Being Black In America STILL Sucks

Official Wire ^ | July 27, 2009 | Elizabeth Boleman-Herring

[2ndDivisionVet]

This past month, Ruminant has been uncharacteristically silent, missing at least three column deadlines—not at all like her: and this at a time when her birth-country is so noisily scandal-ridden and patently loony that her usually effortless and knee-jerk snarkiness should have been propelling her on, of its own massive momentum, to write gleefully malicious prose, paragraph upon paragraph.

But to what effect, I ask? To what effect? What can commentary add to "news" that is so transparently monstrous and mad that the only sane response is either 1) silence; or 2) going postal, in DC just for starters.

Instead, following the Michael Jackson Death Circus, La Palin's Final (We Think)Withdrawal From The Pageant That Is Her Personal Alternative Universe, The Continuing Shenanigans Of Bad, Mad, Thinking-With-Their-Reproductive-Organs White Republican Boys in DC (All Paying Members of that notorious C-Street Frat-House, Sigma Kappa Upsilon Mu, or SKUM). . .I've been, instead, rendered mute. (And I haven't even MENTIONED the so-called Democrats in the House and Senate blocking Health Care Reform, the Rabbis and Mayors et al Recently Arrested in New Jersey, nor the ongoing idiocy-in-installments of Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney, Joe Scarborough and Fox "News," just to name a few of the usual culprits-of-crap, all of which should lay obvious, raucous claims on a rabid-left-wing-columnist's time and conscience. SOMEONE has to write about this stuff, this madness, this America-of-Ours, I've always thought, and yet . . .I've been utterly remiss of late.

Why?

SKUM Overload, I opine. Despair over "Popular Culture" as it is known and lived in these United States. A mute desire to head out for the wilderness, where I would never again have to listen to Governor Mark Sanford waxing forth about his Argentinian Soul-Mate (oh, give me a break!), or The (C-Street) Family advancing a philosophy that somehow, guiltlessly, conflates fascism with Christianity. Even Lou Dobbs, always teetering, has gone firmly and finally round the bend. Yes, with The Birthers? That group of gormless jackasses who can't parse a birth certificate? What should I say about THEM? What mere words are up to the task of smacking down all the idiots in this Republic?

I'm not up to this right now, folks. DANTE might not have been up to it. He'd have run out of circles of hell before getting halfway from A to D. (Of course, Cheney would require his own personal circle. As would Karl Rove. Still! And John Ensign and Mark Sanford are bucking for a duplex in Dante's Lower-Circle-of-Fun: adjoining master bedrooms with a shared, en-suite fire-pit might do it.)

Hiking the Appalachian Trail, my ass! I only wish the dog had eaten Sanford's homework while he was out there woodshedding.

Mercy, we live in interesting times!

So, I've been on the sidelines of late, quietly watching the various long- and short-running plays—both comedies and tragedies—on the world's many stages.

And then came the Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. story, out of bucolic Cambridge, Massachusetts. A Harvard professor gets hauled off in handcuffs for "breaking into" his own residence, even after displaying two forms of I.D. to the arresting officer. President Obama, commenting later, says (quite rightly) that the police "acted stupidly". . .and then, days later, does an about-face, and says he could "have calibrated those words differently."

How, precisely?

Had Sergeant James Crowley come into my rural residence (were I still living in South Carolina), without being invited, and tried to haul me off in handcuffs for jimmying my own door open, he would have been dealing with not some sort of verbal "overreaction" (President Obama's words), but, rather, with Smith & Wesson. (I lived waaaaayyyy out in the Oconee County woods, and had to fire my shotgun off into the night sky on many occasions to discourage predations by two-legged varmints.)

Now, I understand, Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley have been invited to the White House to sit down and chat amicably over a brewskie. Were I Professor Gates, I'd be waterboarding Sgt. Crowley with my Sam Addams.

The bottom line is: it still sucks being Black in America, and I suspect it's going to suck for quite a long time to come.

Now, true, I'm an uppity, lippy white woman of a certain age. I've even talked back to the Teaneck police, on occasion, when I felt they were being unnecessarily heavy-handed in the course of issuing a traffic ticket (to my husband) for double-parking outside Louie's Charcoal Pit for precisely two minutes while I dropped off medicine for a sick child. Did me (and Dean) a lot of good: the ticket got written because I got lippy. But, Oh Lord help me, what if I'd been Black and lippy? I can tell you "what if." I'd have been given a second ticket, at the very least, for disorderly conduct.

Now, I also admit, as a child of the 1960s Mini-Revolution in this country, I have stood on ramparts and been tear-gassed while protesting the Vietnam War and calling the Athens, Georgia police who were gassing me "porcine." They were porcine, and they should have been on our side of the line of fire, the right side of history. Post-Kent-State, it was pretty obvious that law enforcement was not batting for the angels in America and, though I've taken citizens' classes in police procedures, and generally got along well with my small-town police force in Pendleton, South Carolina, in Teaneck and, obviously, Cambridge, there's still a great big old problem between the (mostly) men in blue, and those they've sworn to serve and protect.

And, if you happen to be Black, or Latino, or somehow obviously mentally impaired, you're likely to have an even bigger great big old problem with the police.

Reportedly, Professor Gates said to Sergeant Crowley, "I'll speak with your mama outside" (NYT, Vol. CLVIII, No. 54,747, Page 1). Right On, Professor Gates! And right on into those handcuffs, alas. . . .

Well, President Obama missed the boat on this one.

It was not Professor Gates who overreacted, or Sergeant Crowley who needed his feathers smoothed.

It was, instead, an opportunity for the First Black Man In The White House to say, "Enough!" and it was the police, all across America, who needed to be told. Along with their mamas.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Comments?

[Codeflier]

Wipe...flush...wash hands...exit.

[668 - Neighbor of the Beast]

Whereas being black elsewhere is heavenly.
Meanwhile, old in America sucks, and being underage in America, and being handicapped, too dumb, too smart, brown-eyed, unlicensed, nearsighted, female or male or transsexual or gay or bespectacled or deaf or...or...patriotic...or publicly schooled...or...Christian...or........................................

[Oldexpat]

Does anyone think there is any other place where being black is more fun? I have traveled the world and the US has our problems with race, but most of the rest of the world is worse. There is a lot of open and legal racism out there. Legislated and decreed racism..

[silverleaf]

I foud some truth in her article. This for example:
I'm an uppity, lippy white woman of a certain age

[trisham]

Yes. This person can’t write or reason. I would usually refer to the writer of an article as an “author”, but in this case such a description would be ludicrous.

[FormerRep]

Tales from the crack pipe?

[traderrob6]

3 names is a dead giveaway.

[ClearCase_guy]

Hyphenated hippie chick. She’s entitled to her opinion, even when she’s wrong — which, I suspect, is most of the time.

[Reagan69]

Being in America with a black, liberal, socialist president sucks.

So, what’s the point.?

[Clock King]

Mentally ill.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

It’s hard to read this article. It’s incoherent.

Is this another one of those folks who got into and through college on affirmative-action?

[logos]

Naturally it takes a sucker to identify a suckee...

[the_devils_advocate_666]

“Marcie Dahlgren-Frost. Dahlgren is my maiden name, Frost is my married name. I’m single again, but I never bothered to remove the Frost. And I get compliments on the hyphen.”

[dtrpscout]

Wow. That low level of intelligence and reasoning carrys very little survival value in a state of nature.

[silverleaf]

Does anyone think there is any other place where being black is more fun?

Zimbabwe! It's tons of fun to be Black in Zimbabwe. The folks just spent the past generation making Zimbabwe as Black as they could. What fun.

[TSgt]

Two generations of her family have contributed nothing of value to our country and should stay in Greece.

Elizabeth Boleman-Herring was born in North Carolina, but spent the first nine years of her life in Pasadena, California. At ten, she moved with her parents to Greece where, for three years, her father was posted as a Fulbright scholar and administrator at Pierce College in Glyfada. Educated at the American Community Schools of Athens, the Francis W. Parker Private School of Chicago, the University of Georgia, the University of South Carolina, and at American University in Washington, DC, Boleman-Herring returned to Greece as an adult to pursue a career in journalism. In the 1980’s, she served as Deputy Editor of "The Athenian": Greece’s English Language Monthly and, in 1988, became founder and Publishing Editor of "The Southeastern Review": A Quarterly Journal of the Humanities in the Southeastern Mediterranean. Her first children’s book, "The Other Side of the Road," was published, in English and Greek editions, by Lycabettus Press in Athens; a second children’s book, "The First Of Everso," was issued in Greek by Estia. Boleman-Herring’s poetry has appeared in numerous publications, as have her columns, features, reviews, jazz lyrics, photographs and travel articles. A collection of her poetry, "The Crowded Bed: Erotic, Light and Formal Verse," was published by Lycabettus Press, and her travel guides to Greece, its islands and Athens for Insight Guides have been released in many editions by APA Publications. Also, with noted British photographer Clay Perry, she authored "Vanishing Greece." Boleman-Herring divides her time between homes in New Jersey and the Greek islands, traveling to and fro with her husband, jazz trumpeter Dean Pratt.

[TexasCajun]

Hey Liz! Yo Momma Wears Army Boots !!

Too bad Yo Momma wasn't as rabid a liberal as you or she would have aborted you in an effort to save Mother Earth.

And when Sarah Palin is in the Whitehouse, pls feel free to relocate to the nearest universe.

[papasmurf]

There’s a real simple answer to your plight.

Quit the black race, and join the human race.

[FormerACLUmember]

Drug addict whining. Snore....