Hope y'all have been well. Still hard at work with my writing projects -- given that the longer one was primarily and obviously based on my personal experiences, I've decided to turn it into an avowed memoir. That means that (for the most part), the science fiction elements and mythological backstories are out, but there should still be room for social commentary (a la the discussion below, but peppered with my own experiences) and a bit of humor. As much humor as can be in the life story of a suicidal wackjob constantly plotting his own demise, anyway. 7K words so far and counting.

Posted the first Hot Flash in a while over on Scary-Crayon, too, so check that out if you find my drawings and comments to be amusing and don't mind minor Silent Hill spoilers, since that's the subject of the latest comic. See the attendant entry in the SC blog for my assessment of the film.

On another note, I was looking for an article/transcript from an interview with James Earl Jones that one of my commenters referenced and came across the following film quote:

But you think of yourself as a colored man. I think of myself as a man.

That was from Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, released in 1967: and while I go even farther than that -- I think of myself as Wes, id est, myself -- I want to know what the hell happened to that progressive mentality. I listened to Cornel West's annual sermon at Howard University this morning, and while he made a few good points and employed a number of humorous analogies, I couldn't help but notice that throughout the speech he constantly and consistently referred to people with respect to the color of their skin -- except he was hardly employing the term in a purely descriptive fashion. He lavished praise upon Tavis Smiley's new book, The Covenant with Black America, but given that it obviously continues to regard individuals as being "black people" first and foremost -- or at least fails to address the issue at all -- I am convinced that its effect on the nation, if it has any lasting effect, will be decidedly negative.

In the midst of one supposedly racially motivated controversy, I once wrote to the president of the Concerned Black Students at Yale group and asked if they might better serve their aims by encouraging all students to get involved in these issues. I questioned whether a group called Concerned Students at Yale, with the right kind of direction, might have more success. She wrote back that the organization was so named because its intent was to explicitly exclude students who were not part of what she called "the Black Family." She described the actions of the group as being a "for us by us" movement. But if that's how these people think, why should anyone else care? How does that mentality encourage progress? As long as the concept of racial separatism -- which, arguably, necessarily attends the concept of race -- is championed, there will be no progress in this country.

So I want to know why so many supposedly smart and educated people are unable to grasp the simple concept that the color of one's skin should not define one's behavior, interests, or causes. If the problems in our society are to be solved, it will not be because of appeals to racial brotherhood and unity, but because all people recognize that something is wrong and needs to change. I am sick of hearing community leaders preface their speeches by stating what "we as black people" should do. I have no doubt that Smiley's book will be touted as being a book that no black home should be without, but how about it being a book that every person committed to social justice should read? Why not make an appeal to persons with compassion for their fellows and an interest in improving the nation across the board? Perhaps, like Hitler, these people feel that the concept of race is a far more powerful tool for promoting unity: but the Nazi regime didn't exactly do away with racism, did it?

I was looking for a statement that I actually think came from President Bush -- something to the effect that there shouldn't be a black or white America, just America -- but I couldn't find it. When I keyed "there should not be a black america" into Google, I didn't get a single hit. So let this be the first. People should not define themselves and others with respect to the color of their skin, nor should they let themselves be so defined, nor should they privilege shared skin color over personal interests, beliefs, etc., when grouping themselves. There should not be a black America. And while I recognize that to some extent the heavy concentrations of so-called minorities in inner-city environments encourages that mentality, the abolition of these ideological racial divisions doesn't even appear to be an intended goal of these so-called activists' progressive plans. It should be.

Hopefully that'll tide y'all over until my next post. Ja ne!