fiction and musings from a gay black dude with delusions above his station
Breonna Taylor. Ahmaud Arbery. George Floyd. How many times do we have to live the same nightmare, travel the same dark path, scream the same anguish until our voices go raw? I’m very tired. 100,000+ dead from COVID-19, with African Americans disproportionately bearing the brunt of the pandemic in the US. And then these killings…
I had my MAGA kid moment many years ago, also while playing drums. One summer day, long ago, I sat on the lawn near Morrison Hall, home of the Music Department at UC Berkeley, and played tabla. Back in the day, when I took summer tabla classes with Maestro Ustad Zakir Hussain, I often would…
It happened six days after my 3rd birthday, so I don’t have memories of the day. But I can picture my mother screaming. I can picture my grandmother also upset. I can picture my father trying to console them, while tears ran down his own face. I can picture my older brothers, in their teens,…
Alexandria’s library still burns in my heart. If we had not lost the accumulated knowledge of that ancient temple of wisdom, would we have a cure for cancer today? Would we have warp drive? What would our world look like now if we hadn’t taken those sixteen thousand steps backwards—if we haven’t had to retrace…
President Barack Obama enjoyed two terms as president. He continues to enjoy mass popularity around the world to this day. That’s why they marched. When Donald Trump won the 2016 election via the Electoral College, masses of people took to the streets to protest. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by over three million, further…
Carolyn Bryant recently admitted that she lied. It was not a little white lie, but a big white lie, the biggest of white lies ever told. A big fat white lie told countless times over the centuries, always to the detriment of African-Americans. Her lie? She said that Emmett Till, a 14 year-old African-American boy,…
They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. -President-elect Donald J. Trump at his campaign launch, June, 2015 I’m weeping for my country. It has stepped decidedly backwards. Change. Hope. Progress. All dirty words. Obstructionism won the day. Now that Republicans are in charge of everything, the White House and both houses of Congress, what…
“They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” Everyone gasped when Donald Trump uttered those words at his presidential campaign launch event in June, 2015. Out the gate, he hit the racism button, shamelessly scapegoating Mexicans and Mexican Americans for the country’s ills. Complaining that political correctness has kept America from having the “frank” discussions…
A dog whistle silently signals to its target audience that the speaker will work to prevent “those people” from interfering with your life without mentioning “those people” by race, color, or creed. In the context of Ian Haney López’s book, Dog Whistle Politics — How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism & Wrecked the Middle…
Stellar evolution. Lately, the current trajectory of the Republican Party has me thinking of the lifecycle of massive stars. All stars go through the same general evolutionary pattern, but larger stars die more dramatically. If the GOP has entered its death throes, then it is doing so in the most dramatic way possible. Stars in the…
