Random Sunday: The Return!

Because, if you know me, it comes as no surprise that I like to be random! :-) Exactly the same format as last year, with (hopefully) the same regularity. So with no further delays...

• My first comment would have to be simply to acknowledge how much incredibly better this year is going, thus far, than last year. Even at this point last year - still in the midst of my honeymoon period with Pittsburgh - things were certainly not going this smoothly. In some ways, perhaps this repudiates some of my thoughts about "change" from last year; perhaps I am much more versatile than I thought, and I can accommodate a broader degree of change than I anticipated if given enough time. After all, at age 22 I have experienced living in a broader array of areas than a typical American will live in across a lifetime. The reasons for the improvement are multifaceted: part has to do with the changes at Hamburg Hall that I discussed earlier; part has to do with a far greater familiarity with CMU and Pittsburgh and consequently more realistic expectations; part has to do with having a broader social circle; part has to do with an amazing set of courses, most of which I personally selected as electives; and part has to do with my improved living conditions. It has truly taken me aback, as I never expected to be this happy at this point in the year; dare I say that I can scarcely differentiate these first few weeks from much of my time at UF? That is a scary thought...but, scary in a good way! I can only hope that, 10 weeks from now, I'll be singing the same tune.

• On a far more serious note, I've been dealing with a profound issue of cognitive dissonance lately that, while uncomfortable, I need to bring into the open and frankly discuss for my own sake and my own sanity. For virtually all of the time in which I've been cognizant of this aspect of my life, I've either been able to deftly ignore the issue or equivocate about it, but I feel that I've reached the end of the line now and can no longer skip around the point because of my own internal guilt, uncertainties, remorse, and tensions. The issue is simple to explain, but remarkably complex to resolve. It goes like this: On the one hand, I am a hardcore liberal who maintains this sort of Utopian conception of racial harmony; mine is a world that is the fulfillment of Dr. King's dream, indeed a post-racial society. I fiercely excoriate racists and bigots whenever presented with the opportunity, and I am quite proud that my social and professional circle is very diverse; South Florida is my region of choice for, among other reasons, its hyper-diversity; I feel the same level of comfort in a sushi bar as in a Mexican restaurant or an Indian place. There is, however, a gaping , glaring hole in this logical consistency. When we arrive at African Americans and Black people in general, things get very complicated very quickly. To start, across my 22 years on this earth, I have had only a very scattered handful of Black friends, and never once - not once - have a I have an African American in my "inner circle" of closest friends (Blacks of Caribbean descent, yes, and even then I could count on one hand.) I may have no problem walking into a Mexican restaurant, but if I were transplanted into a Southern Soul Food restaurant, I would feel an immense level of discomfort; having in fact been in that position before, I know this to be the case and can't even categorize that feeling, other than saying that it is a feeling of being totally and absolutely "out of place." My differences on religion - and my lack of upbringing in the Black Church - are in themselves a remarkable barrier to understanding and assimilating into mainstream Black culture. Where there is lack of familiarity on one hand, much of my contact with Blacks in the past has been quite a bit less than positive: underachieving kids in primary school who mocked me for hanging out with white kids and earning good grades; Bible-thumpers who couldn't understand why I wasn't in church every Sunday; backwoods idiots who denigrated my "outsider" family mercilessly behind our back; and the usual mixture of welfare abusers, drug addicts, womanizing deadbeats, "thug culture" teens, and other types that, while unfortunately upheld as the norm, are certainly far from non-existent in Black culture. I have never explicitly pushed myself away from Black culture, but over time, quite implicitly, a series of mutual expectations developed, and these things became internalized without me even realizing it; when people in my high school would (innocently, perhaps) suggest that I date the only Black girl who habitually shared the 'A' Honor Roll with me, I remember being outraged, but not fully understanding the source of my disdain for their superficially innocent suggestion (it had nothing to do with sexual orientation; as recently as a few weeks ago, I remember instinctively recoiling in near rage at a mere attempt to introduce me to a gay Black person at a party.) When I arrived at UF as a Freshman in 2005, one of my outright goals - being a good liberal - was to diversify my social circle; I even attended a few meetings of the Black Student Union at first and made an enormous effort to bond with other Black students on campus. But can you really force social interaction when common bonds, common interests, and a common viewpoint simply do not exist? In any event, those efforts failed quite miserably - a quick glance at my list of friends from UF demonstrates that - and I had met so many great friends at UF by May of 2006 that I didn't even really give a damn anymore. Those efforts quickly were forgotten, passed over for more important and pressing pursuits. Never again at UF did I make an outright effort to add African Americans to my circle of friends, and this never did happen spontaneously. I met and befriended plenty of Whites, plenty of Latinos, a huge number of Asians primarily from the ISOM Department, and a scattering of people from other racial and ethnic groups - but never any Blacks, even in a city that was nearly 30% Black on a university campus where more than 10% of the student population was. Perhaps somewhere in the back of my mind I thought that something was peculiar about this - particularly given my liberal, pro-diversity mindset - but it never really stood out as a prominent concern to me, particularly since I had met so many great, loving friends with whom I always had so much fun. At around this same time period, another related issue was starting to become apparent. I was fairly certain that I was gay since the middle of high school, but did not start to experiment sexually until arriving on the UF campus. From my earliest days - years and years ago - none of my sexual fantasies or instincts had ever involved Black men. Whites, yes, by and large; Hispanics also, and other groups to varying extents - but never Blacks. My internalized preferences quite quickly became the drivers of my external actions; in terms of interest, dating, and sex, I have, at age 22, never once moved away from White and Latino men. Interestingly, it is in this area where I have begun to apprehend the (potential) hypocrisy of a large chunk of my system of behavior, because gay Black men seem to be an object of exotic fascination to quite a few in the LGBT community. And while it is quite frustrating, even painful, to be shunned by LGBT's solely on account of race - as has happened plenty of times before - do I have any right at all to cry foul? Not too long ago, in the course of trying to meet new friends, I watched a movie with a gay Black guy from a Southern state - a real Southern state, not a place like Maryland or Florida - complete with the accent and everything. He seemed nice and intelligent enough, but I was unquestionably uncomfortable during the whole social experience - and uncomfortable about what, an accent, or a state of birth? Perhaps not the accent or heritage itself, but the fact those things link, almost automatically, to a whole set of experiences in my schema, all of them unequivocally negative. That, too, was an explicit effort on my part to diversify my social circle with Blacks, and it also failed; I simply did not really enjoy the social experience, and we have not stayed in touch. So at this point, I can only throw my hands up in desperation and laugh at the sheer absurdity of it all. I'm an African American, 22 years old, and I've never once in my life had a close African American friend, never dated a Black person, never had sex with a Black guy, could not order fluently from a Soul Food menu (and probably wouldn't enjoy most of it anyway), would frankly feel more comfortable at a country club in West Virginia than inside of a Black Baptist church, and, in the name of all things holy and sacred, I was introduced to Tyler Perry by a white guy - not kidding you, I had never heard of Tyler Perry until introduced to him by Jason. I have no idea how I should even approach this situation. I've tried forcing myself into majority-Black circles to meet friends multiple times, with no success. On the other related issue, I don't think sexual attraction is really something that you can control...or is it a factor of many things, including preconceived notions and past experiences with certain groups, in addition to an inborn set of biological desires? The biggest unifying glue in Black culture is religion - evangelical religion, at that - and my secularism is so firm and unabashed that it would make even the average resident of San Francisco blush. The moment that a Black person starts spouting off at the mouth about their religious faith, they've effectively constructed an impenetrable wall between us that is likely not coming down. More fundamentally, should all of this even matter? Frankly, I don't think that the absence of one particular group from my circle of friends is depriving me of anything crucial to my existence, but at the same time I feel so damn hypocritical with my status quo. But of course, in my defense, I could quite easily - and truthfully - proclaim that my social circle is one of the most diverse that you'll find anywhere - that I have associated, befriended, and partied with people from all parts of North and South America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and from a veritable smorgasbord of racial and ethnic backgrounds. I am not a racial bigot. On this, I have no doubt. Indeed, unlike the vast majority of people, I can proclaim that all of my closest friends don't look like me - how in the hell could I possibly be bigoted, given this state of affairs? How can I be bigoted when very few Americans have social circles more diverse than mine? That's the unanswered question, and one that I feel like I may be struggling with for a long time - because when I see people who only associate with people who look and act like them, I have no hesitation in raising the flag of moral judgment, and at least on a cursory glance my own actions might appear somewhat bigoted. And while I can never be accused of only associating with people who look like me, should I be judged for the utter and complete lack of African Americans in my social circles, which might reflect my inability to bond with people are fundamentally different from me? In this case, shouldn't I also be held guilty for not having many right-wing conservatives in my social circle? And what, if anything, should I do to rectify this "problem" - if it is even a problem at all? Is it simply due to me having radically different beliefs, lifestyle habits, and personality preferences than most African Americans, or is something more sinister afloat? I wish that I could borrow the wisdom of a senior citizen for one day to confront this issue, because I am absolutely fucking stumped at this point. But the cognitive dissonance is mounting daily and, whatever else I do, I feel that I can no longer simply sweep this "issue" under the rug - I feel like I must reach an explanation before the guilt swallows me alive. If anything, this is a lesson that liberalism is harder to practice than to speak. And, perhaps, I should not automatically assume that people with less-diverse social circles are raging bigots who burn crosses for fun - even people who desire a diverse social circle, like me, can find that achieving this balance is far more difficult than expressing that desire on paper.
  

• Speaking of religion, some people have accused me - and other secular American liberals - of displaying a double standard in regards to our treatment of religion. According to these folks on the right, we have no hesitation in criticizing fundamentalist Christianity, but willfully extend the olive branch to fundamentalist Muslims - even though it was Muslims, not Christians, who directed planes full of innocents into the World Trade towers. Surely, they argue, we must recognize that right-wing Islam poses a far greater threat to the West than right-wing Christianity (that is, if they are even intellectually honest enough to indeed recognize that right-wing Christianity is a threat to democracy.) At the very least, they say, our criticism of religion is directed disproportionately at Christianity, when some of the worst religious tyrants and despots in the world are not Christians. My response to them is two-fold. First, through my writings and comments here and elsewhere I have made it unambiguously clear that religious Fundamentalism - not "Christian" fundamentalism or "Jewish" fundamentalism or "Islamic" fundamentalism - is the isssue at hand; religious nutjobs across religious faiths display remarkable similarities, including a predilection for violent terrorism, a rejection of science, endorsing the second class citizenship of women, and rejecting pluralistic orders built on tolerance and diversity. On the other hand, it is true that I disproportionatley mention right-wing Christians in my posts here. This is because a large part of this blog is dedicated to American political culture, and Americans elect right-wing Christians, not right-wing Muslisms. A fundamentalist Muslim does not have a snowball's chance in Hell of getting elected to any political office in this country, while Republicans routinely vote for fundamentalist Christians who have mistaken their Bible for our Constitution. There is currently only one Muslim in Congress - Keith Ellison (D-MN) - a political liberal and a convert from Catholicism. He's not out lobbying to replace secular law with the Qur'an. Contrast this to the veritable hordes of right-wing Christians in our government who seem to constantly believe that they were elected to priesthood, not political office. And so long as it remains far, far more difficult for liberal Muslims like Rep. Ellison to be elected than conservative Christian Bible-thumpers like Mitch McConnell, I will continue to disproportionately attack right-wing Christians on this blog, as they represent a far, far greater internal threat to secular democracy than fundamentalist Muslims.

• If Florida elects Bill McCollum as Governor - which seems quite possible, particularly given Sink's lackluster political maneuvering to date - California may be much, much closer to gaining a member of the Harpool family as an additional resident. When I was much younger and much more malcontent with my surroundings - stuck in the hell of North Florida - I had this idealistic notion that I would grow up, move 550 miles south to the liberal Miami area, and completely escape all of the backwards, regressive influences from those less-than-enlightened yokels in the northern sector of our state. What I've learned, as I've grown older, is that the state capitol is in Tallahassee and not Miami, geographically and in a more significant sense. South Florida comprises just over 29.5% of the state population (5.4 million out of 18+ million residents) - enough to tilt an occasional election to the Democratic side, but definitely not enough to undo the collective deleterious influence of the right-wing driven politics of the Southerners, rednecks, and old farts in the rest of the state. The passage of Amendment 2 made this crystal clear, and made me look at my home state in a very different light - including the three counties of South Florida, all of which passed that disgraceful measure (albeit, all by margins under the 60% required to pass Constitutional Amendments in Florida.) Of course, it is true that in South Florida I virtually never have to come in face-to-face contact with the ignorance, isolation, intolerance, and general stupidity of the backwoods. It is true that the region is liberal, diverse, forward-looking, energetic, and young in a state that is anything but. It is true that, so long as I stay south of the Palm Beach/Martin County line, I can surround myself in this warm and fuzzy "liberal comfort zone." But it is also unquestionably true that the region is not representative of the whole state - that at its core, Florida is still a Republican-leaning state with conservative excesses and a history rooted in the regressive culture of Dixie, facts that have increasingly began to trouble me and make me question my long-term viability in the state. I simply do not want to share political territory with ignorant sons-of-bitches who believe that women should have no reproductive freedom, that evolution should not be taught in schools, that taxes should be maintained so artificially low that government struggles to provide basic services, that higher education doesn't matter, that we can endlessly exploit our environment with no consequences, and that gay people are a curse from Hell to be oppressed short-term and eventually eliminated. Unfortunately, those lines encapsulate a typical Floridian viewpoint - not a South Floridian viewpoint by any means, but a view of the world that is almost commonplace anywhere from Indian River County to Pensacola, save a few scattered liberal pockets like Gainesville, Tallahassee, and St. Petersburg. And so long as folks from Indian River County and Pensacola are sharing a government with me, I feel like I'll always feel this same frustration, as I watch states like California take progressive actions that would never have a chance in Florida (and as far as Prop 8, count that as a fluke due to abnormally high Black turnout that will, beyond doubt, be overturned either in 2010 or 2012 - and virtually all of California's big cities, the places where I would be living, voted firmly against it. Besides, California's domestic partnerships already go far beyond anything Florida offers to her LGBT citizens.) And yet, I feel like California would be the easy way out - and, as I've said here before, like I would be ceding my home state to a group of pathetic, ignorant, uneducated, fear-driven bigots. Of course, one can say that Blacks in the Great Migration did the same thing, ceding Georgia and Alabama to the rednecks in pursuit of a better life in Michigan and New York; when people are oppressed or do not agree with the political culture of a place, it is a natural instinct to seek greener pastures elsewhere. So, my feelings are incredibly mixed. I will be in Florida for at least the next 5 years - this much is certain - but I am no longer as comfortable as I once was making long-term projections about staying in South Florida. It is my state as much as it is the right-wing Republicans'...but the question is, how much I am willing to fight to see it embrace progressive as opposed to regressive ideas? Only time will tell...

• Tangentially related to the last point, in so many ways the Heinz College and its students - at least on the Public Policy side of things - feel like a direct glimpse into what must have been my mother's soul in her 20's. It is truly amazing that, posthumously, I feel as if I have been able to learn so much more about how she must have viewed the world in her developmental stages in the 1970's, because the Heinz perspective is a remarkably approximation of her general view of things; the notion that government can and ought to make a positive difference in the lives of the oppressed and socioeconomically disadvantaged, that human progress is brought about only through the concerns and actions of dedicated individuals, and that the attainment of material comfort matters far less than the impact that you make on the world and your communities. My own personal viewpoints and philosophy are, of course, direct derivatives of her overall approach to things, with some (many?) notable differences. Perhaps most notable of all was our difference in regards to the small town mentality; her belief and even passion for "changing" and improving these communities, as contrasted with my firm and absolute desire to simply stay as far away from them as I can. In many ways, she was much more of a progressive than I was in this area, because it takes an unyielding love of humanity to move into a hostile, uneducated environment motivated by nothing more than a sincere desire to help people - people who often are too ignorant, bigoted, racist, and short-sighted to even realize that you are trying to help them, people who only perceive you as "that damn Yankee" who is interested in simply taking away their "traditions" and "way of life." On this, I can only maintain a respectable disagreement with the Heinz types, many of whom would take my mother's approach to the issue; indeed, I have the utmost respect for them and their willingness to live in such horrible environments - be they in small towns, impoverished countries, or inner-city ghettos - something which I would never even remotely consider.

• George LeMieux? Florida's new Senator-for-a-year has never been elected to political office - he lost his only race - and essentially got the post for being one of Charlie "Perma-Tan" Crist's good buddies. Like Perma-Tan, he seems to eschew ideology in favor of winning elections; when he ran for office on the GOP ticket in the 90's, he went as far as to embrace gay rights (that he was a Republican running for office in Broward County almost certainly helped to shape his political opinions in that arena, as well as explain his subsequent failure.) I'm withdrawing judgment on him at this point, but I'll keep a close eye on the guy and his votes (for what reason, I'm not sure, seeing as he most assuredly won't be running for the seat full-time; I'm just a political dork in that way.) In related news, after actually considering it for a long time, I have decided firmly that I will not be voting for Charlie Crist in the Senatorial election next year. There is a big difference between being a political moderate a la Olympia Snowe and being an ambiguous, undefined flip-flopper willing to do whatever it takes to get elected, and I have come to believe that Governor Crist falls squarely in the latter, not the former, camp. Crist's unbelievable betrayal on Amendment 2 (just as he himself was getting married!!!), his inability to confront the insurance and real estate crises (Florida is fucked, to not mince words, when a major storm hits and drains Citizens), his flip-flopping on offshore drilling, his total abandonment of climate change initiatives as soon as Republicans applied pressure on the issue, his asinine and ill-advised opposition to Sonia Sotomayor's nomination in a state with a very large Puerto Rican population, and most of all his unyielding adherence to this far-right wing notion of artificially low taxes that has resulted in Florida chronically ranking near the bottom in just about every measure of social development and government efficacy; these are simply too much for me to tolerate, either from my orthodox American liberalism or, frankly, from common sense about governing and concern for the State of Florida. Not only will I be voting for Kendrick Meek in that election, I'll be donating to his campaign and doing everything within my power to give him name recognition and help him get elected. But with all of that being said, I still find myself in the truly mind-boggling position of not being able to dislike the guy! Perhaps Crist's greatest success as a politician is that he is the anti-polemical candidate; even many liberal Democrats like me, while having never given him our vote, find it somewhat difficult to castigate the guy. Part of it is his easygoing personality; part his avoidance of polarizing language (for the most part); perhaps part is simply because anybody would have been such a dramatic improvement from King Jeb that we're simply somewhat complacent. Perhaps a skill I should learn to emulate if I ever intend to run for political office...

• Anthony Woods! What an amazing guy with a personal story that brings tears to my eyes. While it was quite disappointing to see him fall short in his quest to capture Ellen Tauscher's old seat (CA-10, in the eastern Bay Area), I know that he has a bright future ahead of him in politics, particularly once he establishes better name recognition. He ran a picture-perfect campaign, as evidenced by the fact that in the closing days he was the only campaign to show demonstrable momentum; in other words, the more that people got to know him and his personal story, the more likely they were to vote for him (bring back any memories of another historic candidate?) Of more immediate concern to Democrats, that seat is safely ours, and it will be occupied by a true liberal - John Garamendi - who is all but guaranteed to win the election in November. The importance of having real liberals - dare I say real Democrats - in Congress cannot be overstated as Obama engages in a struggle of epic proportions against the forces of the right-wing on everything from healthcare reform to ENDA to cap-and-trade. Blue Dog Democrats, in all bluntness, are generally not worth the toilet paper on which they wipe their asses. Particularly when they stand in opposition to such vital measures as healthcare reform, might I dare ask in which tangible ways they benefit our party, other than simple roll count? People with a "D" next to their name don't bring about change; progressives who are committed to change are the only ones who can accomplish that.

• And, on a closing note, I'm off to Maryland today for some mountain hiking shortly! It's part of my on-going effort to visit all 50 states before I turn 30. So far, I have visited:

1. Florida (home state)
2. Georgia
3. Alabama
4. South Carolina
5. North Carolina
6. Mississippi
7. Louisiana
8. Texas (lived there)
9. Tennessee
10. Kentucky (lived there)
11. Illinois
12. Indiana
13. Ohio
14. West Virginia
15. Pennsylvania (my current state of residence)
16. Michigan
17. New York
18. New Jersey
19. Virginia
20. New Mexico
21. Colorado
22. California

So Maryland will be my 23rd state! Later in the semester I plan on road-tripping to Vermont, and on the way passing through Connecticut and Massachusetts...so by October, I will officially be able to say that I've visited a majority of the states! More on both trips later...

Have a great Sunday!