Yes folks, Sondjata is making a road trip! Garvey's Ghost will be travelling from the New Jeru (That's New Jersey) to Miami Florida. Right now we are in a hotel room in Colonial Williamsburg. It is 97 Degrees as of 4:23 PM and we've been driving top down. I fully expect to lose 10 pound from the heat alone this trip. But enough about the driving. Why are we in Colonial Williamsburg? Well I keep seeing ads for the place with clean, happy looking Negroes. So I wanted to see why the Negroes were so happy in Colonial Williamsburg. After all VA is home to one of the "bloodiest" African uprisings in American history. So perhaps I'll see some monument to Nat Turner. Not. But really, I did want to see what the deal was and I'll report on the goods tomorrow.
Today however; I stopped at the Native American museum in Washington DC. Let me say at the outset that the architecture of the building is excellent. When they said no squares they meant it. The place is curvaliscious (not a word). For those who have not been, there are two floors of exhibits and a few theatres. You can park on the street for 3 hours for no charge, should you be able to find a parking spot. Olodumare and the Ancestors were kind to me and I got a spot straight away (musta known I was on a time crunch). One can definitely see how Africans and Native Americans would have gotten along. Many of the worldviews are complementary. In fact a couple of nations have color schemes in common with the Yoruba.
Off the trip tip, I must continue with my commentary on the Palestinian situation. It is now public knowledge that the US and Europe are looking to back the Fatah government while simultaneously doing all they can to make the Hamas government on the strip fail. When people ask why fools fly planes into buildings and such, these things must be brought up. The US, Europe and Israel have no business trying to topple governemnts. If all Hamas wants to do is gun play, then the people of Palestine will deal with them appropriately. But as it stands Fatah will be seen as a puppet government of "The West" and rightfully so. They will get things done not because they are demonstrably better than Hamas, but because the US, Europe and Israel have decided to support it.
Oh yeah, I must comment on another thing. This trip has fully reminded me as to why obesity is a problem in the US. I'm trying to find a meal here in Williamsburg and decided to go to a buffet place. Now, every buffet place I've been too has had Chinese food, so I can eat well but not heavy. This joint had "southern" food. Grease galore. I swear that I had to be the slimmest black person in the place. Well of the few that were there. In fact, I'll say that I was one of the few slim people in the building. So the food is "well seasoned" and the folks next to me who were apparently from North Carolina, were busy putting MORE salt on the food. Now since I felt that I had paid way too much for what I considered to be glorified junk food, I had two helpings of food ( I found some nice dirty rice, grilled chicken and veggies in the back). Would you know that the waitress, who was very, very nice to me, kept putting out new plates. I think she wants me to gain weight. Then when I got up to leave, the NC folks felt the need to urge to let me know that I had neglected to have dessert. I actually had 2 chocolate chip cookies. But I'm saying though, Folks can't be eating like that and expect to be healthy. Seriously.
(17 years of informed commentary)
As I understand your post on the ercent civil rights decision you seem to stress two points. The first seems to be one of skepticism about the whole projectof "integration". You seem to question the value of sitting next to a white student. The second point seems to be that much of what people are concerned about is not racism but "market ordering: residential housing patterns-you go to the school where you live-not coercive discrimination is the problem. Very laissez-faire.
ReplyDeleteI'm very familiar with those arguments: they resonate in terms of the arguments made first by Charles Hamilton Houston and later pic ked up by Derrick Bell: "the issue" he says, "is not integration but quality schools." There is truth here but it must not obscure a deeper problem.
There are two questions you need to think about. First the harm of segregation is not the inability to sit next to a white person per se. The harm is that segregation , operationally, represents a concentration of poverty. Majority black schools, in inner cities especially, are overwhelmingly poor . When you concentrate poor students you concentrate problems. The result of racial isolation is that the quality of education is usch that in Baldwin's words inner city schools have become "disaster factories." What the pundits are addressing is the fact that the disaster is likely to escalate, That is no talkinfg head rhetoric . That is what will happen.
Another point is that the market-residential housoing patterns- did not just get that way. These housing patterns are theselves driven by racism. If we are going to change racial isoaltion where do suggest we begin?
There is a larger issue. The issue is not integration it is the extent to which the ideology of colorblindness has become and is merely acover for white supremacy. I am frankly not interested in sitting next to whites or having my chilkdren do so. But I am opposed to white supremacy in any form, especially the form of the Supreme Court decisons legitimating racial isolation. That's what these cases represent.