Marian's Blog

Genuine Progress Indicator? Measuring economies as if society mattered

As so many consumer and exchange economies teeter on the brink, here's a fascinating index that could prove more useful to more people. Many of us are in the same time familiar with, yet put off by, words and terms like "GNP", "GDP", and "economic indicator." For over a decade a group called Redefining Progress has been working on what they call the "GPI" - the genuine progress indicator.

"... The GPI starts with the same personal consumption data that the GDP is based on, but then makes some crucial distinctions. It adjusts for factors such as income distribution, adds factors such as the value of household and volunteer work, and subtracts factors such as the costs of crime and pollution. Because the GDP and the GPI are both measured in monetary terms, they can be compared on the same scale. ..." - Redefining Progress

On Racism & Fascism: Stan Goff's article at Alternet.org

Finished reading retired soldier Stan Goff's article which asks if the U.S. is becoming fascist. It's quite detailed. He even writes about the U.S. military recruiting, inadvertently or otherwise, straight-up white supremacist racists. Goff concludes: "They are not Arabs who are painting Aryan Nations graffiti on the shattered walls of Baghdad." Can you imagine?? Along with everything else Iraqi people have been forced to go through and to subject themselves to, to endure. Goff's last line made me recall a local train ride from Sisak to Zagreb, in Croatia. One afternoon I noticed something written on the gray stone wall at one station where the train always stops along the way. Unusually, what I saw not only was written in large, bold letters, but in perfect English. It caught me by surprise. It was the "N" word. In the middle of Croatia.

Right after, I wrote an official report to the international human rights mission in which I worked. No one ever responded. Two weeks later I again rode the train. Someone had painted over the N word. This was a relief and I'm glad someone did. And yet even that doesn't alter the fact the word had been there, and that I and many others witnessed it. That someone had thought about this, then gone and very deliberately taken paint and written this foreign word - the "N" word - in huge letters on a gray stone public wall facing every passing train. And they'd written it in perfect English.

Someday I shall remember which station it was, in which community. I wondered then and still it comes back. Who wrote it, and why? I was the only Black person for miles around. I never saw another Black person in that area, nor on the Sisak-Zaghreb train. Why that particular spot? Had someone written it for me to see? Was it written because of me? I'll never really know.

"Granulated slavery" - Michael Burke in the Jamaica Observer

It's August. This is a month to remember and commemorate Britain's end of its slave trade, from London to Guyana and the Caribbean and its "basin", and beyond. This also encompasses "local Washington, DC" since a sizeable number of Caribbean folk live and work in the DC-Maryland-Virginia area. More Caribbean and Caribbean Basin folk are scattered across Canada and various parts of Europe. August also marks national independence of Britain's post-slavery Caribbean colonies, more than a hundred years after chattel slavery ended. So we're checking Michael Burke's fascinating column, Granulated slavery, Saturday, 5 August, in the Jamaica Observer. Burke pulls together related issues: economic enslavement, jobs and their absence, 1970s' Roman Catholic liberation theology throughout the Americas (conveniently abandoned by some), the virus of today's artificially induced mass consumption as well as the local and global co-operative movement and its underused ability to put a dent in poverty. Thanks for the overview, Michael.

Color of wealth: what's the racial wealth divide?

The Color of Wealth is available June 2006. Subtitled "The Story Behind the US Racial Wealth Divide", authors include my girl Rose Brewer along with Rebecca Adamson, Meizhu Lui, Barbara Robles and Betsy Leondar-Wright.

Woman of colour and M.I.T.-trained economist Julianne Malveaux reviews TCoW: "... shows how contemporary wealth differences evolve from pivotal points in our history, and explains how public policy, even when well meaning, reinforces existing inequality. This book is an important contribution to critical work on race and economics.” Julianne's most recent book is Wall Street, Main Street and the Side Street: A Mad Economist Takes a Stroll.

The Color of Wealth press release explains that for every 100 cents (dollar) owned by an "average" US white family, an "average" US family of color has just 18 cents. "Why do people of color have so little wealth? The Color of Wealth lays bare a dirty secret: for centuries, people of color have been barred by laws and by discrimination from participating in government wealth-building programs that have benefited white Americans." This includes, for example, "post–World War II GI Bill programs [that] helped whites only—The Color of Wealth is the first book to demonstrate the decisive influence of government on Americans’ net worth."

Kenya: An "Old Etonian" accused of killing not once but twice

Some say certain people's claims to being African are not taken seriously. And I might ask, not taken seriously by whom? Perhaps not wholly by themselves? Then there's the strange Kenya case of Thomas "Tom" Cholmondeley (possibly pronounced "chum-lee"?), accused yet again (and pleading not guilty) of a recent murder. I was surfing the net for info on contemporary African-Caribbean Cholmondeleys when I stumbled on this latest news story. Thoroughly appalling. The headline seemed so outlandish that I checked the allegation in two or three places, just to verify I was not reading something from 2005. I was not. In 2005 other charges against this Tom were dropped in the separate shooting death of a Kenya Wildlife Service warden.

Tom's an aristocrat, though possibly without the bearing. He seems to have a nasty streak of 'bad luck'. Or maybe just a nasty streak. His family happens to "own" approximately sixty-five to one hundred thousand (65,000-100,000) acres of Kenya. And he's Kenyan. And white.

Neither killing allegedly committed by the above-mentioned occurred in the parking lot of the type of Naivasha or Nairobi club as is frequented by persons of Tom's particular (Kenyan) background. To look at this from one angle it would seem Tom's 'claims to fame' are 1) social and 2) material. Or perhaps the order should be reversed. You need to read the articles linked below to begin to grasp the depths to which Tom's mostly poor yet (hopefully) equally Kenyan neighbours despise him. They say they find him "arrogant". How shocking. (snicker) All of which is very sad and once upon a time might have been avoided, possibly had Tom ever had a personality transplant. But I digress. A couple of the articles I've seen on the latest shooting include Barack Muluka's biting commentary in The East African Standard (Nairobi) in which he declares: "We live in a white man's world" (no date Sat, 13 May, sorry), and (London) Observer writer Tracy McVeigh's 14 May piece, also from Nairobi: "Protests grow at Kenya killing." [I thought the previous title looked a bit long!] It's the mainly British western press that's alluded to Tom's studies at Eton and to him as "an expat". I thought he was Kenyan.

The alleged killer's full name is "(Honorable) Thomas Patrick Gilbert Cholmondeley", born 1968 (he is not 46 as some have reported). He possesses British peerage #68401, as listed here and is the son of the 5th Baron Delamere - who (for reasons possibly only fully comprehensible and interesting to Brits/Europeans and a few in the ex-colonies) also is known as Lord Delamere (as his ancestor in that book Out of Africa). These titles are not Kenyan. The social core of Tom's existence (and political clout) seems to derive almost entirely from this British/European peerage system that seeped into Kenyan life along with the larger, now post-colonial problem (if I may go there) for Africa, of "who gets the land?" In many social circles not limited to any single continent or region, being African does not "cut" the social "mustard". Europe, the USA and Latin America all come to mind. Oh -and Asia and the Middle East. That rule-of-thumb, however, does not usually apply to Tom's type of African. And being in firm possession of a country-sized slice of Africa is handy on the material side of this social equation. I doubt that in the past hundred years it was possible for a "new" family to acquire one-hundred thousand acres of Scotland, England or Wales. I don't think even northern Ireland. But East Africa, yes.

Back to Kenya, where breadwinners from two families are dead in a similar fashion and allegedly by the same hand. This reflects an almost incomprehensible contempt for human life, in particular for the lives and families of the dead Kenyans. This whole scandal also does much to exacerbate and nothing to help resolve Kenya's piece of East Africa's lingering post-colonial land-tenure problem. I know you didn't think that was limited only to Zimbabwe...

I've already 'blabbed' too much. If convicted, British-hereditary-peerage-aristocrat African scion Thomas Cholmondeley could face Kenya's death penalty. Depending on the winds in Nairobi, maybe, maybe not.

Some say certain people's claims to being African are not taken seriously. And I might ask, not taken seriously by whom? Perhaps not wholly by themselves? Then there's the strange Kenya case of Thomas "Tom" Cholmondeley (possibly pronounced "chum-lee"?), accused yet again (and pleading not guilty) of a recent murder. I was surfing the net for info on contemporary African-Caribbean Cholmondeleys when I stumbled on this latest news story. Thoroughly appalling. The headline seemed so outlandish that I checked the allegation in two or three places, just to verify I was not reading something from 2005. I was not. In 2005 other charges against this Tom were dropped in the separate shooting death of a Kenya Wildlife Service warden.

Tom's an aristocrat, though possibly without the bearing. He seems to have a nasty streak of 'bad luck'. Or maybe just a nasty streak. His family happens to "own" approximately sixty-five to one hundred thousand (65,000-100,000) acres of Kenya. And he's Kenyan. And white.

Neither killing allegedly committed by the above-mentioned occurred in the parking lot of the type of Naivasha or Nairobi club as is frequented by persons of Tom's particular (Kenyan) background. To look at this from one angle it would seem Tom's 'claims to fame' are 1) social and 2) material. Or perhaps the order should be reversed. You need to read the articles linked below to begin to grasp the depths to which Tom's mostly poor yet (hopefully) equally Kenyan neighbours despise him. They say they find him "arrogant". How shocking. (snicker) All of which is very sad and once upon a time might have been avoided, possibly had Tom ever had a personality transplant. But I digress. A couple of the articles I've seen on the latest shooting include Barack Muluka's biting commentary in The East African Standard (Nairobi) in which he declares: "We live in a white man's world" (no date Sat, 13 May, sorry), and (London) Observer writer Tracy McVeigh's 14 May piece, also from Nairobi: "Protests grow at Kenya killing." [I thought the previous title looked a bit long!] It's the mainly British western press that's alluded to Tom's studies at Eton and to him as "an expat". I thought he was Kenyan.

The alleged killer's full name is "(Honorable) Thomas Patrick Gilbert Cholmondeley", born 1968 (he is not 46 as some have reported). He possesses British peerage #68401, as listed here and is the son of the 5th Baron Delamere - who (for reasons possibly only fully comprehensible and interesting to Brits/Europeans and a few in the ex-colonies) also is known as Lord Delamere (as his ancestor in that book Out of Africa). These titles are not Kenyan. The social core of Tom's existence (and political clout) seems to derive almost entirely from this British/European peerage system that seeped into Kenyan life along with the larger, now post-colonial problem (if I may go there) for Africa, of "who gets the land?" In many social circles not limited to any single continent or region, being African does not "cut" the social "mustard". Europe, the USA and Latin America all come to mind. Oh -and Asia and the Middle East. That rule-of-thumb, however, does not usually apply to Tom's type of African. And being in firm possession of a country-sized slice of Africa is handy on the material side of this social equation. I doubt that in the past hundred years it was possible for a "new" family to acquire one-hundred thousand acres of Scotland, England or Wales. I don't think even northern Ireland. But East Africa, yes.

Back to Kenya, where breadwinners from two families are dead in a similar fashion and allegedly by the same hand. This reflects an almost incomprehensible contempt for human life, in particular for the lives and families of the dead Kenyans. This whole scandal also does much to exacerbate and nothing to help resolve Kenya's piece of East Africa's lingering post-colonial land-tenure problem. I know you didn't think that was limited only to Zimbabwe...

I've already 'blabbed' too much. If convicted, British-hereditary-peerage-aristocrat African scion Thomas Cholmondeley could face Kenya's death penalty. Depending on the winds in Nairobi, maybe, maybe not.

Why does Bush talk about 'the Americas' but not the OAS?

There's a major disconnect in the Americas. I can't figure when or where or how it began. Bush is in Chicago talking to the National Restaurant Assoc. and answering citizen questions about "the Americas" and relations with "our neighbors" in "the Western Hemisphere". Actually, seems more like throwing tomatoes at Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Chavez 'just happens to be' a pardo - which means he's a racially mixed person of African and Native descent; like a lot of us from the Americas. And Bush never mentions anything about the OAS. (As a matter of fact, neither does the MSM.) Heck. It's almost right out back of the White House.

Speaking of "neighbors" and "neighborhoods", this may ring a bell: "... In present day Venezuelan society, notes respected commentator Gregory Wilpert, "The correspondence between skin color and class membership is quite stunning at times. To confirm this observation, all one has to do is compare middle to upper class neighborhoods, where predominantly lighter colored folks live, with the barrios, which are clearly predominantly inhabited by darker skinned Venezuelans."..." (A Real Racial Democracy? "Hugo Chávez and the Politics of Race" [Venezuela], N. Kozloff, Counterpunch, 14 Oct 2005)

             OAS - Organization of American States
              17th Street & Constitution Ave., NW
                      Washington, DC 20006

Violence against women: Five people shot dead in Baton Rouge church

A chill ran through me when I heard at least five people - from the same family -were shot dead today in north Baton Rouge. Each woke this morning and headed to the little church where they were shot by Anthony Bell, a man with a grudge. He then snatched his wife from the church, drove away and killed her too. An Associate Press story quotes police chief Jeff Leduff calling the killings "...senseless ... a total waste of human life." Yet the same violence happens on every continent, even as governments, ngos (nonprofits), colleges, thinktanks, pastors, priests, rebbis, shamans, monks and imams meet constantly to reflect on ending armed conflict in the world. But what about the wars on women? Everywhere. How many women and others around them will die and be injured and maimed in how many countries on how many days of every single year? This time this happened in a Black church. Will it bring even one more Black minister anywhere in the world to deal with violence against women?

Happy Mother's Day weekend; Nikki and Debbie marry on Logo

It's a busy day. This post and its title transformed a few times as typepad goes through changes. Need a new server?? I'm inspired by a kind of fun show on Logo called First Comes Love in which Cannuck Scott Thompson (a "Kid in the Hall") plays wedding organiser to two ladies, Nikki and Debbie. Scott always seems to make it clear he's a Canadian and not one of us from South of the (northern) border. Anyway, each of the women has two children of her own, equaling four kids. I cracked up over Scott's nickname for Debbie's ex. "Captain Custody". He had a 'problem' with Debbie's children - to whom she gave birth, by the way - attending their own mother's wedding. Not nice behaviour. But they did. Both ladies like a singer named Lea DeLaria who surprises them by singing at their reception. Really a nice story. On the same channel gay Black American author E. Lynn Harris hosts a segment of "In the Life". Very informative. Happy Mother's day weekend to Mom, Ana, Gudger, Dora, Paola and Grace, my aunts and cousins, and my buddies - Sandra and everyone... to all of us. And oh yeah, for real, more later on France's May 10th slavery commemoration (previous post) - et bonne Fete des Meres.

The Hummer: Militarized American family car

I vividly remember. It was summer 2003. I was in the US, with family, and traveling a highway through Virginia. At first maybe I thought I was having a 'flashback' of a visit at Camp Dobol in eastern Bosnia, or remembering what it was like driving an OSCE armored vehicle on the road between Fushe Kosov/Kosovo Polje and Pristina. But no. There before me coming down a civilian highway in northern Virginia, USA was the military vehicle we call a "Humvee". That was the first time I laid eyes on its commercial equivalent - a freak of marketing - known as a "Hummer." Being rather militarized itself, northern Virginia seems a likely locale for observing the unprecedented blurring of military transport with the need to pick up dish liquid and a newspaper. What is the Hummer owner's demographic profile? Is this ostensibly the next evolutionary step up from the SUV? I've seen one Hummer ad on US TV. It depicted a kid being dropped at school, and by mom no less, as he cheerfully exits the vehicle's passenger side. All this seems highly unlikely. In my book, anyway.

2005: Thank you from me to you

Habari gani? Nia. Purpose. Today is the fifth of the seven days of Kwanzaa 2005. In this sense, Ron Karenga's official Kwanzaa website explains that purpose means "to make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community..." The older many of us get (and perhaps among people across the world), the more we marvel at some mysterious "space" somewhere 'out there'; the place to which months and years and decades and even centuries fly away. Miraculously, 2005 has now done the same thing. And twelve months from now we will already have lived the first five years or 5% - of this still-new 21st century (by "western" time). For me 2005 has been a most amazing year. We began 2005 celebrating Capo d'Anno (while in shock over the tsunami) near Alberobello, in Puglia, in Italia (Italy). Two years ago we ate, danced and celebrated with my Mother, at Muthaiga Club in Nairobi. I sense that for me this New Year's will be one that is more contemplative, and I would like to take this moment to thank God and family, friends, readers and other colleagues for helping to make 2005 as amazing as it's been. We look forward to wonderful and beautiful experiences to come in 2006, and even to some of those not so easy things along with the friendship, love and support we share with each other to get through them. Thank you, also, for reading this blog, Marian's Blog!

Rosa Parks' American Life: 1913-2005

Rosa Parks has died at the age of 93. Mrs. Parks was well-known and yet she was one in a long line of Black American women who were willing to live by their integrity and courage. This is a photo of Ms Parks in 1955 as she was being arrested for ... basically for being Black and not accepting the proscribed and subjugated space to which Blacks are still regularly assigned. There are at least three lessons to keep in mind from Mrs Parks' life and exoerience. Obviously she was not a very darkskinned individual, and yet some people maintain the artifice that pretends that lighter-coloured skin in and of itself is an adequate shield to protect some people of African descent from social discrimination and human rights abuse. That's a lie. The second point goes to political and social gender reality as lived by Black women and often also other women of colour. In 1955 Ms Parks was expected - by law - to give up her bus seat to a white male. That reality goes against popular "one size fits all" visions of gender relations, both internationally and in the USA. International mythology tells us that women supposedly are "respected and protected" by men. No white woman would ever be required to give up her seat or anything else to a Black man, and yet Rosa Parks went to jail for not getting up and moving to give her place to a white man. The third point goes back to the first and regards Mrs. Parks' appearance. It is possible that - like many millions of Black Americans and other African descendants in the Americas - one of her two male grandparents quite likely may have been a white male. So many experiences, so many ironies in one American woman's life. Thank you, Ms. Rosa Parks.

Chapter 18, de Tocqueville: "Democracy in America" - Not for Black Americans or American Indians

"The most formidable of all the ills that threaten the future of the Union arises from the presence of a black population upon its territory." I needed more than a minute to digest those words straight out of Alexis de Tocqueville's famous Democracy in America. Democracy for everyone but Black Americans? Many prominent US scholars and reviewers of French 19th-century traveller, observer and author, Alexis de Tocqueville, have conveniently skipped this (and one other) section of "Democracy." Teachers and professors don't discuss it when they teach it. Yet clearly de Tocqueville's devastating predisposition toward Black Americans and American Indians, written during an 1831 tour of the USA - is still playing out in America today. De Tocqueville says "democracy" is for whites: "Europeans", "British", "Anglo-Americans" - de Tocqueville variously called them. (Nowadays select "honorary" whites also are added.) But other than mentioning the sense that civil war was approaching over enslavement of Blacks, de Tocqueville includes neither Black Americans nor American Indians in his reflections on the US future. "The lot of the Negro is placed on the extreme limit of servitude, while that of the Indian lies on the uttermost verge of liberty; and slavery does not produce more fatal effects upon the first than independence upon the second. The Negro has lost all property in his own person, and he cannot dispose of his existence without committing a sort of fraud. But the savage is his own master as soon as he is able to act; parental authority is scarcely known to him; he has never bent his will to that of any of his kind, nor learned the difference between voluntary obedience and a shameful subjection; and the very name of law is unknown to him. To be free, with him, signifies to escape from all the shackles of society. As he delights in this barbarous independence and would rather perish than sacrifice the least part of it, civilization has little hold over him." (Chap. 18, "The Present and Probable Future Condition of the Three Races that Inhabit the Territory of the United States.") For nearly two centuries huge numbers of de Tocqueville fans - schoolteachers, professors - have regularly expunged and glossed over the deeply racist anti-Black and anti-Indian bits of "Democracy in America." Now it's time we read them and, finally, respond.

Fannie Lou Hamer testimony at 1964 Democratic National Convention, Atlantic City, NJ

"... my children ... told me that the plantation owner was angry because I had gone down to try to register." Those are Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer's words speaking at the historic 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. I believe that women like Fannie Lou Hamer in the USA and Benedita da Silva in Brasil have far more in common than we have differences. How I wish Ms. Hamer were still here. She died in 1977, at age 59. (How does Black mortality in the USA compare to Black mortality in the Caribbean, or in Europe for example??) At the '64 Atlantic City Democratic convention Ms. Hamer described to thousands of delegates how she was treated when she tried to register to vote. This is a fraction of abuse she endured while being held in a US jail: "... I began to scream and one white man got up and began to beat me [in] my head and told me to hush. One white man—since my dress had worked up high [her dress was raised], walked over and pulled my dress down and he pulled my dress back, back up." Is there anyone around 40 years old who is reading this?? This was 40 years ago - in the United States of America. Since then, things have not changed anywhere near enough, and not only in the US South. And language that was still used ... "plantation owner." Just recently there is news of poor Black Americans, many homeless, who are currently being held against their will in so-called "labour camps" in Florida and elsewhere. Don't believe for a minute that the "plantation owners" -- along with their children and now their grandchildren and greatgrandchildren -- aren't still there ... working with other people (in higher places?) - still doing some of the same things they were in 1864 and 1964 ... only in slightly updated, even sometimes electronic, ways.

Technical Difficulties?

Is something about the wireless connection here keeping me from uploading photos (to Flickr)? If I'm not able to I'll do it as soon as I can. In the meantime I'll try uploading to my album here. Patience is s'posed to be a virtue anyway.

UK, Iran: what to say about some things in the News?

What's to be blogged about some of the things we're hearing every day in the news? The "missing" body count of Iraqi civilians (said to be @ 20-30 thousand as of July 2005); or those two young men who were hanged in Iran last week - because they were known or believed to be gay - what vicious, cowardly hypocrisy; and the police in London discovering that deliberately and mistakenly they have taken the life of a Brazilian who apparently had nothing to do with terrorism or the bombings last week. God help all of us. Everywhere.

"Scotland's Black History" on BBC Radio Scotland

Straight up - I want to thank Scottish radio producer Billy Kay for developing his groundbreaking and popular series, Scotland's Black History. You can hear several parts of the 6-part programme here as audio on the Radio Scotland website for a few more days. Part 1 was last Monday night, followed each evening through tonight. UK broadcast time is 19:03, or 7:03pm. Each audio segment is on the Radio Scotland website for a week starting right after each broadcast. Program # 3 aired last night, Thursday July 7; it's about the USA - "The Virginia Slave's Lament." It details Scotland's relations to slaveholding and colonial plantations in the American South. The whole re-broadcast was July 4-8, plus the time the audio is available on the website. "Scotland's Black History" first aired last September-October for Britain's Black History Month (in the UK it's October). More details below.

For Claudia - Mexico, Memin, Blond eyes, blue Hair and Hermann Hesse, Part 2

A thank you to reader Claudia who wrote to offer an honest insight into part of what Mexican culture is like. In response to a fellow Mexican who can't seriously be described as 'eloquent', she wrote, "As if calling americans stupid engages you in any intelligent dialogue." And that's exactly what we'd like to shoot for in this blog: intelligent dialogue. As Claudia also noted, I did not and would not ever say that "all" Mexicans are racist or anti-Black and/or against Indian (native) people. The fact about we people of the Americas -- meaning those of us whose primary ancestry is some combination of African and/or indigenous Native Indian and/or European intertwined over the past 200-500 years - is the vast majority of us (who are not newcomers), regardless of region or country, are of mixed-race heritage. I won't go into all of mine again right here. And DNA tests are now easily available for all of us to take. But I do remember a Mexican American friend of mine, originally from Texas. She was 'typically' 'mestiza'-looking (indigena+ (Southern, dark) European), but she told me that her brother - also Mexican American, with the same parents - clearly looks more Black (African). As Claudia writes: "... do you not remember the saying in mexico when you marry a white mexican or a white US American or when your kid comes out "guerito" [meaning 'light' in skin colour] - "estas mejorando la raza" - "YOU ARE IMPROVING THE RACE." How totally idiotic... These days this phrase may be heard less often, but the thinking still is just about the same. 

Mexico, Memin, Blond eyes and blue Hair and Hermann Hesse, Part 1

I'm thinking of Mexico, our beloved neighbour, and her seemingly endless capacity to debase herself in matters of race - and almost solely toward her Black and Indian citizens. Now the issue is Mexico's Memin Pinguin postage stamps and how a previously obscure piece of Mexican cultural history looks amazingly like a 'cry for [collective mental] help', while requiring a kind of Afrocentric human rights critique with which Mexico truly is unfamiliar. According to LA Times' article yesterday, "five new stamps show a cartoon figure named Memin Pinguin, a picaresque urban child who gets by on wits and moxie..." Though Memin has been a real money-maker in the Mexican comic book world - which we're supposed to take as some kind of compliment - yet I can pretty well guarantee not a peso of those profits ever went into providing hospitals, schools and homes to Afro Mexican communities. Memin was created in 1947 by one Yolanda Vargas Dulche; its "popularity peaked in the 1950s and 1960s." An Afro-Mexican singer named Johnny Laboriel (whom I'd never heard of before) declares, "The idea to put out this postage stamp is the biggest stupidity." The head of Mexico's postal service claims nostalgic "value" and has no plans to recall them. I have to contrast depictions of the black caricature 'Memin' - the product of one woman's imagination or of her demons - with the no class, over-exposed Paris hiltonian influence largely attributable to the apparent enthralling impact of blond eyes + blue hair. Oops, make that blue eyes, blond hair. My mind turns to a quintessential blond. Ok, maybe it's a stereotype though there's little stereotypical about the German blond called Hermann Hesse. Hesse's name is ever-present on this blog. I spent several minutes discussing Hesse's meaning in my plenary presentation last October at the 2004 European Social Forum. For the past 30 years I keep coming back to my deepening intellectual awareness that a pacifist German novelist is a cultural hero of mine. And why? Because at an early and tumultuous point in 20th century consciousness - anti-war, anti-racism, anti-homophobia, etc. - singlehandedly, in the fell swoop of a short and unusual essay, Hermann Hesse contributed to de-constructing the global economy of European-ness/whiteness. I wonder if Hesse scholars out there know if Hesse realised what he did when he created The European. Long past his death Hesse is helping to dismantle the strange, negative habit called white "supremacy." It is a habit, just like drugs, food, smoking, or the viral transmission of AIDS and of memes. While staring white supremacy dead in the face, and sooner rather than later, eventually someone will debunk the racist distortion deceptively known as Memin Pinguin - and for that I will say 'vielen danke' to Hermann Hesse.

Oprah nixes HERMES: Paris Shop says don't come in

Money makes some Black folks rich but it still can't make some other folks less ignorant. In a tragic case of "mistaken identity" shopkeepers at Hermes in Paris apparently mistook Oprah Winfrey for an idiot. Maybe they saw her chocolate brown face and thought "beggar." Oops. The talk show host, and publishing and producing diva - and all-around sister with mucho courage - is said to have assured the public that Hermes need not worry about seeing her -or her credit cards - ever again. I hope she keeps her word, which frankly she's likely to do. I have a strong feeling word will be getting around and some other folks will follow Oprah's lead and give Hermes and their scarves some permanent "space." This "misunderstanding" as Hermes called it, is a regularly occuring social-psychological condition known to and experienced by many, many Blacks & other people of colour (gens de couleur, gente de color). I call it the "Your-Money's-not-as-good-as-White-folks'-Money Disease." Couturier Hermes has since apologised to Oprah, but honey ... it _ is _ too _ late. Hopefully le tax system francais has a business write-off specifically for financial losses due to racist stupidity. If they don't, they and a lot of other places should. And not just in France.

American poet Langston Hughes: I Dream a World

I don't know in what year Langston Hughes wrote I Dream a World. I know he was born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri in the US midwest, what some folks call the American heartland. His full name was James Langston Hughes and he attended Lincoln University in Pennsylvania (not Lincoln in Missouri) and lived his life until 1967. Later as a student at Lincoln (in Pa) myself, I first lived in Hughes Hall, named for him. His biographer is Arnold Rampersad, author of The Life of Langston Hughes, 1941-1967: I Dream A World, first published in 1988.

I dream a world where man No other man will scorn, Where love will bless the earth And peace its paths adorn. I dream a world where all Will know sweet freedom's way, Where greed no longer saps the soul Nor avarice blights our day. A world I dream where black or white, Whatever race you be, Will share the bounties of the earth And every man is free, Where wretchedness will hang its head And joy, like a pearl, Attends the needs of all mankind-- Of such I dream, my world! - The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), p. 311.

Race for the Cure thank You ... and "Coming out Grandma"

Well I am up and getting ready for today's 5K. We have a woman-like change of plans. By now in my life I know: Women's lives are so - flexible. I'll be there with my granddaughters - a two year old and a two month old. This will be their first race. The 2 yr old loves running, the other one drinks alot. Luckily it's milk (not cow's). I've just about put aside thoughts of Burundi, Rwanda, Bosnia ... We'll see how the morning develops. Weather's good. I want to thank everyone who is supporting me by making donations. Detailed thank-yous later. "Italia" called this morning, in that "sarcastic" bemused voice, to let me know the town's rooting for me. And all of us are rooting for women and men all over the world dealing with breast cancer and other illness. Was it Susan Komen Foundation that notes in the US alone, about 1600 men a year discover they have breast cancer? Men have mammaries too. The rest of that is also a blog for another day.

Sister-Chefs, Where Are You??

Chef Juliette Rossant emailed to say she's conducting an online poll for US Internet readers, but so far with more than 40 candidates she has no Black American women chefs to include in her White House women chefs competition. She has some Asian and Latina women chef candidates - though no mention as yet of American Indian women. I replied to Juliette that after decades and years, when it comes to cooking/'chefing', New Orleans-based veteran sister-chef Leah Chase of the restaurant Dooky Chase richly deserves much more international and national public props [recognition & respect]. Maybe you know sister-chefs who should and can be included in the poll, so check the info on the White House woman chef election via Juliette Rossant's SuperChefblog site. Et bon appetit.

Lost in translation - Is This What They Call 'Legalese'??

Truth is stranger than fiction, which is one reason I became a journalist. I figured no one would believe me so here's the text of a 'legal disclaimer' I found somewhere on the Web. I kid you not. This gives new meaning to the word gibberish (i.e., nonsense). And if this had been in (incomprehensible) French or Urdu it would still be hilarious. Except for the bits in brackets - [] - this is exactly what was written. I suppose if you don't check the "I Accept" button you can't use their services?!

To the senses and for the effects of law [1975/69] on the protection of they give to you personal express authorizes [Joe Blow Schmo Express] to dealing electronically and to conserve they give to you contained in the present cutting. They give to you in object will be it uses you exclusively for fine [promotions] and trades them. In order to obtain the cancellation or the modernization of this gives to you will have to be written to ... [JOE BLOW SCHMO Services Somewhere on Planet Earth].    I accept

[Don't] Tell Me what you really think... blogging 'inconsistent with the business mission'

Who reads your blog? Co-workers, friends, your boss?

There's a gazillion stories in the [global] naked city - and a bunch are right there in blogs on the web.

Some people would do a lot better to click private as their preference.

"There are 8 million personal Web logs -- or blogs -- in the United States, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. People write blogs to talk about their day, family outings, dates gone awry and, of course, work. But what might feel like a very personal entry about a dismal workday can mean something quite different to a boss who needs only a search engine to read it."

Read all about it in Washington Post.

"Blogging While Black' Panel at 2005 South by Southwest, Sunday 13 March

South by Southwest conferences and festivals are coming up in Austin, Tx in just over a month. I see George - of AllAboutGeorge - has a notice on his blog that he's on the Blogging While Black panel, on Sunday, 13 March. I used the link George posted tho' I don't yet see mention of all the panels. Wonder who else'll be on the panel; I send them my congrats!

Tell every U.S. Black woman voter we know...

Here's your assignment, dear Reader:

Cribbed w/ attribution from my sisters @ blackfeminism.org - Ed Lewis, chair of Essence - the pioneer Black women's magazine - wants Essence readers [actually all Black women who are U.S. citizens] AND "who voted in the [U.S.] presidential election to register their first name, last name, and email address at http://www.essence.com/essencevote. As he states:

It was only four years ago that our presidential election was too close to call on Election Day. A mere 537 votes out of more than 6 million cast in Florida gave George Bush his margin of victory despite questions about the untallied and discarded ballots—questions that remain today. In the 2000 election, 94 percent of Black women voters went for Al Gore and 6 percent for Bush. Out of 13.8 million Black women in this country, 9 million were registered voters and 7.6 million actually voted! These are astounding numbers. And if even more Black women had voted, the course of history would have been different. I bring these statistics to your attention for a very important reason. Black women are critical to this presidential election.

He will send a letter to President George Bush along with these names to let him know that the African-American Woman’s voice should be heard. ..."

We'd best get busy. Lewis wants to send the names of 7 million Black women voters. The deadline is Dec 31, 2004.

DC Voted 90% Kerry - But NO Vote in Congress

On Tuesday, 2 November, 2004 the voters of majority-Black Washington, DC gave John Kerry 90 - NINETY - % of their vote. Now I hear investigative journalist Greg Palast has published a piece entitled, "Kerry Won". www.tompaine.com.

On U.S. Election Day I made sure I was home in Washington, DC. I voted, but I also did phone calls for several hours at Democratic National HQ... thanking voters in Ohio who'd voted for Kerry and reminding others to vote for Kerry bef