December 4, 2010

  • ON “DISINTEGRATION” – A BRAVE AND NECESSARY LITERARY MASTERPIECE

     

    One of my favorite holiday songs is “My Favorite Things”. I like Luther Vandross’ version best, though versions by Betty Carter and The Supremes are almost as perfect. When it comes to Christmas shopping, books and music always top my list of gift items. Books and music are definitely two of my favorite things. They bring me wisdom and joy each day of every year. They are timeless treasures.

    I typically pick one book or CD that I cherish and then buy multiple copies of each to distribute to family and friends annually. My personal schedule is insane. And, I live online. This hectic routine allows me the gift of cyber shopping, the luxury of brevity, and the evasion of favoritism. This year the winner is “Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America” by renowned author and columnist Eugene Robinson.

    Robinson expertly examines the detrimental fracturing of Black America. From hostile spoiled children to criminal statistics, his book is a masterpiece of history and hope, bravery and betrayal, legacy and lunacy, integration and insanity, courage and criminality, success and sabotage, heroism and hedonism… Robinson describes four distinct and grossly unequal classes of African-Americans who are increasingly distant, as Americans of all races become rapidly more divided by class each day.

    Robinson laments the demise of educational work ethics as he praises those who have shone academically. He admonishes elite parents who have spoiled and enabled their children as gravely as poor parents have neglected and abused theirs. This masterful book reads as a superior plea and a sincere prayer. It records the best that we have accomplished as it inspires us to achieve so very much more.

    The difference between the empathetic and cerebral Robinson and heartless elitists like Hobama is that Robinson actually cares about blacks in each of the four classes. Clearly, Robinson regards no class as disposable. He refuses to pretend that any of us can ever truly arrive when so many of us are so lost. He understands that we are no more than the sum of our fractured parts. As we dismiss any one class, we all collectively disintegrate further.

    The blackish Hobama has amorally convinced bigots and fools that racism is a relic. He has also brazenly demanded that the poorest blacks magically resolve all of their own problems with no assistance like that he has given to banksters. Hobama’s blatant abuse of blacks has tacitly told the world that black pathology trumps bailouts. Thus, why should he bother to create any policy to assist broke black mongrels who own no banks?

    Robinson is never so brutally callous or selectively sighted as he thoroughly exposes the complexities of multifaceted pathology. He indicts black failures without ignoring the role of white racism and federal genocide that still linger. Robinson brilliantly details the ongoing ills that doom us from Africa to Dixie and New Orleans to DC.

    Robinson reveres and praises those blacks who excel and transcend the hood, without buck dancing on the graves of those they have left behind. He reveres the best of us even as he laments the permanent black underclass that is buried deeper than ever before. He recognizes that denials and divisions ultimately allow each class to be conquered and sabotaged.

    I am 47. But, I spend most of my time in the company of people between the ages of 6 and 25. As a veteran educator of adults and children, I experience a dual surge of panic and pain when I often feel like an alien among them. It is far more than a mere generation gap. It is a haunting and gaping spiritual and ethical cavern that feels like a political and emotional canyon.

    I hear the spiritual detachment I feel in the soulless voices of young “musicians”. Soul music mandates that singers have souls. Too many of our youth have lost their souls or seem to have been born and reared without them.

    I revere all of my students. Those students who revere education are the ones I adore most. They inspire me and give me hope for the future of our world. I learn from them as much as they learn from me. They are the oxygen I need to revive me from all that suffocates my spirit within our toxic world.

    It grieves my soul when I see young people of all races and classes who have no respect for anyone, including themselves. I see them everywhere. They are ruining private and public spaces nationwide. They are ruining public education. They are torturing fellow tenants in housing complexes nationwide. They are terrorizing elders in communities globally. They are destroying customer service in all arenas. These rude, loud, inhumane, fertile, turbo breeding, inept, illiterate, abusive “parents” define a generation that only educators and other front line entrenched social workers truly know. The panic and pain we endure is one of passion and proximity. The loss we lament is our collective pride.

    We are all doomed by the rabidly elitist Hobama who continues to starve everyone who is not a bankster. As Hobama freezes the salaries and axes the federal lifelines of the poor, he continues to exclusively serve his beloved banksters and their mega rich elite peers. This legendary presidential sabotage will only produce greater intraracial splintering.

    Our collective future and the destiny of poor people globally seem more hopeless each day. Robinson reminds us of the power of authentic hope and historical change beyond vapid political slogans and hoaxes. His book is a soothing balm to those charred by the brutally unchanged and hopeless fracturing of black progeny. Read this book today. Then, say a prayer for all four classes within Black America.

     

     

     

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