At 8:10 am, twenty-four years ago, I was born in Portsmouth General Hospital, Portsmouth Virginia. Don't look for it; it doesn't exist anymore. Pope John Paul II was the victim of an attempted assassination later that day. That's right. I was born on the day the Pope was shot. I am a Wednesday's child.

I try not to be a superstitious person. Black cats don't bother me. Still, I've noticed that it's hard for me to enjoy my birthday, regardless of the year. I downplay the significance, ignore the statistical anomaly presented when an African American male reaches another year without police arrest or police issue bullet holes. My birthday doesn't often matter to me because I reflect on my accomplishments, or lack thereof. I don't wish to engage in useless self-deprecation, but today's odd conflux of jubilation and tragedy reminds me only how little real happiness one receives in this world.

My father called to wish me a Happy Birthday, on his way with my mother to the funeral of a cousin of mine, a fourteen year old named Deshon Antoine Hunt. He was shot in the back of the head by a friend of his on Mother's Day, in Virginia. I read his obituary in the Richmond Times Dispatch. I did not know him. I did not cry.

I spent most of this week irritable and moody. Honestly, I hadn't the slightest idea what the problem was. I kept telling Angel to ignore all attempts at birthday mirth; I really didn't care. I told myself I couldn't care. I was still unemployed, without any viable prospects or upcoming interviews. I was losing friends faster than President Bush could turn the American electorate away from Social Security privatization. I was incensed. I was angry. I had all the time in the world to focus my thoughts on a world I was powerless to affect, a solitary inmate trapped in perpendicular shades of gray too small to breathe in. I took measurements during last Wednesday's American Morning, doubted whether my apartment truly possessed three dimensions while Soledad O'Brien pontificated on the inevitable Senate judicial filibuster battle between 90 Second Pop meanderings on Dave Chappelle's shaky mental state in Durban, South Africa. Before crotchety Jack Cafferty could make some overly White middle class and probably offensive opinion on the funniest comic on Comedy Central (Sorry Jon Stewart...) I retreated to the PlayStation 2 and Tekken 5. No more drama.

Then the phone rang.

Starting July 6, 2005, this commentator will begin employment for the New York City office of Grassroots Campaigns, Inc., a progressive political organization determined to reinvigorate American politics by actively supporting progressive candidates in congressional elections. Instead of commenting in cyberspace on the useless policies of the Bush Administration, I will work against them in the real world. This is a hell of an opportunity; you have no idea how thankful I am.

With all the jubilation accompanying my twenty-fourth year, I feel oddly sobered. Angel and I watched the new Jet Li film Unleashed, a actively poetic tale of perverted control and animal bloodlust, and with all the fun we enjoyed today, I can't force Deshon Antoine Hunt from my mind. I won't allow Passion of the Christ-graphic mental pictures of his bloodied corpse to invade my cortex, but his abrupt demise gives me unnatural pause. Today I'm a decade older than this child was when his friend shot him, and I know that I will forget his name by next week. I don't know how my parents stand it; sometimes I think their retirement is no more than an endless string of funerals, an unceasing hangman's noose lynching Black people of all ages and class plateaus; regardless of social status approved by Bill Cosby, Ph.D, the Reaper assassinates everyone. And the Reaper is a White man.

Chris Rock, in his amazing HBO comedy special Never Scared, famously said that "only the White man can profit from pain." Everyone dies, but not everyone dies from violence at fourteen in this country. The privileged progeny of pampered professionals surrounding Angel and I in this crowded Ithacan movie theater are here to not only watch a short Asian man use his martial arts skills to both impress and entertain American audiences and validate his very on-screen existence (people don't pay money to see Asian men in dramatic roles without violence in George W. Bush's compassionate conservative American theocracy), but also to transfer aggression in a perverse manipulation of testosterone infused visual pleasure. These children of a lesser god named Adam Smith do not engage in physical violence of any sort; they wouldn't throw a punch to rescue their mothers from the rapist's turgid, plunging phallus. All around me are neutered fraternity boys, ambitious, careful, fearful both of lost status and lowered profit, learning to replace an aging technocracy with new blood, new skills, and zero problems. Modern Ivy League corporate student camaraderie engages a homoeroticism without violence, as some forms of aggression disrupt the flow of capital, and must be avoided at all costs, or transferred to useful proxies like sports entertainment and Hollywood horrorcore and mundane minority murder. Therefore, when the Cornell student audience watches Jet Li in an underground pit blindingly bending the bone structures of muscular killers twice his size on-screen for his character's White masters, I notice not only the race conscious use of the otaku villain or the raunchy sex jokes from aged female piano teachers, but also how easy it is to forget a death in the family because I too am an Ivy League corporate alumnus, a transitional technocrat, a Talented Tenth. To fulfill my destiny is to forget my people.

So now, as the gray matter rewires and this reflection on a fallen son I never knew dissolves, I realize again the ultimate gift of Western civilization for those affirmative action babies unblemished by Black Nationalist bullshit. We can analyze for ourselves the true worth of individuality, and then dance. Dance. Dance to dodge forty-one shots of forgotten rage and unsung anger and proletariat passion from the people we will never help, those whose only crimes are the hate etched in their skins and children that deny them.

... ... ...?

Hey, did I forget something? What was I talking about?