But Bob Loblaw no habla español.

Above: Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto
Below: Bob Loblaw, as portrayed by Scott Baio.

Thanks, Obama: A Treatise on Race in America

More book review than treatise.  Not actually much about Obama.  Just felt like a good title.

Few books have altered my understanding of history and of the present moment as profoundly as The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson.  I want every person in the country to read this book.

The Warmth of Other Suns is the story of the Great Migration, the exodus of six million African Americans from the South from around WWI through the 1970s.  I remember learning about this in high school history, but mainly as a simple chain of cause and effect.  Jim Crow was bad, black people moved away, demographics in northern cities changed.  I completely missed the big picture.  This was the largest and fastest migration of people in American history.  I’m not sure my italics can convey how huge that statement is.  How about This was the largest and fastest migration of people in American history.  The sheer number of migrants dispersing at such a rapid rate from one region to the rest of the country fundamentally changed most, if not all, aspects of our nation—our economies, our politics, our culture.

Isabel Wilkerson weaves the stories of three distinct migrants together with the overall picture of the Great Migration.  The personal accounts of Ida Mae Gladney, Robert Joseph Pershing Foster, and George Swanson Starling give the story of the Great Migration something I missed in history class—the power and emotion of our common humanity.  We learn not only of the indignities they escaped and the challenges of their new homes, but also what they felt at those moments.  We can feel Ida Mae’s nerves as she and her husband quietly prepare to leave Mississippi, without alerting their sharecropper for fear of retaliation.  We can feel Robert’s humiliation and delirium as he pleads for a place to sleep for the night on his drive from Texas to California.  We can see ourselves in these people.  They make us ask, “What would I have done in their shoes?  What if I had to flee the place I’d always known and start from scratch in a foreign city?”

This is not a political book, but it has clarified my views of civic responsibility.  As President Obama said in his farewell address,

[if our democracy is to work] For white Americans, it means acknowledging that the effects of slavery and Jim Crow didn’t suddenly vanish in the ‘60s…

Ms. Wilkerson expertly draws the lineage from slavery to the Jim Crow South to the Great Migration to the present, illustrating the compounding, deleterious effects of slavery on today’s African Americans.  We can’t pretend the wealth gap between white and black people is the result of one group’s hard work and the other’s laziness. Black people began in this country as slaves, were kept subject through sharecropping, denied rights and respect, forced to leave their communities to start again elsewhere, where they faced the same prejudices and earned less than their white counterparts.  While at the same time, white people were free to build their wealth over generations, free to attend the better half of “separate but equal” schools, free to buy homes where realtors forgot to tour their black clients, where those homes would appreciate in value and prove a good return on investment.  We cannot pretend institutionalized racism is a made-up phenomenon, when almost 9% of black men in their late 20s are in prison.  When, at the same time, a young white man convicted of raping an unconscious woman walks free after only three months in jail. It’s dishonest to pretend we all start on the same playing field.  We just don’t.

I’m not shaming white people for our ancestors’ wrongs.  I’m asking us to recognize how our whiteness has eased our paths through life.  If we truly believe all men and women are created equal, we have to acknowledge the injustice of the fact that one’s mere skin color either enhances or threatens one’s ability to pursue happiness.  The Warmth of Other Suns opened my eyes to so many ways that is true.

I would like to end this treatise and step off my soapbox, after a quote Ms. Wilkerson included in her Notes on Methodology, from the 1922 Chicago Commission on Race Relations report The Negro in Chicago.

It is important for our white citizens always to remember that the Negroes alone of all our immigrants came to America against their will by the special compelling invitation of the whites; that the institution of slavery was introduced, expanded, and maintained in the United States by the white people and for their own benefit; and that they likewise created the conditions that followed emancipation. Our Negro problem, therefore, is not of the Negro’s making.  No group in our population is less responsible for its existence.  But every group is responsible for its continuance; and every citizen, regardless of color or racial origin, is in honor and conscience bound to seek and forward its solution.

Raise a glass to freedommmm 

Questions I have about this week's news.

Why does Donald Trump refer to himself in the third person in statements regarding Vladimir Putin?  Was this something Putin required in their secret agreement to destroy liberal democracy?  “While discussing me, you shall refer to yourself in the third person.  It will make you sound extra dumb.”  “Yes, sire.”

What other vulgar terms, besides "pussy grabbing" and "golden showers", will the Trump White House bring into vogue?  Aren't we glad we have this to look forward to, and not, say, a president who once had a private email server?  The emails!  Oh God, the emails!

Why wouldn’t Trump try to debunk the Russian prostitute rumors with a statement like, “This couldn’t possibly be true because I am faithful to my wife and find the hiring of prostitutes abhorrent”?  Because no one would believe it?

Will the Obama girls pass on their wisdom in a letter to Barron?  What would they say?  Should I write it for them?[1]

If Kellyanne Conway were human, would she laugh or cry herself to sleep?[2]

---

[1] The Blob’s ethics watchdog Will has concerns about this potential post.  W: “He’s a child.”  C: “Probably a shitty child.”

[2] I can hardly watch this interview without becoming apoplectic, which leads me to another question—how did Anderson Cooper survive?

First class farts.

If I ignore the political climate and general world doom and gloom, I can say that 2017 has had a very auspicious start in Claireland. 

When I arrived at my seat for my flight back to the west coast, a small boy was already sitting there.

Me to the mom: Oh, I think this little guy is in my seat.

Mom: Oh yes, do you mind sitting in first class so our family can sit together? (motions to husband and two other small children across the aisle)

Me: WHAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA DO I MIND?  SEE YA, SUCKASSSSSSS (grab ticket she is handing me and muscle way back to front of plane)

Upon arrival in first class, I briefly attempted to play it cool, as if I belonged there, but the charade did not last.  I flagged down a flight attendant for a gin and tonic (“HEY LADY, CAN A PERSON GET A DRINK IN HERE OR WHAT”) and then called my mom to proclaim my good fortune.  Jane was ecstatic. “Honey, that is wonderful!!!!  I can’t believe it!!!”  The guy next to me (very obviously a creature of first class and unimpressed by its many luxuries) definitely could hear her joyful shrieks and cries coming from my phone. I think the excitement level of my mom’s response ranks just behind that of her reaction to Erin telling her she was having twins.

After I hung up with my mom, I sipped/downed my drink and found myself spying on my neighbor’s pre-flight text messages.  (In my defense, he had the text set very large so it was almost impossible for me not to read them.)

            Girlfriend (presumably): Miss you

            Him: Miss you too babe

            Him: Boatload of losers just came on board

I almost spit out my drink.  Was he referring to the poor souls journeying to the back of the plane, the plebes—my people, until my stroke of luck just moments before?  Was he joking?  Did this man not understand how swiftly and inexplicably our lots in life may change?  One minute in business, the next in coach?  I decided two things then and there:

1) I would not hold in my farts for this guy.

2) I required another gin and tonic.

Cheers to 2017, y’all.  Let’s live it up while we can.