Dope Fiend Moves...pt. 1

A dope fiend move.

That, when I was growing up, was the saying we used to have for actions that were so head-scratchingly bizarre, so out of left field or so patently stupid that the only explanation for them we could offer was that the cats behind them had to be under the influence of weapons-grade narcotics.

"You cheated on your girlfriend and forgot to take the condom off before you got home to her? Damn, money, that was a dope fiend move."

I thought back to that old saying as I was reading about how Rep. Tim Mahoney, a Florida Democrat, popped off this week about the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Mahoney took it upon himself to suggest that the contest might be in for an unexpected twist if it remains undecided by the time the Democrats' convention rolls around starting Aug. 25.

If the party hasn't picked a candidate by then, Mahoney said, both Sens. Obama and Clinton could be passed over in favor of a "compromise candidate." Further, Mahoney said, that third candidate could very well be former VP Al Gore.

Huh??

OK, for a Congressman to express so blithely an eagerness to just throw off the electoral process because he doesn't like the pace of its resolution is already more than enough to merit concerns that he might be under the influence. But to then offer up Al Gore — a guy who hasn't been approved by anyone, hasn't appeared on a ballot in eight years and whose last memorable act as a politician was folding like laundry as George W. Bush made off with his Supreme Court-appointed presidency in 2000 — is the very definition of sucking that glass dick.

I mean, who in the hell said Gore was some kind of "solution" here? And how does a vintage white male politician represent any kind of a "compromise" between the potential first woman nominee and the potential first black nominee? C'mon, Mahoney. Put down the pipe, guy.

Of course, the biggest dope fiend move would be for the Dem leadership to attempt some stunt like this. Given the historic nature of the race, the passions flowing among the swelled camps of both Obama and Clinton, this wouldn't just be a blow to the party. This would be a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the temple.

Now I Know Why The Caged Bird Had Better Sing

I can't say I generally favor snitching.

And by snitching, I'm definitely not talking about the average hard-working citizen who calls the police on the neighborhood crack dealers carousing late night in front of her house. That's not snitching. That, no matter what lames like Cam'ron say, is safeguarding your home and your community from ig'nit motherfuckers.

No, by snitching I mean ratting out someone with whom you've been closely involved in some sort of criminal or wrongful activity. Nigganalysis usually compels me to subscribe to the belief that if ya'll did dirt together, you'd better be ready to go on and do that time together, too. I don't mean to suggest that this is necessarily even the right way to think. But it's a code I was taught early on -- even my mom would get on me about "tattling" -- and it's one I've pretty much adhered to for much of my life.

But when I stare out over the fast-collapsing mess that appears to be Detroit mayor KwameKilpatrick's political career , I can't help but re-examine this code somewhat as I consider the plight of his now-disgraced former chief of staff Christine Beatty, whose affair with the mayor has been put on blast by this text-messaging scandal. Despite her role in some of the mayor's biggest successes, she's been cast as a major villain in this storyline, being portrayed alternately as a home wrecker and a 'ho, a conniving careerist chicken-head who boned her way into a cushy, powerful spot in Kilpatrick's inner circle and abused her privilege all along the way.

And she probably deserves some of these characterizations.

Still, even when you remember that she's regarded as his co-conspirator in all this, you still can't help but think she sure seems to have caught more than her fair share of hell. Her marriage went down the tubes, with her husband (reportedly a very decent brother and a Detroit native who, more than anybody else in this town, deserves the right to punch the mayor dead in his fat, smirking mouth) moving their children to another state. She was forced to resign her job in the administration. A law student, her legal career may be over before it ever even began. She's been forced into virtual seclusion and has barely made a peep since this fiasco exploded. When she does surface, Beatty (who I'll admit to regarding as vaguely cute, depending on what angle you catch her at) usually looks worn, depressed and humiliated nowadays.

Oh yeah, and she's facing seven felony charges stemming from the scandal, including various counts of perjury, misconduct in office and obstruction of justice.

Meanwhile, the mayor -- who himself caught eight charges -- continues to insist on his innocence, has refused to step down, continues to show up on TV with this stupid-ass smirk on his face and continues to enjoy the support of a high-powered group of attorneys, citizens and members of his newly minted defense fund.

At some turns in all this, he and his girl Christine share the same lawyer, a white shoe legal mastermind whose exorbitant rate seems to translate roughly into about a pint of blood per hour. The lawyer, who's also repping her in her criminal trial, insists that there's no conflict of interest in representing her and the mayor. And Beatty, so far, has indicated that she intends to stick with the mayor throughout this legal ordeal.

But I can't help but wonder if the mayor is thinking the same thing. Sure, it's certainly expedient for him to say that, to convince her to take up a united front with him in much the same way he convinced his wife to endure public shame and ridicule by sitting alongside him during his televised apology to the city for transgressions he refused to name. But he's already chucked Beatty under the bus once, forcing her unceremonious resignation just as the text-messaging scandal began to unfold. And you can't help but think that, sooner or later, he's going to have to publicly assign blame to her for the blunder that started all this, the colossally stupid way his administration got rid of police officers looking into misconduct by the mayor's bodyguards.

Sooner or later, in other words, Kilpatrick will have to snitch Beatty out. And when it becomes obvious to even their lawyers that the mayor and Beatty have conflicting interests in this case, there shouldn't be any question who's going to get frozen out by the big-money attorneys and high-end backers. Christine will be ass out. I don't claim to know the woman's financial circumstances, but if the mayor is fighting to pull together his own twos and fews in an effort to pay these lawyers' $700-an-hour fees, I just don't see how Christine will even be able to pick up the tip on that kind of tab.

(And we haven't even begun talking about what she may be facing if and when the federales decide to start bringing charges against the Kilpatrick Klique.)

Ultimately, she's likely going to wind up right back where she was when she resigned back in January -- out in the cold.

If there's one thing I feel fairly certain about when it comes to Kwame Kilpatrick, it's that dude will sacrifice anybody and anything to avoid getting busted. And if Beatty can somehow be used as the scapegoat for his ass-clownery, I don't think he'll have any problem fitting her for those stubby little horns.

So I'm figuring, never mind the code this time 'round. Christine needs to start telling on Kwame Kilpatrick's ass as soon as possible, definitely before he starts running his own mouth. She needs to sprint, not saunter, into Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy's office and start giving up as much as she knows in hopes of cutting a deal. She knows where the bodies are buried, knows who got what and when and in what size brown paper bag. The same knowledge that could sink her just might also save her ass (or at least soften the inevitable legal blow).

I'm sure Worthy's hoping for something similar and would certainly welcome it. And even if she's not counting on Beatty's eventual cooperation, I can't help but think that she's going to apply a bit of extra pressure to ol' girl, just to see what, if anything, cracks. Again, judging by that forlorn look that seems superglued to Christine's mug these days, she's got to be struggling to hold herself together as it is. No telling what might happen if the prosecutor gets a chance to impress upon Beatty further very real prospect that she'll lose everything.

The mayor's entire family is connected, from his Congresswoman mother to his dad, a long-time political operative not above shoving his foot into his mouth. Kilpatrick's a spoiled, over-privileged elitist who utters inanities like his recent declaration that god chose him to be mayor and throws tantrums when people remind him that the scandal he wants to spin as "a personal matter" drained city taxpayers of $9 million. He may very well land on his feet once all the smoke blows over (and his sentence gets commuted).

I'm not so sure Christine Beatty will be able to say the same, though she appears not to be paying attention to her own best interests. In the same way dope kingpins try to cover their lieutenants' legal expenses in the wake of a big bust, the mayor's probably doing everything he can to keep his old flame and former chief of staff on his hip (and, thus, further his wife's humiliation). I'm sure he's spitting the same sort of game that convinced her and a whole lot of other otherwise smart, capable people to go along with his nonsense in the first place.

But Christine Beatty needs turn a deaf ear to that chatter now. And she needs to start making some noise of her own.

Fake Outrage

By now, everyone knows that Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is in scalding water and throwing seven different kinds of smoke in an effort to shield himself from the inevitable legal and political fallout headed his way. And while our region buzzes on about the toll of his bullshit behavior -- a $9-million tab in settlement and legal fees that taxpayers must foot; yet another embarrassing stain on the city's reputation; the trauma to the families involved as well as Detroiters' civic spirit — what may anger me as much as anything else is how the smokescreens he's erected have undermined, even momentarily, Detroiters' rightful complaints about the enduring legacy of racism in metropolitan Detroit.

At the end of his recent State of the City speech, Kilpatrick responded angrily to critics, calling out the City Council president, chiding the media and blubbering about how, in the month leading up to his speech, he's been called "nigger more than any time in my entire life."

Almost instantly, there was an overwhelming backlash. White media pundits and politicians expressed their own brand of outrage, angered by Kilpatrick's rather blatant (and, admittedly, tired) attempt to suggest that coverage of his scandalized ass was purely racially motivated. Admitted philanderer and state attorney general Mike Cox, already accused of frustrating earlier efforts to investigate rumors that Kilpatrick often turned the official mayoral residence into his personal version of the Rolexx Club, tagged his former crony a race-baiter and, like almost everyone else around here, asked that Kilpatrick resign.

Look, I think Kilpatrick needs to vacate the mayor's office, too -- and with the quickness. He's repeatedly proven that he can't keep his appetite from wasting taxpayers' dollars. He's shown absolutely no ability to learn from his mistakes. He clearly believes that, because he has been successful in recruiting some businesses to invest in the city's once-forlorn downtown, that this should place him above press scrutiny, above the will of the people and above the law. (Wrong on all counts, homeboy.)

But I'll be damned if I'll abide this phony outrage from white power brokers around here about Kilpatrick's "divisiveness" in using the "n-word." Let me be clear: Kwame Kilpatrick did not create racial division in metro Detroit; Kwame Kilpatrick does not further racial division in metro Detroit; Kwame Kilpatrick is not responsible for the continuation of racism in this city. White racism is white people's fault. Period. Black folks don't "provoke" or "encourage" or "inflame" or "justify" it anymore than a rape victim "asks" to be the target of brutal sexualized violence.

Kilpatrick didn't trigger the white flight into the area's northern suburbs that deprived Detroit of so much of its tax base. Kilpatrick doesn't engage in the continued redlining designed to prevent black people from moving into many of these places. Kilpatrick doesn't actively promote black economic disenfranchisement, doesn't vandalize black-inspired landmarks, doesn't harass and intimidate black schoolchildren walking through white communities.

In short, Kwame Kilpatrick's speech doesn't in any way explain the economic, social and racial divisions that plague Detroit. White people left this city because they didn't want to have to share power with black people. White people continue to encourage the racist attitudes that make the suburbs so hostile to people of color. (You really want to see racist attitudes, hateful speech and divisive thinking on display? Give white folks an Internet message board, a topic about an issue involving black people and a guarantee of anonymity.)

Even now, they are working to strip Detroit of control of its most vital asset, the city-owned water and sewage system that serves much of the metro area. Mind you, the city built and maintains the system. The white-dominated suburbs are just customers. And yet somehow they think they deserve to have more of a say in how the system is run. It's the equivalent of a customer walking into a market and demanding to be allowed to price groceries any way he sees fit. And when the merchant objects, the customer rushes out to court in an effort to sue his way into ownership of the market.

Black Detroiters came to this city en masse in the '30s, '40s and '50s to earn a decent wage and escape the Jim Crow-ism of the Deep South. They didn't come to run white people away. Hell, they didn't even come seeking political power. They just wanted to live a little better.

When they got here, they were attacked. They were smeared. They were segregated. They didn't do this to themselves. White people did this. And then, when black folks stood up, fought back and, in many ways, won, white folks couldn't stomach this. So they ran away, creating the racially hostile bedroom communities we now see in backwaters such as Northville and telling themselves (and anyone else who'd listen) lies about imaginary black sins that compelled them to flee. As Coleman A. Young once famously observed, "White people find it extremely hard to live in an environment they don't control."

Kwame Kilpatrick bears responsibility for many problems, including the paralysis that has now gripped Detroit as the city and its stakeholders wait anxiously to find out if he'll be charged for his transgressions and, if so, with what crimes. He has shown to be a man of little integrity and outsize ego. He has caused us consternation and humiliation.

But the sickness of racism and its symptoms — the rabid hatred metastasized as public policy, the arrogant refusal to share power, the insane and pathological fear of anyone "different" — these should be placed squarely where they belong: On the shoulders of the white folks who've created them.

The Birds and Disease

You know, people sometimes get after me about criticizing so many of these black churches in our communities, especially the ones where our preachers decide to join forces with the bigoted, sexist, right-wing slime attempting to force its phony "family values" agenda down the nation's throat. Sure, I know a lot of that is driven by greedy ministers trying to cash in on the Bush Administration's efforts to bribe the churches into complicity via faith-based funding. But the sad truth is, there are also some naive, narrow-minded clergymen out there willing to sacrifice all of the interests and needs of their parishioners and the black community as a whole just to engage in dead-end moralizing.

Some stunning numbers from recent federal study, though, shows just how pernicious these right-wingers' agenda can be for all Americans in general, black folks in particular. According to a recent study from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in four American teenage girls has some sort of sexually transmitted disease.

Even more alarming, a full ONE HALF of black teen girls in the study had suffered from one type of STD or another.

And yet, despite the alarming statistical and anecdotal evidence that our girls are endangered by herpes, chlamydia, HPV and other preventable ailments, many black churches continue to fight sex education in our schools. They continue to diminish the importance of condoms and continue to stand against groups that seek to make condoms available to our teens. They continue to promote abstinence-only programs that have shown clearly to be ineffective.

I realize that black folks are a traditionally socially conservative people. But that doesn't mean that's necessarily a good thing. And now that many black preachers allow themselves to be pimped by the right-wing agenda in an effort to exploit that conservatism, we are finding that not only is our narrow-mindedness not a good thing, it may very well be helping to kill us. (That, too, is part of the right-wing agenda, might I add.)

We cannot afford to maintain these Puritanical notions about sex and sex ed in the black community. We have to teach our children about safe sex and not only teach in an academic sense, but urgently promote real-life application of safe sex lessons.

Teach ya sons how to put on rubbers. Teach ya daughters how to put them on boys, too. Teach them about dental dams and spermacides, same as you teach them about self-respect and intimacy.

Most of all, though, teach them that sex is not dirty, not bad, that it's something they should feel comfortable talking about.

And yes, teach 'em that when you screw, you run the risk of having babies. Creating life is always one potential result of sex, and I agree that teenagers should never be saddled with the burdens of parenthood.

Neither, though, should they have to risk death.

Hillary Has Torn Her Drawers

I'm glad to see that Barack Obama's church is finally standing up for embattled pastor Jeremiah Wright, although I wonder whether it's too little too late.

As Sen. Obama's march to the Democratic nomination has seemed more and more inexorable, Hillary Clinton has become more desperate, more shrill, more willing than ever bloody her rival with smear tactics, whisper campaigns and blatant appeals to white supremacism. Her campaign has cast aspersions on his heritage, his name, his religion and, recently, his pastor. More and more, it's becoming clear that Barack Obama is not simply running against Clinton. He's running against the absolute worst of white America: its racist sickness; its deep-seated delusions about white beauty and superiority; its lies about our nation's foreign policy; its patent hatred for anything even remotely unlike itself.

Hillary Clinton has appealed to all of these things. She has courted the worst elements of the national psyche, all in the hope that white racism will save her election chances. She has turned on black folks in the most crass, obvious and irrevocable ways. For years now, Black people have supported her and her husband almost blindly. We've tagged him "the first Black president," defended them against scandal, welcomed them into communities like Harlem. And what have we received in return? Backed in a corner and desperate to capture the Dem nomination, the Clintons have thrown black people under the bus.

That's a favor that, if Hillary Clinton somehow does win the nomination, more than a few of us are ready to return. I, for one, will not vote for her if she wins the nomination. I can't say for sure yet whether I'd vote at all for President -- voting for McCain is out, but I may still write in Obama's name -- but I know I'll never support a Clinton for anything ever again.

Of course, even if she doesn't win, she has bloodied Sen. Obama's image so badly that his task of winning the White House, at one point a foregone conclusion, now looms as an increasingly unlikely mission.

I still believe Barack Obama can win, that he can overcome the smears and lies that the Clintons and their Republican fuckbuddies have thrown out there to short-circuit him. If he does, I'm willing to bet that Black Americans will get past the racist displays that the Clintons have paraded in front of us and move forward with trying to unite the Democratic Party and this nation. But if he loses -- given the racist dynamics that his rivals have played to to surpass him -- I'm willing to bet that the Democratic Party will never be the same again.

It certainly won't have many of us to kick around anymore.

WTF Is Nigganalysis?

"Nigganalysis" is the term I've coined for the uncompromising world view that courageous working-class black people express daily when honestly assessing the bullshit state of our people's conditions all around the globe. Nigganalysis is grounded, informed, intelligent and -- most important of all -- unafraid in its willingness to stake out intellectual ground that the American mainstream finds offensive. Nigganalysis doesn't set out to offend anyone. But nigganalysis also can't afford to give a fuck if you get offended, just as long it's being true to the realities of the conditions of black folk. 

Nigganalysis is not about glorifying stereotypical "nigga" behavior or thought — nor is it seeking to validate the gross mischaracterizations of black folks established by white America. Nigganalysis acknowledges, however, that, to the degree that he exists at all, the "nigga" is a thoroughly American creation, brought about by the soul-crushing oppression of American white supremacism. To the degree that all black people have been victimized, humiliated, traumatized, terrorized and permanently scarred by white supremacism, to that same degree are we all "niggas." It is in this context that, whenever we attempt to critically examine our circumstances, our place at this point in history, we engage in nigganalysis. 

Refusal to acknowledge our conditions is denial. Passively accepting what's been done to us is cowardice. Calling this shit for what it is each and every day, without ever losing sight of the daily sacrifices we make to exist within the selfsame shit you call out as fucked up -- that, my friend, is nigganalysis.

Nigganalysis is expressed by all kinds of black folks everyday, whenever we look out on the world for ourselves and analyze what's going on irrespective of what other people think. Nigganalysis drives the comedy of Paul Mooney and Dick Gregory, fuels the lyrics of rappers like dead prez and Lupe Fiasco, inspires the politics of activists like Amiri Baraka and informs the attitudes of athletes like Gary Sheffield, Eton Thomas and Craig Hodges. 

Nigganalysis provokes defiance, talks shit and compels black men to stand up. Nigganalysis is about assessing what is even while trying to figure out what should be.