blather
urban_black_social_codes
Be courageous! Question everything, speak truth conviction to power, Speak to power, challenge it.
Just because it is an acceptate urban or cultural social code it doesn't mean that it's inviolable or w/o merit or pernicious and group imposed. Here's what I'm talking about. I am of course black. I live in a middle class black nieghboorhood in a large city on the east coast. I have been ostracized and harassed over the last 15 years by my nieghboors. Why? Simply because having grown up in rural and suburban areas and even attending colleges in those areas I have no grasp of the sometimes befuddling and quite frankly w/o cause animosity of middle class black urban america. I'm not an elitist, I am probably not doing that well financially compared to others, but I speak what some of us have been socially conditioned to think of as "really proper" or "white" Because I have said to various neighboors when faced with thier absolute disrespect for property lines, Oh god this just so pointless! I mean if you say to a brother or sister, hey I have no problem with you, I only ask that you show me the same respect you expect from others. I mean what is this whole idea that there's thing deep misanthropic vien that resides in the depths of black america. This kind of group enforced social codes, to marginalize ostrisize someone simply because...okay..would it sound better if I said if one opposes the primacy of a cultural universalist "morality" that dictates as an inviolabe and sacred cultural imperative that those who swim against the stream be sactioned, marginalized ostrasized and terrorized en masse. What is this burning seed of self-hatred and insecurity that impels us to vicously belittle and harass people, our own poeple with no provocation simply but that wich "says he/she is different thier ways threaten me, threaten my over inflated sense of self esteem, they won't play the part that I have written for them play, so now I will call my beknighted brother/sisters in arms and we will teach him/her to think freely, to require of me the decency and respect I am not willing to give. How dare they make me doubt myself or feel inferior"

I mean, I believe that there is a large part of the black/african merican social and cultural code that is little more than an argot of animosity reserved for only US. A lot of us especially employed in retail and other service industries will still fawn over "whitey" while growling through gritted teeth at black customer with no provocation but simply this...whose he or she think he/she is? Well I ain't kissing thier but!" 400 years of social conditioning ya'll that's all I gotta say. And did I mention that most of this rudeness is displayed with no provocation imp[licit or other wise.

So this argot of animosity that part of our culture consists of is merely an echo (well quite frankly a little more than an echo) or an intractable insidious remnant of the social conditioning that began 400 years in order to keep a certain enslaved segment of the populace from uniting and harnessing its intellect, creativity and beauty and collective might. To suffer from that kind of conditioning and not be cognizant of it, and to be PROUD, to be PROUD of it and feel affirmed in this outrageous and insidious form of subtle fratricide. To be complicit in ones own races negation is beyond my ability to say, to summon the words to convey that kind of blindness, that kind of depraved hubris and blindness. We claw and tear at the very fabric of one anothers uniqueness and individuality, at one anothers sense of self while our true enemies who actually can affect our lives are free to continue implicity perpetuating the dictates of thier cultures economic, legistlative civic hegemony of black folks lives. 		050322
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of = over 050322
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oldephebe I mean I watched my mother march during the late 60's and throughout the 70's, return home battered by white cops. When Bull Conner's dogs leapt and tore savagely at one grandmothers soft throat, as the gushed out, as the blood painted the pavement she and many other martyrs of the civil rights movements last thoughts were of the future our generation, the power that unity can bequeath to a movement. I might add that many, not all though, african americans that I encountered in the suburbs and rural areas did not express this absurd argot of animosity towards one another or me. I don't get the self-hate, the hubris the sense of self, the solipsism and narcissism that says, "My self-esteem should be overltly indulged. And I without limit or check should glower imperiously at complete strangers of my race. I need to exorsixe this misanthropic, sadistic border-line sociopathic impulse to belittle brothas and sistahs who don't happen to have or carry the ah abrasive black urban edge in thier personas.
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I mean does it exact so great a cost from you to be decent, civil to honor and encourage positive people who happen to look like you?
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I gotta hurl....seriously
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oldephebe I posted this to a black chat group so sorry blather if you can't relate. I mean I'm not sorry but I would express regret if any of my comments would be constured as being anti-white, yellow brown or red.

If there are any brothers or sisters in blather I'd be interested to hear what you'd have to say about some of our social and cultural dictates that consist of nothing more than a argot of animosity toward one another.
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{a mixed girl but not a sister} I might love you. But on the other hand... 050322
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minnesota_chris well if you guys have freed your minds from the slavery of generations of mistreatment, then hallelujah. Black America needs more people who are truly free.

oldephebe, you're black? 		050323
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oE Yep 050330
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oldephebe mixed girl - Well my dad is a mullato, well actually he was blackfoot, scottish and black and my mom is this beautiful african american woman. I have a younger sister who'sbeen mistaken for latino many times.

If you don't mind, what races are you mixed with? It doesn't really matter but I'm just curious.
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oldephebe But then Chris can a people really blame a kind of culturally imposed psychosis and minsanthropy on someone else if we are generations removed from slavery and Jim Crow? I mean if anything shouldn't ANY marginaliszed people pull ranks around one another?
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minnesota_chris you're a woman? My world is shaking.

I think racism can exist whenever we are willing to deprive someone of human rights, to view them as less than human. That was slavery, Abu Ghraib, the Holocaust.

Wow, oldephebe, you're a trip. I need to reread your blathes. 		050331
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minnesota_chris oh and my ancestors are 100% poor Scandinavian farmers, I believe. 050331
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oldephebe Well I'm a guy.

So is Garrisson Kheeler of NPR a force for good or evil?

Actually Garrisson Kheeler is great.

Does he pretty much capture the Norwegian/Scandinavian ah zietgiest?
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minnesota_chris Garrison Keillor is in many ways a Minnesotan, with the whole wry, laid-back sense of humor, and religious but not evangelical. He's also an old-school radio man, and a first-rate joke teller, and he likes to sing. I find him pretty entertaining. But I listen to the programs This American Life, On the Media, and Whad'ya Know more often. 050409
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andru235 the idea that marginilized people ought unite; but then there are (of course) those hidden complexities.

i don't really meld well with the other gay men here, at least not most of the ones my age whom i encounter at the places where gay people meet each other:

i don't meet the fashion standards,

i'm not very good at being catty and bitchy (nor is it my desire, barring the rare occasion),

i regard sex as *gasp* something mystical, not merely a several-hour-one-day-only-pleasure-fest,

i'm awful at conversation,

i cannot sit still and have a few tics, which are "uncool",

i couldn't care less about madonna, cher, ms. aguilera, janet, britney, j-lo, mr. timberlake, etc., nor do i care what they were seen wearing last week at whatever event of distinction,

(shall i go on? no need, i'd guess)

and in person i seldom make any of this an issue: i'll go public places but i keep to myself; i try and be friendly to the elder gay men who are often regarded as "trolls"; i try to be friendly to the gay kids because most of the attention they receive is from those with lurking sexual interest (i know from having been there not so long ago)

to top it off, i work in the suburbs with a bunch a gruff straight guys [I'M NOT SAYING ALL STRAIGHT GUYS ARE GRUFF but this crowd is gruff, and that is putting it nicely] and am tenuously 'out' wherever i work, which at this juncture is rather uncomfortable but it needs to happen, because these guys are mostly from this white christian suburb and IT SHOWS in a sometimes painful way

i know that this isn't the same but i am definetely sympathetic the gay black men who are caught between *two* irritatingly primitive social codes

i'd like inclusion, i'd like a sense of unity with 'my people' but i can't fake it, nor can i fake being someone other than myself, because i am no good at faking.

so i wait.

and wait.

and wait. 		050419
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oldephebe thanx ofr sharing a part of your narrative with us andru

so chris--garrison may like singing but i simply abhor his singing and mike hogging harmonies...the female on his show has a beuatiful voice though.
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unhinged .


after my friends joined a hip_hop group i became much more acquainted 		180312
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