Please Come Back Dr. King

It's the day after my birthday party. Last night I was surrounded by some of the most beautiful and amazing people that I have ever had the pleasure to meet. That so many tremendous humans came together to celebrate my birthday was a sweet joy and a blessing. This morning I had to fight my own internal tapes that tell me that I don't deserve to be loved by so many beautiful people, but this morning those tapes don't win. Love wins. Thank you my family, my community, my people for loving me so gently and so beautifully last night.

I have been crying for the last five minutes. And not just crying but acting like I have been beaten for doing something wrong. You know the kind of crying where you can't catch your breath. You know what I am talking about.

But they are actually happy tears. Let me tell you a story.

This morning, a person that is family to me as if he were blood kin, posted on his Facebook wall, an excerpt from Dr. King's speech "I've Been to the Mountaintop." If you haven't heard this speech, and so many people have not heard it, you should listen to it now. This was the speech that Dr. King gave the night before he was assassinated. These were the final words he spoke in public:

Well I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. I don't mind. Like anybody I would like to live a long life. Longevity has it's place. But I'm not concerned with that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. So I am happy tonight. I am not worried about anything. I am not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Maybe I am a big old softy...but listening to that speech in the doctor's own words maybe me choke up like an old black lady at a funeral.

Hey glory.

Yesterday was the 47th anniversary of Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Yesterday Glen Beck and Douchnozzle Extreme Sarah Palin held a rally...at the Lincoln Memorial....talking about taking back the Civil Rights Movement.

Fuck them. FUCK THEM. FUCK THEM IN THE FUCKING SKULL WITH A RUSTY RAZOR BLADE COVERED IN EBOLA!

So glad I got that out of my system.

I am actually angry. I am so angry I could spit random toiletries. The anger is directed solely at one target: myself. I am angry that I have succumbed to hatred. On the anniversary of Dr. King's most famous speech. I have betrayed his memory and legacy by bowing down to the emotion of the enemy. I have let hatred overcome my spirit, and I have reveled in it.

I am ashamed of myself. Dr. King deserves better. I deserve better.

I wish that I could love my enemy as I love myself. I wish that I could live the spirit of Dr. King.

Let me be clear. Dr. King was a human. He was a womanizer and was not faithful to the commitments he made to Mrs. Coretta Scott King. He was gay accepting but only to a point. He kept his mentor and friend and architect of the 1963 March on Washington Bayard Rustin on the sidelines and out of the limelight because of his sexual orientation. But not despite all that, but because of all that...because he was human and because being human he still inspired us to be more than we are and gave us the space to imagine ourselves as better than this world would have us be, I love Dr. Martin Luther King.

I remember.

In high school, I had an amazing history teacher by the name of Frederick Burton. In my senior year, his three year old daughter recited, from memory, Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech as part of a Black History Month celebration in Minneapolis. Mr. Burton blessed my entire school by having his daughter's rendition of the speech broadcast over the school's intercom system. In my mind and in my spirit I can still hear her little and powerful voice say, "Free at last...free at last...thank God Almighty...we are free at last."

I believed every word that little girl said.

The power and legacy of Dr. King is that he continues to inspire us 42 years after he was assassinated by the United States government. Now, more than at anytime when Dr. King was alive, we know the truth about him as a man. We know about his weaknesses and his foibles, and we, or at least I, love him even more for his humanity. And though Glen Beck and Sarah Palin tried to co-opt his dream yesterday...though they straight up lied about the coincidence of organizing a rally on that day while including Dr. King's fucked up, self-hating, stupid and ugly niece in the line up for the event....no one can take Dr. King from us. No one can take his dream from us.

Dr. King DID get to the mountaintop...and he DID see the promised land...and though that land may still be far off...and though many of us may not live to see our arrival...the arc of the universe does bend towards justice...and we will get there...we shall overcome...some day....very...very soon.

Some of My Best Friends Are White

As a matter of fact two of my best friends are white and the third is black. So using Mendelian genetics, I think that actually makes one of the white friends mulatto.

But seriously, I love white people. I let some white people carve pumpkins in my house last night AND I let them use my bathroom. My Mom is white, and I don't hold that against her (anymore), and I sleep with a white man every night...and now that the Summer has ended he gets paler by the day. I am thinking about getting him a sun lamp before his skin gets any whiter and he starts reflecting light.

I think white people are very articulate. They are funny (that Kathy Griffin is a riot). And they sure are a musical people (N'Sync rules!). And boy oh boy can they move...I mean those white folks on Dancing with the Stars are AMAZING. And considering how queer I am, you know I appreciate all those Rogers and Hammerstein/Stephen Sondheim Broadway tunes. Thank you White America!

But seriously, a good friend of mine (he's white)....noted that I had been directing my anger lately at the shenanigans of white people. And truthfully between Glen Beck and Perez Hilton (I know, I know, that one is Cuban, but the Latino community voted to strip her of her Latinidad until she stops speaking in any public forum)...anyway...from Glen Beck and Lou Dobs to that idiot in Arizona with the "sweat lodge," white folks have been pissing me off a lot lately. But, I am an equal opportunity bitch master, and so yesterday I had to call out a dumbfuck black woman that was more worried about her food stamps than she was about the fact that she left two children in a house that caught on fire killing one of the kids.

And, frankly, since Obama took office many white people have decided that we are living in a post-race America. I still haven't gotten my 40 acres and a mule or a check for my share of 400 years of free labor by my ancestors (plus interest)...so just as soon as I get me a stretch of prime downtown Manhattan real estate and a check for roughly $1 billion dollars (I will cut the IRS a deal and settle their back taxes bill for a cool half-billion)...I will declare the United States to be post race. Until then, I am going to continue to write about the laughable yet sad attempts by racial terrorists to kill Barack Obama (there have been at least three plots foiled that I know about...curse those kids and that dog!)...until Lou Dobbs is yanked from CNN by his balls for his vilification and racist diatribes against undocumented immigrants...until Don Imus is dunked in a vat of Pink Lotion for daring to refer to black women as nappy headed...until transgender women of color are no longer targeted by white men for sexploitation and murder...until white privilege is a history lesson instead of an object lesson on racial reality....until no justice of the peace DARES to decline to marry a mixed-race couple...until white folks can tell me apart from Tiger Woods, Barack Obama, and Derek Jeter...until the day I die...I am most likely going to be on the case of white folks like...well...white on rice.

I love you white people, I just don't love what you do (sometimes). And I know that all white people are not guilty for the sins of the idiot few, which is why I rail against specific incidents as opposed to white folks in general. And I totally think that white people should be allowed to sit anywhere on the bus they want....just as long as its in the back.

Just kidding. Rosa Parks wouldn't like that at all.

This blog is dedicated to Divine Grace...one of the most awesome white people I know.

Tragedy and Stupidity In South Memphis

This morning I logged into my Facebook account to find a news clip posted on my wall by my friend Arthur. The clip was an interview from a Fox affiliate in South Memphis. A mother and and her sister left their home unattended with a two year old and a three year old inside while they went to drop off a friend at home. During their absence the house caught on fire. The two year old died.

You can see in this clip that the mother of the children is understandably distraught. One child is in critical condition and the other one is dead. Then the aunt of the children loses her fucking mind. At the end of the clip, she announces that she has no regret that the children were left home alone, then she laughs and says she needs to get in to see if her "purse burnt up cuz her food stamp card..." was in the purse.

Stupidity knows no fucking color.

Unfortunately, this ignorant black woman's interview is already making its way around the country at the speed of YouTube. I am sure that Fox News could not WAIT to get this clip up on the Internet and into the hands of their faithful across the country. At a time when the black community is enjoying the beginnings of a Renaissance, Fox has helped ensure that this ridiculous excuse for a human being is going to get massive amounts of air time.

And let's be real here. When a crazy white person aka Timothy McVeigh blows up a federal building killing innocent children, he is just one disturbed human being. When a crazy working class black woman exhibits her personal ignorance and callousness on Fox News, she is representing the entire American Black community. She immediately conjures of images of deadbeat welfare queens, uneducated poor, and stereotypes of black women used to galvanize the religious right base during the Reagan and Bush Sr. years.

The woman in that video clip is a poor excuse for a human being that should have her tongue yanked out by her sister. I can't imagine one of my siblings being so heartless and cruel as to make a statement such as the one she made while the house is still smoldering. If any of them did, you can bet the first thing I would do when I came out of the shock of losing my child would be to kick his or her ever loving ass. But I would know that it was just a stupid person saying stupid shit. But when the media, particularly Fox media, gets a hold of something like this it is a culture war gold mine.

If I had the stomach for it, I would Google search this topic. I would not be surprised if Don Imus and Glen Beck mentioned this news story on their shows today. Just as one black person should not represent our entire community nor should that same black person have the power to sabotage the image of an entire community, but this one disturbed individual does. My own internal tapes started running as soon as I heard her speak. False stereotypes of the working class (from which I come), the South (my family is from the South and I went to college in the South), black women (ummm I am black), and a whole host of other negative stereotypes started running through my head. AND I KNOW BETTER. I know that the South is a beautiful and vibrant place. Most of my political mentors come from, live in, and organize in the South. I came out in the South, cut my teeth as an organizer in the South, and I know the power, beauty, and history of that place. Yet this one woman was able to raise all the specters of the South implanted in my mind by history books, television, movies, and other pop culture vehicles. I know so many powerful black women that it should be impossible for me to project the shortcomings of this stupid individual to all black women, yet the tapes in my head started shouting things like "typical." The Aunty in this video IS NOT TYPICAL. Yet pop culture and U.S. acculturation tells me that she is.

I hate Fox News. I despise this woman her personal ignorance, and I hate our cultural system that indoctrinates even people that know better to feel and think AUTOMATICALLY the thoughts and feelings that rushed through my head and heart when I watched this particular interview.

My heart and prayers go out to the Mother of those children. She is not faultless. She knew better than to leave two young children at home alone. She has reaped a punishment that will haunt her for the rest of her life. I wish her only peace as she tries to pick up the pieces of her family. To the Aunt, I hopes that she gets the help she needs from friends and neighbors. I hope she sees her interview and is embarassed to the core of her being. And I fervently hope that Fox News and Ruport Murdoch are sucked into a worm hole, deposited on an oxygen-less planet on the far side of the solar system where they are gang banged by giant poisonous sea slugs.

Lord let the rest of the day be filled with peace, joy, and love.