As Jay-Smooth says of John Mayer’s recent buffoonery:
There’s so much wrongness there, you can just swim in it.
As true as this is, Jay doesn’t want us to drown in it. Getting sucked into media soundbites about race can draw us away from the most immediate issues at hand. Jay goes on:
A lot of the most important race issues are institutional, systemic, structural issues. Questions like:
Why in 2010 do Black people not have the same educational opportunities, the same access to health care, the same economic and employment opportunities?
Why are Black people so disproportionately affected by this recession?
Why, in 2010, does it so often seem like on an institutional, systemic, structural level Black people are still disproportionately affected by almost everything thats bad?
Those questions cannot be answered by analyzing the racial awkwardness of a YouTube video. Answering those questions means figuring out how we can change public policy and pressuring the government from inside and outside to make those changes.
Damn. Who wants to listen to John Mayer, anyway, when you can watch Jay-Smooth spit the truth? Check him out at his new site, Nil Doctrine.
says Jay Smooth in a killer post at Ill Doctrine. Check out the video below to learn why our obligation to join with the Haitian people goes much deeper than pity:
This not only a nation of poverty and desolation…this is the nation that taught our hemisphere what it means to be a freedom fighter, and what it takes to break the chains of slavery. Its only when you see that full scope of Haiti’s history that you understand what our obligation is. That we need to act not because Haiti is some nation of perennial victims that we need to have pity on. We need to act because Haiti is a nation of heros. And we need to repay them for what they’ve given us. THAT is what our responsibility is.
Damn. That gave me chills. Looking at it in this way gives so much more meaning, not only to the suffering we see in pictures and on the news, but to our deep connection and responsibility to the people of Haiti.
Jay goes on to suggest four different ways to get involved, and stay involved, in the solidarity effort:
Like many folks, I’ve contributed what I can afford financially, but Jay’s post gave me a swift kick in the ass to step it up in other arenas. I’ve provided links to the categories above to help us get started.
Sometimes I get overwhelmed by the magnitude of suffering around the world, but thats no excuse for inaction. If you’re like me and need a reminder of both our responsibility and power to act, re-watch Jay Smooth’s video and kick it back into gear. There is much work to be done.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr day is not only a day of service and day to honor the heros of the Civil Rights Movement, but also to remember and examine the words of Dr. King. Here are a few of my favorite thinkers reflecting on Dr. King’s legacy:
It is fashionable to sneer at Obama’s appeal to “hope” during his campaign. But that is all liberals have because it supports the will to persist. Conservatives have the power and money. All we have is hope that through extraordinary effort some injustice can be removed.
That is Dr. King’s legacy.
Pam Spaulding @ Pam’s House Blend remembering one of our less-known heros, Mr. Bayard Rustin:
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s hallowed “I Have a Dream Speech” is an iconic moment in the history of civil rights. But this historic moment would probably have never happened if it weren’t for a man standing in King’s shadow, Mr. Bayard Rustin.
Bayard Rustin was a man with a number of seemingly incompatible labels: black, gay, Quaker… identifications that served to earn him as many detractors as admirers. Although he had numerous passions and pursuits, his most transformative act, one that certainly changed the course of American history, was to counsel MLK on the use of non-violent resistance. Rustin also helped to engineer the March on Washington and frame the Montgomery bus boycott.
Our predecessors were never so consumed with theoretical debates that they couldn’t see progress when it came. Sometimes I get a little frustrated when folks just don’t want to see that even if we don’t get everything, we’re getting something. (Applause.) King understood that the desegregation of the Armed Forces didn’t end the civil rights movement, because black and white soldiers still couldn’t sit together at the same lunch counter when they came home. But he still insisted on the rightness of desegregating the Armed Forces. That was a good first step — even as he called for more. He didn’t suggest that somehow by the signing of the Civil Rights that somehow all discrimination would end. But he also didn’t think that we shouldn’t sign the Civil Rights Act because it hasn’t solved every problem. Let’s take a victory, he said, and then keep on marching. Forward steps, large and small, were recognized for what they were — which was progress.
Thank you, Dr. King, for your wisdom and sacrifice and for the chance to learn from such a powerful legacy decades later.
