Juror#8

You’re on to something here, I think. Not everything, I know. But something, I’m sure. So I’m going to try to support and develop your post in the best way I know how - experientially. I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that half you mother!@#$ers have no earthly clue what you’re talking about. (Yes people have a reason to be protesting and good on them for using their platform and a peaceful means through which to try to bring attention to something they consider a social ill. You don’t have to agree with why they’re protesting, and as such you can peacefully protest too with your pocketbooks, but don’t make your disagreement about an ideological refutation of why they’re protesting). That’s not entirely your fault though. It’s truly probably just as well. Your idea of the inner city comes from nightly news programs, rap personalities, and tv dramas which sell out verisimilitude in their quest for sensation. “Verisimilitude”: thanks mom. The issue, and the disconnect, and where the failings are within the black community are grounded in educational shortcomings. The fault of those shortcomings are complex and fall into a lot of categories that would take a while to explore. But back to the experiential ... I grew up in the hood. For the uninitiated white folks, the “inner city.” 1. Reisterstown Road in the 410 2. then we moved to Takoma Park and lived in the high rises behind the Old Giant (a little ghetto but not really a hood spot), 3. then to District Heights and Mt. Ranier within the same year 4. then right across the line and we stayed with my uncle Lamont in Barry Farm (at the tail end the crack epidemic but it was still a **** storm) 5. then Silver Spring back before the revitalization (I still remember walking from City Place mall to where we were renting a room off Thayer Ave when I worked at the Burger King in the food court at City Place and Paris Glendining was walking with a bunch of people with hard hats. I recognized him and said “hi” and he ignored me). There is a hood motif - “if you want to get out of the hood you either sell crack rock or have a wicked jump shot.” As cynical as that is, it’s a prevailing theme in the parts of the inner city that I’ve lived in. No one extolled the benefits of academic success. You went to school so you didn’t have to see the truancy officers and the truancy vans. Not because it was an avenue to success. It didnt help that architecturally the schools were dilapidated, the books were outdated and some in the same class had different text book editions, and that during 10th grade the heat in most of the building was out so they sent a letter home telling students to bring a coat and if they couldn’t afford one, the school had a coat lend program. No one is thinking about breaking the cycle of multi-generational poverty, or the benefits of academics, when they don’t have a !@#$ing coat when it cold and they don’t want to wear the one with the sewed on orange patch on the inner right side that identified it as a school lend. Are you kidding me?? People are having meltdowns over cyber-bullying now when back in the early 90s you were pilloried if you wore the woats (they called them “woat” for “welfare coat). “Show me the inside of your coat.” “No.” Someone yells: “This nigga wearing a woat.” In the middle of the cafeteria no less. Most people aren’t thinking about being the rose that grows out of the crack in the cement when they’re wearing a woat and they just got made so they know they’re either going to get mercilessly made fun of, just have to be cold, or jack a coat and hope for the best. That thought is penetratingly all-encompassing and doesn’t leave room for retaining scientific classifications in Biology. And then just getting to school was a !@#$ing show. Because you couldn’t make it there without being intercepted by someone about something. Either someone wanted something, wanted you to do something, or wanted you to try something. If you ignored them, it was either disrespectful and an ass whoopin or you got the woat treatment. People arent thinking about academic excellence when they have to maneuver their way to school to and from in order to avoid an ass-whoopin. And I wont even go into the !@#$ing bass heads asking everyone for money with puss around their lips and scratching their !@#$ing bleeding scab-filled skin that we’d see everyday on our way to this place every morning that’s supposed to be some salvation from all the craziness. The fiend lines at 6:30 in the morning were epic. Niggas can’t get up for work but theyll be 10 minutes early for that early-morning allocation of the best smack. The hoppers want people od’ing and drooling on themselves early and the rest of the bass heads to see them so they can sell the weak **** the rest of the day. Hood marketing. My mom didn’t want us to make excuses for not going to school so she drove us past the rifraf and to the front school doors every day in her 1976 Toyota Corona. My dad wasn’t in the picture from about middle school on. When he wasn’t thinking with his dick he was acting directly on its behalf. Probably a trait that he handed down. He also probably liked the idea of having a family more than he liked having a family. A trait thankfully that he didnt hand down. So my mom and her 2.5 jobs was how we made it. And also why we moved so much because we were frequently living with family members and my mom’s friends (shout out Ms. Thelma) when times were tough and there was less overtime at the Wendy’s she assistant managed. My my mom was the first black Republican I ever knew. Politics has less to do with this than it does the fact that she did push an agenda of not letting us feel sorry for ourselves. So I keep that as part of my politics and even though I’m middle of the road, I have a strong self-determination streak that informs my politics. And it’s why I’m independent and have voted cross the isle many times. One Christmas we knew we wouldn’t have any gifts. My mom told us in advance that we wouldn’t have gifts to avoid the suspense. “Either they evict us or no gifts this year.” But we woke up to something under the tree. And my mom standing there almost crying. She said she couldn’t give us anything nice, or Jordans, or a Starter Jacket, but she could give us this. There were two red milk crates with old books in them. Some had torn covers and pages missing. They were free from the public library because the condition was such that they were no longer considered fit for public readability I guess. Vonnegut, Dostoyevsky, Bronte, dictionary, a Latin dictionary, a bunch of Hardy Boy and Nancy Drew mysteries. We read them all. No bull ****, we did. And my mom made us write sentences using dictionary words and find a synonym and antonym and the correct part of speech. !@#$ing brilliant. I didnt realize the impact that had until I used “egregious” naturally speaking in a sentence in school and it just made sense. It rolled off the tongue naturally at 15. “Egregious”: thanks mom. I have an undergraduate degree from an Ivy League light school and a graduate degree from an Ivy League school. I live in a neighborhood where the median family income is about $200,000 a year. My white neighbors would probably look at me weird for being there if I didn’t step out of a new M3 everyday. They probably think I have a wicked jump shot. Not everyone has a mom who wouldn’t let their family veg out on tv and who would drive them to school and make them read to supplement for what wasn’t being taught at school. My best best best friend growing up is 14 years into his 276 months in Jessup. He was tired of wearing a woat. He couldn’t avoid the rifraf He was tired of being 12 and also cold and hungry and being told to learn algebra. He just didn’t think that at 17 it should be that hard. So he found a temporary avenue out. Mother!@#$ers aren’t stupid. The inner city culture just isn’t inherently conducive to being successful. It instead promotes survival instincts by any means necessary. “They know I’m a sinna, but it was cold in the winta and eating out of the trash, that ****’ll make you a killa.” -Rick Ross You can blame it on the parents. But they wore woats too. And they dealt with rifraf, just their rifraf had Afros and leather jackets. And their parents wore woats and had rifraf. Their rifraf put “lie” in their hair and said “daddeo.” Eventually you’ll get back to the root of this generational struggle. And it’s that at some point at some time black folks weren’t allowed to get an education or read. By the time they were legally allowed to get an education, it was with fifty year old text books in schools that were a collection of closets. By the time a legal correction to that was on the books, in 54, many white teachers didn’t want to teach them and white students didn’t want to sit next to them. Hold up, social media bullying is the !@#$ing scourge of the earth and the seven-seas though ... And then once white folks said “!@#$ it” and just picked up and left the area en masse, the schools they left in their wake, in what became inner cities, were underfunded and not properly taught. So even though there was no longer institutionalized barriers, the generational and psychological ones had taken hold. Generations upon generations upon generations of not being able to be equal and then getting the **** end of the stick under the color of law does some **** to people. It attaches itself to outlooks and it admits itself through environmental disrepair. That falls into into the category of “like it or not.” Think that was ages ago ... well that’s interesting because my parents were in segregated schools. That’s how recent that **** was. One (just now two) generation ago. I’m the first generation not subject to segregation. After tens of generations in the shitter, mother!@#$ers get one foot out and people think they should be !@#$ing bar-b-quing and brimming with sustained success. Not sure it works that way. People look at **** too theoretically and in a vacuum. But spend a day down in West Baltimore schools or in Southeast dc or any hood near you and I guarantee you won’t be talking that theoretical ****. But it’s easy to opine in a vacuum. I get it. Just so long as you realize that it’s incomplete analysis, then I guess it don’t make me no kinda nevermind.

Assignment: read Tasker’s responses in the voice of Robert California from “The Office.” It’s interesting how we envision people in these forums. But that’s how I’ve personified Tasker. Good mother!@#$in dude that drops gems in his posts. Good stuff.

Would love to hear more around your first paragraph as that’s my wheelhouse. You made a statement that’s very expansive in scope ... all things considered. Adventure chosen, friend. Actually less an adventure and more a roller coaster ride. If that makes little sense to you just know that like Charlie’s departure from the show, some things make more sense when they make less sense. It’s inscrutable, yes. But not any less so than this poor effort at calibration on a subject matter that two people similarly inclined should better be able to align. Not a touche. Not a zinger. Just an observation. With that said, I’ve said before and I’ll say again that I respect your passion and what appears to be your zeal and pronounced testicular fortitude. I just think you’re barking up the wrong tree in the execution of it all and by characterizing observations as “racist” ipso facto. For what it’s worth, I’m also smart enough to know that you’re leaning on some testimonials and experiences that none of the rest of us who are typing with one hand and jerking our dicks with a cushioned and lubed 44 ounce Big Gulp cup can possibly understand. And I get that those experiences probably inform your outlook on **** in a way that feels right and meaningful to you. So agree to disagree we shall. Peace my nigga.

Bro you should look back at some of my posts. Especially circa 2013 and 2014. The ones with Oc and La Billz Fan were doozies. Some pretty contentious exchanges to be sure - especially around race in America, the public health system, poverty, social status, education, etc. I can say, with certainty, that if you read some of those bad boys you’ll know without a doubt that I’m no one’s token. Just not my grind. Not how I boogie. With that said, neither 3rd nor Tasker are racists. They’re making observations about the world that incidentally implicate race. I’m of the opinion that we have to be careful in drawing any race observation in the territory of bigotry. If nothing else, it tends to devalue, trivialize, and muddle actual instances of racial bias and bigotry which I’ve argued, very pointedly, does occur in this world.

We can agree to disagree but I completely took 3rd’s comment sardonically and not as something full of animus. Looks back at my posts. I call myself and others “nigga” and “nigger.” Me and Boyst have had some fun with racial epithets back in forth in posting banter over the years. To me it’s disempowering in the spirit of Dave Chapelle. But again, we can agree to disagree. To be fair, I admitted that my outlook/acknowledgment of the biracial commercial trend could evidence a racial animus. So I could be secretly racist against is either my own people, or my pasty ass white blue-eyed wife or my mulatto chil’ren. It puts me in a weird space to be sure but at his point it seems like being racist is en vogue and I’m not going to be the one to !@#$ up the trend. I don’t think so based on a post on page 5 where he intimates that he has a white father and uncle who may or may not have once spoken indelicately around race.

Much appreciated my friend. I’ve always enjoyed reading your thoughts. Here’s to some good discussion in the future. ??

Just got engaged in September. It took her some time to forgive around some indiscretions. But I’ve been a good dude. Wild oats sewn.

Hey bro, we joined in the same year. 2011 up!! I trail you by a couple of months. But anyway, that was a good ass year. I appreciate your passion and what seems like a zest for egalitarianism. That’s always refreshing to see someone stand up for something. With that said, I think you may be barking up the wrong tree with 3rd and Tasker on this one. I think this primarily because I made the same observation as 3rd about the commercials. Now while that could make me racist too, it could also mean that I noticed a growing commercial trend (biracial couples in commercial advertising) where there had been no such trend before, and wondered “why.” That “why” could be “why weren’t those biracial couple compositions in advertising before,” or “since they werent there before, what’s going on philosophically or attitudinally that’s driving the conspicuous presence in advertising now ...” So I like to think that an awareness of that trend evidences some intellectual curiosity or even a mild amount of perspicacity. I get that it’s tough to ask 3rd’s original question because by its very construction, and considering the subject matter, it *could* superficially appear loaded with racial undertones and baddies. The problem is that sometimes an analysis of the obvious can masquerade as something sinister - especially when that “obvious” characteristic is something as historically sensitive as “race.” But I believe that we have to be careful of conflating intellectual curiosity with some type of animus. I’ll give you a case in point, a buddy of mine and I were enjoying fish and chips and Yuengling lager at a spot downtown last weekend. We got into an interesting conversation about how back in the day, the best place to get fish and chips was Fin McCool’s in southeast. That took us to a conversation about the Nationals Park, gentrification, and higher taxes which ultimately drove a lot of the lower income folks into Pg County. My buddy (white) had to talk around the fact that the lower income element that was forced into suitland and seat pleasant and hyattsville and those lower income (read: ghetto) areas were primarily black. He didn’t want to associate “lower income” in that context with “black folks” even though that was contextually and factually accurate in the case we were discussing. So he kept pausing himself, and uncomfortably interrupting his own thought flow, and verbalizing weird rhetorical asides like: “how do I say this without putting my foot in my mouth ...” His comfortability had really eroded when we began discussing how the crime rates in those areas went up even more over the better part of the last decade or so because that forced him to consider a causal nexus between a lot more bruhs in one particular geographic area and increased crime. The issue with that conversation was that it started to suck once he couldn’t speak factually and sincerely and once he became hesistant to make observations that tied together certain types of bad **** with certain racial demography. It was almost as if he was worried that by his very analysis, in that specific context, he would making a general (read: macro) claim about the black community as a whole. So because of that hesitation, he stopped his train of thought multiple times, changed complete course, questioned himself, paused frequently, and was just generally uncomfortable. And I’ve know this mfer for fifteen years. I just wanted to talk in a way that discussed an event and a sociological circumstance and I wanted to discuss it candidly. I know that he doesn’t have any animus towards me as a black man because I’m a black man, and I know there was no bigotry that colored what should have been an otherwise analytically sound and coherent discussion. But we couldn’t do that comfortably because society has put weird parameters and “gotchas” around discussions of racial moment. And people are made to feel bad for having opinions and for making observations that tangentially involve race. Even though the opinions aren’t derogatory or filled with hostility. You probably stopped reading long ago and that’s ok. I didn’t mean to lecture you. You seem like a good dude. And I tend to get long winded. What I want to say is that 3rd is not a racist. I disagree with a lot of what he says because we have political/philosophical disagreements about **** but I think he’s a stone cold good ass dude. Most importantly, in seven years of chatting with him about really sensitive political topics, he had a lot of opportunity to show some bigoted colors and he hasn’t because I don’t believe they exist. And Tasker is about as analytically sound, and objective and dispassionate of a conversant that you’ll find on this board. I think you’d be hard pressed to find anything that he’s posted that isn’t carefully thought out, well articulated, and from a place of sincere intellectual curiosity. Not sure that it’s fair to attribute to him any other motivations. I saw you call those two out specifically. I didn’t see you call anyone else out so my post shouldn’t be taken as tacit agreement with you if you similarly indicted others. Be well bro. Looking forward to some good convos in the future.

Thanks bro. Happy Memorial Day!!

Recruitment. For those who enjoy elective politics and the machinery around it, this is a really good article: https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5b049aebe4b07c4ea102e0c3

I’ve noticed it too. My fiance is white. Like waay white from Greenville, Sc. I insisted that I first meet her parents in a public place because she hadn’t told her parents in advance that ... ya know ... I’m black. Wasn’t trying to have her pops have a moment of unbridled dissatisfaction considering how much she lauded his extensive gun collection. Her dad was cool as !@#$ing ice. I thought about it more than him apparently. I love that ultra conservative bastard ... Dude calls me his son now. Race nearly melted for me that day Anyway, there was a Cheerios commercial back in 2013 that racist whites and racist blacks both excoriated for showing some vanilla-chocolate love. Dolts. This was the first one I can recall that was a big deal and garnered some press. So Cheerios doubled down if I recall correctly. Found it:

Can’t get over this chick dancing. Posted it before. I thinks it’s the 60s-era Bond-girl chick fetish. There are two different versions of the commercial. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lorNhBOpWIM ... and then something about this wife in this Hyundai commercial just does it for me. One of those weird things that I can’t explain. She can get the d though.

I send this to my mom every year. It makes her cry. Hopefully this will bring a smile to someone’s face, or a happy tear to someone’s eye, in the same way it has in my family for the last few years. Happy Mother’s Day weekend. Send your mom some flowers or take your mom to dinner.

I'm surprised that he's still on the market with so many receiver-needy teams. He has to be persona non grata around the league. Because the guy isn't that old and isn't far removed from some 75 catch, 1000+ yard seasons.

Yup. More fun than a puppy, I hear.

Just that recognition shows that you’ve probably heard what I’ve heard which if true could mean an interesting detour for his career unless he has good payoff people. Since I’ve heard it from paper pushers on the hill who hear everything there is to hear then there probably is some there, there. Since we both know what that’s about, and everyone else can probably use their imagination and guess in the right area, it’s interesting that his name is mentioned prominently as a presidential candidate. Because that “there” is there with him. Its like with Mark Warner. Ever wonder why he doesn’t run for president? The guy seems like a textbook candidate on the dem side, right? Well he realizes that his “there” is too much of a threshold to overcome so he doesn’t even dabble. And his ishouldntrunforpresidentitis syndrome becomes acute when mixed with unprescribed Viagra, gin, Georgetown and dirty blondes. But just allegedly though.

I wonder if you hear what I hear about Vandome and twenty-somethings. Who knows if it’s true but I hear it enough around the watering holes to wonder. But seriously you hear **** about everyone because everyone has a story to tell.

So for 2020, do you feel that the only hurdle between Democrats and the presidency is a (nationally) politically untainted candidate, outside the machine, who avoids controversial statements about middle-America? So “yes” to a Terry McAullife, a John Delaney (who will run), an Andrew Cuomo, or a Corey Booker? And basically “no” to Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden or a Bernie Sanders? This question is admittedly tough because the “hold your nose and vote for Trump” crowd will now (for better or for worse) be able to stand on his four-year record the next time the ballot box opens.

Sounds good man. The issue is not about your contribution. It’s about your effort to mischaracterize my original post and the point of this thread via your wayward reply. I guess I was more addressing his mental shortcomings. But if you’ve ever seen “Canadians Bacon” then that might just explain it.

Why are you the way that you are?

As me as in like “me me”? Laugh at me? As in “me me”? Because you may may have missed where this thread was going. This wasn’t a thesis thread or a position piece to convince someone of some strongly held frame reference. Not aimed at you necessarily now, but I wonder how much is missed out in the world and how much people jump to conclusions based on what they read or hear in the news when something like this post draws reflexive ire. There is a place for conversation that isn’t slanted. It has to start somewhere. And there is admittedly some passion in the subject matter. I read something and wanted to hear thoughts and opinions. I did everything to flatten the starting point as a basis for discussion and not as a “I’m right and you’re wrong.” Interested to hear your thoughts now.

Whats up man. Give the thread a read again. I wasn’t making any assertions. I was opening up some dialog based on a recent conversation. I try to clearly say that to avoid the red meat responses. To be sure ... I agree with 90% of your point #1. 90% or your point #2 and 50% of your point #3. Hopefully you read read my thread again and some of the responses and note what I was endeavoring to do with this thread.

I think there is certainly an impression amongst the coastal electorate that the folks in the flyover part of the country vote nearly exclusively based on faith, significant exceptionalism shown towards a nuclear familial constitution, being culturally monolithic, an outmoded conception around values, xenophobia, and a myopic attachment to firearms. I think if you cornered a handful of folks at Starbucks downtown, they would probably say most - certainly a preponderance - from West V to Idaho and some areas south, vote along with those contexts in mind. Not sure we disagree. But we may be having two different conversations. Read through the thread including what others have contributed. This isn’t a “trying to convince you of anything” thread.

For what it’s worth, that was an idiomatic statement. As in “this is a question about ...” or “this is a question of ...” It wasn’t referencing any of the propositions as “questions.” That’s evidenced by the fact that I used “question” singularly though there were multiple propositions.

Not sure that this is that though I can sorta understand your reflexive frustration. A republican state legislator, over lunch a Clyde’s in Tyson’s Corner on Saturday, in between talking about whether or not Darryl would truly go head-to-head with Rick in the post-apocalyptic thriller that many of us know and love, made the assertion that there is some backlash to what he perceives to be a “blame whitey” and pc explosion over the last decade or so. And there was an element of that sentiment that came to the rescue for Trump. You can call it poo or crap. But at least don’t say it was some Democratic conspiratorial conversation. And it’s not an unreasonable thesis. He also directed me to a book which I recently ordered (yesterday): “Strangers in their own land.” Contrary to popular belief, many of these politicians are interesting well read and thoughtful fellows. Anyway, in researching that book, I ran across some editorial mentions that I thought were interesting so I spent much of the weekend reading. This is is a place where some of the erudite on the board come to play so I wanted to solicit thoughts. Not to make assertions but to have some open dialog. Unfortunately, there is a move to quell ideas that don’t fall in line with conventional orthodoxy and then to demonize it. Some folks don’t even read the content and come to conclusions (Bman). You can do that, sure. But don’t blame the next lib who does the same especially since your stone and your glass house can easily become one in the same.