand your ground’ law. (Although the law had been brought up during the jury selection process.) The case had nothing to do with race. This was about self-defense. Period.
Then you later watch Juror B37 – ironically cloaked in darkness to conceal her identity - talk about how she believes Zimmerman’s learned his lesson and how she would feel comfortable having him on a neighborhood watch. You are horrified as you realize Geraldo Rivera was right. You are disgusted when you find out that Juror B37 has signed a book deal to tell about the jury deliberations. Money made off of the blood of a dead Black child.
You turn off the television and seethe. This is the truth as you see it. An African-American young man was racially profiled by a cop wannabe - a judge’s son who only called the police whenever he saw a Black man walking in his neighborhood – followed by him, confronted by him, murdered by him then freed. (In effect, giving a White vigilante the same rights to use deadly force as an officer of the law.) To claim that he was found not guilty because of a jury’s ‘reasonable doubt’ is a canard. As people of color know all too well, many of us have been convicted of much more with far less evidence. It is when we are the victims – and, especially, when Whites are the accused – that the burden of proof shifts. In life in well as in death, people of color are guilty until proven innocent and the shield of reasonable doubt leads to verdicts of unreasonable heartbreak.
In a month when the majority of headlines concerned a female television cook’s use of the ‘N’ word, you have seen the Supreme Court emasculate the Voting Rights Act, the Mayor of New York City defend his stop-and-frisk policy by insisting we don’t stop enough Black & Latinos while stopping too many Whites and a child killer go free. Trayvon Martin wasn’t old enough to go to a bar and in some states, to drive. He wasn’t old enough to serve our country in the military. Perhaps, most importantly, he wasn’t old enough to vote. But his life, his existence mattered and - despite it being snuffed out so tragically – it’s up to us to affirm it in a way that goes beyond memorial T-shirts, wall murals and protests. T-shirts fray, murals fade and crowds disperse as the cause behind them is too-often forgotten. That is until the next tragedy. Not this time. Please not this time. It is time to stand our ground – stand tall on our high, moral ground – to gather emotional, spiritual strength and then politically mobilize to end this madness. Let the murder of Trayvon Martin be the catalyst for true change in this country. For it is only through real action that we can still the sounds of his screams.
For a man of color, life in America oft feels like a frightening rollercoaster ride with dangerous traps awaiting you on every hairpin turn. One thing that is made clear at an excruciatingly early age is that because of color, because of race, not only are you different but you will be treated accordingly. And so you grow up being condescended to in conversations, followed in stores, treated with minimal – if any – respect at work and so on. Just because of the hue of your skin or the broadness of your nose or the fullness of your lips, your day-to-day actions will come under greater scrutiny. You are living life under a suspicious societal microscope and caution is not only suggested but for survival’s sake it’s expected. So you develop a hardened shell as much to maintain your sanity as to ward off any external trouble. 'Don’t mess with me, I won’t mess with you' becomes your credo. And you become content with the tiniest of triumphs. All I want to do is get through the day, you tell yourself. And then in the evening you think that all I want to do is live to see tomorrow’s dawn. When you’re a man of color in America, you believe that each breath you take is a victory.
And when that gift of life is snatched away from another person of color, you acutely – almost disproportionately - feel the pain of that loss. In most of those cases, you shake your head about the senseless loss. Sometimes, you even think how that could have been you. But you try not to linger over such thoughts. After all, there’s enough ache in your life. Why invite more hurt into your heart? So you compartmentalize and move on.
Then one day you hear about a 17 year old Black young man, a child named Trayvon Martin, who trying to return to his dad’s home in Sanford, Florida after a snack run is shot and killed because a White neighborhood watch guy – 29 year old George Zimmerman - deemed him suspicious, followed him and, against police advice, confronted him and all the emotions you’ve kept bottled up – a Pandora’s box of tangled, raw feelings – come flooding back. You think of assorted racial confrontations you had at that age. You think how you never once worried about being shot during any of those incidents. You thank God for growing up in a time when guns weren’t as plentiful. Then you think that if you had a son he’d look like Trayvon. A few days later you hear the President – the country’s first African-American commander-in-chief – say the same thing. For some reason, you take this as a good sign so you decide to follow the trial.
When you’re a person of color in America, the decision to follow a trial like this one is not a cavalier one. All too well, you know the capriciousness of the American justice system. You’ve either personally gone through it or known somebody who has and the results usually range from deficient to disastrous. Yet, we keep getting emotionally invested in these types of trials. Like an abused spouse welcoming home her battering husband, we tell ourselves that this time will be different. Justice is blind, we say while forgetting that that sightless gaze is habitually turned in our direction. So you lie to yourself and insist that this time justice will be surely be served.
Then you hear the stalling tactics by the district attorneys as they debate whether or not to bring charges and you start to worry. You hear about the Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law and shudder. You hear the acronym WWB – Walking While Black – mentioned and shake your head in disbelief. You hear from Geraldo Rivera how Trayvon’s wearing a hoodie contributed to his death. You hear the police tape where Zimmerman profanely describes Trayvon walking through his neighborhood before ignoring their pleas to stay put. You hear about how the arriving police cordially and respectfully greeted Zimmerman, the son of a former judge, just a few feet away from Trayvon’s still warm corpse. Then you think that a person of color would have been cuffed on the spot. You see the videotape of Zimmerman going into the police station later that evening and wonder where are the visual signs of all of these injuries he claimed Trayvon inflicted upon him. You hear about the financial war chest Zimmerman is accruing for his defense. You are told that the jury is made up of all females: five White and one Hispanic. You wonder what you are supposed to make out of such information.
You see Trayvon Martin’s parents and know that you could never demonstrate that much class and calm under such tragic circumstances.
Then the trial begins and you immediately notice the prosecution hasn’t brought their A game. You find yourself yelling at the television about unasked questions and obvious follow-ups. You see Travyon’s friend Rachel Jeantel – the one he was speaking to on the phone while Zimmerman followed him – and share her frustration at both the prosecution and defense. Then you later see Jeantel being unfairly vilified on social media by both Black & White folks for her supposed lack of sophistication and erudition. You think about how she literally heard her friend being murdered and wonder how folks can be so cruel with their criticism. Then you realize that Jeantel is a victim of the most common American prejudice: the bigotry of class. Her sin – in the eyes of many of the trial’s onlookers – was in being Black and poor. What she said may not have been purty but her pain – if you cared to listen – spoke volumes.
You watch the defense do what you expected: trash Trayvon. They show scary, blurry photos of Trayvon while putting on the witness stand neighbors who talked about burglaries in the neighborhood committed by African-American men. (Immediately, carrying such a theory to a logical conclusion, you wonder if President Obama, Will Smith, Prince and Clarence Thomas would also be stopped by George Zimmerman.) You hear the screams on the tape and watch both Trayvon’s mother and Zimmerman’s mother claim the screams belong to their child. For you, the answer is easy. Unfortunately, you’ve heard enough pained screams in your lifetime to know the difference between a child’s yell and that of an adult’s. Then you realize you just heard the death scream of a child and your soul throbs again.
Then the trial wraps up and the wait begins. You see Geraldo Rivera claim that the women on the jury would have shot and killed Trayvon a lot sooner than George Zimmerman did. You read social media and see the same phrase over and over again used by people of color: ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’ Surprisingly, you don’t. You figure that if Zimmerman isn’t convicted of the top charge of second-degree murder surely he’ll go away for manslaughter. You can’t just kill an unarmed child who you stalked and get away with it, right?
Wrong.
You get a call from a friend on a Saturday night. (A White friend, if it matters.) He sounds angry, disconsolate. He tells you the verdict is in. Not guilty. You’re shocked. While still holding the phone, you quickly put on the television. You see a replay of the verdict being read. The first thing you notice is the unnerving calm of the defendant Zimmerman. This is a man with his entire life riding on this verdict. You would think he would be nervous but he was confidently stoic. It was as if he already knew the favorable outcome and the reading of the verdict was a mere formality. Not guilty. You notice that the second charge – manslaughter – wasn’t even read aloud by the court. Why waste the breath? The not guilty statement covered everything.
Then you watch Zimmerman smile as the defense team hugged Zimmerman’s family. You recognize that smug smile. It’s a smile of pride. “The son of a bitch is proud of what he did,” you tell your friend. “Yep,” he agrees. You talk for a while then you excuse yourself to watch the press conferences. The prosecution – unsurprisingly - comes across as bumbling buffoons straight out of a Three Stooges slapstick short subject. Except there wasn’t a single laugh to be had here: just pain and sorrow.
The prosecution was followed by the defense team: Mark O’Meara and Don West. As distasteful as their trial strategy was, you understood they had to vigorously defend their client. But at the press conference, instead taking the high road, they instead decided to take a victory lap around Trayvon Martin’s dead body. You watch them insist that Zimmerman was the aggrieved party here and that if he were Black, he would not have even been charged. You clench your fists and now understand why Trayvon’s parents didn’t attend the sentencing. It would have been like watching their child get murdered yet again.
You spend the next few days watching the Sunday talking heads play Monday morning quarterback with the case. It shouldn’t have been brought, they say. Don’t blame the jury, they insist. They were just trying the evidence in front of them. The verdict was the only possible one considering the weakness of the prosecution’s case. The case had nothing to do with the ‘stand your ground’ law. (Although the law had been brought up during the jury selection process.) The case had nothing to do with race. This was about self-defense. Period.
Then you later watch Juror B37 – ironically cloaked in darkness to conceal her identity - talk about how she believes Zimmerman’s learned his lesson and how she would feel comfortable having him on a neighborhood watch. You are horrified as you realize Geraldo Rivera was right. You are disgusted when you find out that Juror B37 has signed a book deal to tell about the jury deliberations. Money made off of the blood of a dead Black child.
You turn off the television and seethe. This is the truth as you see it. An African-American young man was racially profiled by a cop wannabe - a judge’s son who only called the police whenever he saw a Black man walking in his neighborhood – followed by him, confronted by him, murdered by him then freed. (In effect, giving a White vigilante the same rights to use deadly force as an officer of the law.) To claim that he was found not guilty because of a jury’s ‘reasonable doubt’ is a canard. As people of color know all too well, many of us have been convicted of much more with far less evidence. It is when we are the victims – and, especially, when Whites are the accused – that the burden of proof shifts. In life in well as in death, people of color are guilty until proven innocent and the shield of reasonable doubt leads to verdicts of unreasonable heartbreak.
In a month when the majority of headlines concerned a female television cook’s use of the ‘N’ word, you have seen the Supreme Court emasculate the Voting Rights Act, the Mayor of New York City defend his stop-and-frisk policy by insisting we don’t stop enough Black & Latinos while stopping too many Whites and a child killer go free. Trayvon Martin wasn’t old enough to go to a bar and in some states, to drive. He wasn’t old enough to serve our country in the military. Perhaps, most importantly, he wasn’t old enough to vote. But his life, his existence mattered and - despite it being snuffed out so tragically – it’s up to us to affirm it in a way that goes beyond memorial T-shirts, wall murals and protests. T-shirts fray, murals fade and crowds disperse as the cause behind them is too-often forgotten. That is until the next tragedy. Not this time. Please not this time. It is time to stand our ground – stand tall on our high, moral ground – to gather emotional, spiritual strength and then politically mobilize to end this madness. Let the murder of Trayvon Martin be the catalyst for true change in this country. For it is only through real action that we can still the sounds of his screams.
April 11, 2013
Accidental Racist
Ten observations about the Brad Paisley – LL Cool J song “Accidental Racist.”
1) Easily the strangest buddy pairing since Anthony Hopkins and Chris Rock graced our movie screens with the aptly-titled "Bad Company."
2) Paisley sings that ‘it’s not like you and me can rewrite history’ then he and LL proceed to do just that.
3) It sounds like a discarded SNL skit from the ‘80s starring Joe Piscopo and Eddie Murphy as Buckwheat. Accent on the word ‘discarded.’
4) The ‘If you don’t judge my gold chains/I’ll forget the iron chains’ couplet. Maybe you will, LL, but I assure you no one will forget you saying these lines and let ‘bygones be bygones.’
5) If this song had come out six months ago, I guarantee you it would have made the “Django Unchained” soundtrack only Tarantino would have played it for laughs.
6) Exactly what school did these two learn their history from? The School Of Rock
7) ‘R.I.P. Robert E. Lee’? Really? Or should I say Real E. Lee?
8) Who would have thought the Nelly/Tim McGraw duet would remain the “What’s Going On” of country/rap collaborations?
9) Beware of any song that begins with a revelation about race at a Starbucks.
10) The song ends with the following lines: ‘It’s real. It’s real. It’s truth.’ Reality? It’s not. It’s not. It lies.
February 22, 2013
2012
(The following post was first published by First Of The Month – www.firstofthemonth.org – on December 2012.)
It was Election Day morning, a week and a day after Hurricane Sandy had wreaked havoc on the tri-state area – seventy-two hours since my home’s electrical power had been restored - and there was what the local television forecasters called an “unseasonable” chill in the Canarsie, Brooklyn air. November nippiness or not, there was work to be done. Important work. After all, there was a Presidential election today.
I put on my heavy denim jacket and walked to my local polling place – the place where I have voted my entire adult life – the public school across the street from my house. As I’ve done for decades, I opened the school doors and followed the posted signs with the big, black arrows on them to the cafeteria.
This time – for the first time - I walked in to a madhouse. A plethora of disjointed lines with dissatisfied folk were demanding answers. I went up to a woman with a badge and asked her which was my voting line. She pointed to the line nearest to me. I got on it and, over a half-hour later, spoke to another woman seated behind a picnic table. She asked for my address and name. I gave it and stood silently while she rifled through a large book full of names and addresses. Unfortunately, mine was not among them. She then referred me to another table in the far corner. I went there only to discover another thirty minutes later the folks at that table didn’t have my information either.
Onward if not upward, I was sent to another table. This one was located catty-corner from the first one I’d been to and again, I relayed my information. The woman at this table looked in another huge book, did not find my name and address, excused herself and came back with another large tome. She asked me to repeat my address again. I did. I watched over her right shoulder as her right index finger slowly scanned the page in front of us. Then it stopped on a number and she looked up at me to inform me that my polling place had been moved some six blocks away to the middle of the Breukelen Projects.
“That’s crazy,” I responded, “I live right across the street and I’ve voted here my whole life.” I also told her that I hadn’t been given any written notification concerning such a move. So, I asked, how could such a thing happen? She then lowered her voice. “It is crazy,” she said. “It’s almost like they’re trying to discourage people from voting.” She then grabbed a pen and paper and scribbled down an address. “Please, please, please, promise me that you’ll go here to vote,” she implored. “It’s important that you do.” As I took the paper from her hand, an older woman turned to me and spoke. “I live in the projects ten blocks away and they told me over there that I had to come here and vote. It’s ridiculous what they’ve doing. Ridiculous.” I nodded and left.
Now, a smidgen of regional history. The Breukelen – pronounced by neighborhood denizens as Brook-line – projects is considered by many local residents as a bit rough. Hence, its nickname of Crook-line, a sobriquet designed to create fear in some and a sense of class superiority in many of its bordering homeowners. Regardless, it is without a doubt a most curious choice to send redistricted voters. My response? I just buttoned up my jacket to the top and walked to the address I had been given: a community center smack dab in the – where else? - center of the projects.
In front of her was a middle-aged couple who had turned out for the turn-out. The woman was wearing a brown leather coat cinched with a belt tied tightly around her waist. Her hair seemed to have been recently coiffed because she kept patting the air around it with cupped hands as if she wanted to touch it but remembered in mid-pat not to do so.
The man had on a black leather peacoat, black Nikes with sandy brown shoelaces, a sandy brown track suit - the jacket zipped halfway up his chest - made of velveteen and a canary-yellow turtleneck. He was rocking black sunglasses and a black leather fedora which had on the left side a series of rhinestones that spelled out in capital letters: OBAMA.
In front of them was an elderly lady who was engaged in spirited conversation with two equally aged – male and female – poll workers. I glanced to my right behind me. A long line was beginning to form. (Must be a whole lot of M through Z’s in my ‘hood, I thought) Behind them were six privacy booths where people were filling out their ballots. I looked left. There was a young brother showing those with finished ballots how to run them through the scanners.
Coming from the scanners, having just finished the process was a heavy-set Latina Latina
A twenty-ish young lady in a grey leather jacket and grey kerchief on her head came into the room and made her way to the teenager in front of me. The teen – for the first time since I’d been behind her - took her eyes off of her phone and said hello to the slightly older woman.
“Shit is crazy,” her friend said in response as she began to rattle off tales of the trouble people were having in the neighborhood trying to vote. “That’s why I came here first thing this morning and insisted you come,” she concluded. “I’m here,” the teen said quietly as the A through L finally began to fill up next to us. “You should be here,” her friend responded with a correcting tone, “this is important shit. They’ve trying to steal this election and we can’t let that shit happen.” As she finished her sentence, the middle aged couple passed us with their ballots.
The two elderly poll workers then called the teen to the table. The teen paused and took a deep breath. Her friend gave her a comforting pat/shove in the back and pushed her towards the table. “You’ve got to forgive me,” she said, “this is my first time voting.” The poll workers smiled. “Nothing to worry about,” said the woman. “Just take your time,” said the man.
As she stepped forward, a slight commotion appeared to break out in the A to L line. A man in the back of the line began to complain that an elderly lady clutching a walker had cut to the front. “But I’m old,” she said in a weak voice, “I can’t stand for long.” The man in the back of the line began to respond until a young tall brother in the front, stepped out of the line, took a step towards him and spoke. “I let go her in front of me,” he said. Then he thumped his chest with his right hand for emphasis. “Me,” he repeated. Then he turned to the elderly lady and with his left hand cradled her right elbow. “Just take your time,” he softly told her as a slight smile came over her face, “you just take your time.”
The Hoodie
(The following piece was originally published by First Of The Month – www.firstofthemonth.org – on April 2012.)
A fox tail dangling from a leather belt. A key chain dangling from a leather belt. A leather belt with a personalized name buckle. Low top red Converse sneakers. High-top black Converse sneakers. Green suede Puma sneakers. Clamshell white Adidas sneakers. White Nike basketball athletic footwear. Blue chinos with the orange stripe running down the side. Black “overlap” slacks with two overlapping seams running down the side. Black “AJ’s” slacks with white thread running down the side. Denim jackets with the sleeves cut off. Leather vests worn without a shirt. Leather motorcycle jackets. Leather blazers. Leather pea coats. Leather bomber jackets. North Face jackets. Shearling jackets. Black Bally boots with a Cuban heels. Army jackets. Combat boots. Doc Martens. Black baseball caps with the letter X emblazoned on them. Black caps and jackets featuring the logo of the Oakland Raiders. Hockey jerseys. Baseball jerseys. “Throwback” basketball jerseys. Starter jackets. Gold chains. Floppy denim hats. Tan Timberland work boots.
Hoodies.
The preceding was a roll-call of clothing items that during my lifetime have been identified by the mainstream media as criminal attire. Anyone wearing this garb, the powers-that-be informed the populace, was sending out a signal that they were ‘up to no good’ and were soon going to commit a felonious act. (It’s an argument designed to bolster police “stop-and-frisk” policies.) Of course, the fact that this apparel was primarily worn by Latino and African-American youth – who began many of the aforementioned fashion trends – served to bolster their supposition. After all, what ethnic groups do we see on television being arrested and arraigned on a nightly basis?
Then came the killing of 17 year-old Trayvon Martin by 28 year-old George Zimmerman in Sanford , Florida
This dreadful event has for a multitude of valid reasons – race, vigilantism, the initial bungling of the case by the Sanford police department, the constitutionality of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law among them – gotten considerable national attention. As many folk of color have noted, there are, unfortunately, Trayvon-like tragedies in their communities on a regular basis. This is, therefore, that rare opportunity to discuss them while also seeking to see justice served. All of this, again, part of a valid and necessary dialogue.
Then came Geraldo.
Soon after the Trayvon Martin case began to break nationally, Geraldo Rivera – according to a transcript posted online – said this on his home network Fox News: ‘I’ll bet you money, if he didn’t have that hoodie on, that nutty neighborhood guy wouldn’t have responded in that violent and aggressive way.”
In the world-according-to-Geraldo, half of the problem with today’s world is the way young men dress. As the 68 year-old Rivera pointed out, hoodies have been worn by – and I am paraphrasing - by everyone that has ever stuck up a convenience store and such notorious criminals as D.B. Cooper and the Unabomber.
Rivera’s outrageous and, I suspect, calculated comments predictably caused a firestorm which then led him to a series of semi-apologies first to outraged viewers then finally to the bereaved Martin family themselves. But one thing had been accomplished. Geraldo Rivera had captured the nation’s attention once more. For a short time, he had become the story.
This may be hard for some people to believe – especially those who remember him from the live The Mystery Of Al Capone’s Vault debacle in the mid-80’s - but there was a time when Geraldo Rivera was considered to be a serious journalist. In the early ‘70’s – after a stint as an attorney who had been affiliated with the progressive Latino organization The Young Lords – Rivera joined New York City Staten Island hellhole known as the Willowbrook State School
By the mid-70s, Rivera had graduated to a late-night ABC show entitled Good Night America where along with celebrity interviews; he aired the first look at the Zapruder footage of the John F. Kennedy assassination. But after a few network battles, Rivera left ABC and by the mid-80s was hosting the high–rated syndicated Al Capone special where millions of viewers found out that after two hours of Rivera’s purple-prose build-up that the Capone vaults contained ……nothing. (A metaphor of Rivera’s career if ever there was one.)
Soon after that Rivera went over – in Jedi-speak – to the dark side. He hosted a contentious daily talk show entitled – what else? – The Geraldo Rivera Show where the highlight in a decade-long run was the host getting his nose broken by a flying chair thrown by a white supremacist during a brawl. There was a half-hour nightly program Now It Can Be Told which presaged the modern predilection of television tabloid journalism and his cable show Rivera Live which devolved into a circus during the year-long O.J. Simpson trial. (Although, there was a memorable postscript where a stunned Rivera, doing a live remote from a Washington D.C. African-American church whose parishioners had held a fundraiser to support the acquitted Simpson, ended up being repeatedly and wittily lambasted by the congregation) After being denied the opportunity to cover the Iraq War by his NBC bosses, Rivera bolted for Fox News where he has remained ever since.
The unfortunate arc of Rivera’s career has even been more magnified in the last few months because of the deaths of two great television journalists: 80 year-old Gil Noble and 93 year-old Mike Wallace. Noble had since 1967 been the host of Like It Is arguably the most influential African-American program ever broadcast. Through Like It Is, Noble had provided a forum for political folk from Stokely Carmichael to Al Sharpton; celebrities from Harry Belafonte to Sammy Davis Jr., historians, poets, artists and produced outstanding documentaries on both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King while all the time maintaining a delicate journalistic balance of asking his guests tough, fair questions. Wallace brought a bulldog tenacity to 60 Minutes grilling his subjects regardless of political affiliation and often cutting straight to the heart of the matter.
Rivera had the raw skills to be either Noble or Wallace but chose not to. Hell, he could have even been Dan Rather who’s another flamboyant reporter with a knack for injecting himself into the stories he’s covering. But where Rather and Rivera differ is Rather usually brings the viewer back to the tale being reported. He’s rarely bigger than the story. Not so, Rivera. He had to traduce the Travyon Martin tragedy to a ridiculous, even bigoted observation to garner attention. The funniest thing about all of this? This is from a man whose weekend television show on Fox News is entitled Geraldo At Large and who wrote a 1991 autobiography called Exposing Myself. Two titles which conjure up echoes of criminal behavior. I mean, who’s profiling who here?
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