Twenty years ago, I was involved in the seemingly unending fights over interracial adoption – specifically, should white parents be allowed to adopt black children? The organization I worked for, and represented in the media, believed the answer should be yes. I was even labeled a racist in one major newspaper.

Part of the argument against allowing such adoptions was the “who will teach” argument, as in who will teach these children how to navigate an inherently racist society. My answer at the time was, I’d rather see these children trying to figure it out with parents (in this case white) than trying to figure out anything in a foster care system that was increasingly betraying their futures.

I had such a “who will teach” moment of my own yesterday, at the mall – where so many of my important parenting moments seem to happen (loyal Blogenberg readers will recognize that!). I took my 13-year-old twins shopping. Each of them, the girl and the boy, armed with a cell phone and “safe shopping” instructions, were allowed to shop on their own, while I stayed available in the mall. (more…)

Some of my best friends are NPR fans. I’m an NPR listener. And what I listened to on the way home from work, Monday, October 1, disgusted me.

It was on All Things Considered, and it was titled “Courting Justice Kennedy’s ‘Swing’ Vote.” This is how the NPR website describes it: “As the ‘swing’ judge on the Supreme Court, Justice Anthony Kennedy has to fend off people from the left and the right who wish to influence his thinking. Satirists Bruce Kluger and David Slavin imagine how that might play out.”

One way, in Kluger’s and Slavin’s imagination, it plays out is Justice Clarence Thomas as Justice Antonin Scalia’s lackey, with a rather large dose of stupid. The way Kluger and Slavin depicted Thomas reminded me of the typical black servant often found in 1930s and 40s movies, such as the Charlie Chan or Abbott & Costello movies I used to love as a kid – slow of shuffling feet and mind, a complete toady for the white man. (more…)

The mainstream news media has a serious African American problem. Lots of blacks in this country are furious at CNN, MSNBC, Fox News Channel, Greta Van Susteren, Anderson Cooper, etc.

There’s no polling or focus groups behind my conclusion. Just listening to my wife, her siblings, and her friends, and hearing a healthy dose of The Michael Baisden Show on WHUR playing on my kitchen radio.

They’re furious about the Jena Six – with good reason. And they’re disgusted that, except on September 20 when tens of thousands marched in Jena, Louisiana, the mainstream media spent no time talking about what clearly appears to be vile prosecutorial racism. From the perspective of many, Greta, Anderson, etc. pull out all the stops when it comes to reporting on a young white girl gone missing or – talk about manna from heaven for the media – OJ getting arrested. But when it comes to reporting on nooses hung from a playground tree, racial fights, and African American youth being charged with attempted murder after a schoolyard brawl, the television news coverage might as well fade to black. Well, actually, I guess not

Nobody wants this war,
Fewer seem to understand it.
Talking pundits (the non-talking kinds are better) scream
behind me on TV about Scooter not going to jail.
24-hours news predicts “spectacular�? terrorism this summer.
“Spectacular�? – TV talking heads’ word, not mine.
Wow, “spectacular�? I wonder – should they sell tickets?
I’m old enough to remember when this was not a violent society in which we lived.
I’m old enough to remember when as a kid I left first thing in the morning for adventure with directions to just be home for dinner.
How did I survive childhood without Dateline catching predators on TV seemingly every night?
We don’t get along. We can’t get along. We’re terrified of immigrants. We’re nonchalant about young mothers killed as collateral damage in gang violence.
Is this the remix that Sam, John, Thomas, George, and the rest of them thought they were starting in steaming disease ridden Philadelphia?
Maybe.
I’m confused.
But that’s good. ‘Cause I live where nobody can order me how to act, what to think, when to have faith, and when to be enraged.
I live in America.
It’s good to be confused; it shows I’m not too old to pay attention.
Happy 4th.

Inside my head so often are the anxieties and pressures of working tirelessly (actually, often very tired) to build a public relations business – the pressures of marketing and pursuing contracts, taking care of employees, hiring new employees, meeting client needs, etc. – that I forget my blessings. It’s too easy to do, because owning a small business always feels, even on the best days, at least a bit precarious. Today, I’m reminded.

Today is the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson taking the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers. I can thank him for many of my blessings. In part, I can thank him for three: one 18-year-old son and 13-year-old twins, a boy and a girl. I could not have safely and happily married their mother were it not for what Jackie Robinson started, because he started America’s look in the mirror on race relations, a look that required Rosa Parks, Emmett Till, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others to make the reflection so painful it forced change. I would not be the father to the three children God blessed me with.

Most Americans today take Jackie Robinson for granted. They need to read Jackie Robinson by Arnold Rampersad, probably the best biography of the man. One of my proudest possessions is a Jackie Robinson autographed baseball from his playing days (at least I’m 95% sure it’s his autograph and, if you know anything about sports memorabilia, that’s pretty good).

And some of the proudest things in my life – I’ve got to look back and thank Jackie.

Regular Blogenbergers will soon learn that I’m fascinated by a construct: choosing race. My wife is black. We have three children of varying hues. Race relations are very intimate for me.

Top of the news are two examples of choosing race: the Imus outrage and the Duke lacrosse tragedy.

The cackling cacophony that passes for American discourse has chosen race as the battle line over Don Imus. They’ve decided that, when Imus called Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy headed hos,�? it’s a race relations battle. From Fox News Channel – which I watch every day – to ESPN’s The Dan Patrick Show – proof that an IQ is not a prerequisite for garnering riches in America – they fight over why it’s okay for black hip-hop artists to use these words and worse, and why it’s not okay for a white New York City cowboy radio jock.

They’ve made the wrong choice. They’ve chosen the wrong reason to be angry. For sure, it’s tasteless for white people to say “nappy headed�? and “ho,�? but it’s not prima facie evidence of racism. (The “n�? word is different of course.) Why Imus should be reviled is that he attacked young women with the howitzer of his national radio show who were, certainly within this context, innocent. He destroyed a memory for these young women. (more…)