I am not an attractive man. Never in my life has anyone complimented me as a 'pretty boy', a 'fine brother', or even 'hot'. Angel, no doubt, would disagree with this assessment, and while I always appreciate her attempts at ego-stroking when the subject of my physical attractiveness arises, I realize she's humoring me, on some level. She loves me. But Orlando Bloom, Dean Cain, and Hayden Christensen will always do more for her primal on-sight sexual urges than I ever will. This does not bother me, mind you. I know I am not an attractive man.

Given this, for me the eternal American quest for beauty strikes me as a puzzle wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma, for want of a better metaphor outside of Oliver Stone classics. For this writer, the human body should only be maintained at peak performance, mentally and physically. Manipulation of the human form for personal interests is for me, wrong. Many people over the years have asked why I don't smoke, drink alcohol, or use drugs, and the answer has always been the same - I don't believe in personal alteration of the human biochemical form for personal interest purposes, recreational or otherwise, outside of basic health and wellness. Take a pill to fight diabetes? Cool. Take a pill to lose inhibitions at a rave? Not cool. But don't worry, my later-day Shields Anti-Scientologists! I don't proselytize.

I do wonder though, why the quest for beauty in this county enraptures women with higher frequency than men. I mean, I always thought of myself as 'not attractive'. That doesn't mean 'ugly'; rather, I realized early on that some people with certain features were considered by all concerned 'beautiful', and my wavy black hair, broad brown nose, thick lips, and predatory brow were not considered 'beautiful'. Little children are mean, spiteful creatures, but even during the worst of the teasing - when I could not stand any more open taunts on my Bubblicious lips, or my Hoover vacuum nostrils, or the barnyard qualities of my last name - I never wanted to change myself. I was me. The entire concept of physical alteration to please others (who never have any incentive to like you no matter how many answers on math tests you let them steal) never made sense to me, and never will.

No one in modern American history better personifies the dangers inherent in changing yourself to please the masses than the greatest entertainer alive, Michael Jackson. From humble, modest rhythm and blues child prodigy to harried, reviled infamous pop laughingstock, Jackson engenders all types of angry, acidic commentary from African Americans insulted by his surgical manipulation of his African features into the acquitted Euro-terrestrial he presents today, but one wonders how universal Jackson's detractors would be had the entertainer settled on a particular look early on, and never went under the knife again. For example, if Michael Jackson today looked the spitting image of Michael Jackson on the cover of the Bad album, circa 1987, I truly doubt many Black folk would have much of a problem with him, which would mean that his singing career (dependent on mainstream appropriation of African American pop cultural tastes) would be in a much healthier state. The point? When people become enraged on a racial level about individual ethnic minorities who choose to pursue beauty through plastic surgery, designed by Western medicine to promote Western attitudes of beauty to all consumers (read: universal Whiteness by popular demand) they often ignore the more fundamental point - in a human environment based upon free choice, manipulation of the physical form to affect personal perceptions of beauty is as wrong as manipulation of chemical substances to affect personal perceptions of bliss. Botox is America's newest crack.

Today, after reading a new article on Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's abandonment of the extreme Left (registration required) for centrist Democratic electability, I read in the Los Angeles Times an article about Asian American women who use skin whitening techniques and treatments to preserve and promote lighter, whiter skin. First, I was afraid. Then I was petrified. "Beauty and the Bleach", by Jia-Rui Chong, describes the quest of some Asian American women to "preserve or enhance their pale complexions with expensive creams, masks, gloves, professional face scrubs and medical procedures". For me, this manner of body manipulation is far past repugnant, way beyond disgusting. It's rather inhuman.

From the article:

For many Southern Californians, summer is the season for beaches, chaise longues and the quest for the perfect tan.

Not for Margaret Qiu. She and thousands of other Asian American women are going to great lengths to avoid the sun - fighting to preserve or enhance their pale complexions with expensive creams, masks, gloves, professional face scrubs and medical procedures.

For these women, a porcelain-like white face is the feminine ideal, reflecting a long-held belief that pale skin represents a comfortable life. They also believe it can hide physical imperfections.

"There's a saying, 'If you have white skin, you can cover 1,000 uglinesses,' " said Qiu, a 36-year-old Chinese immigrant who lives in Alhambra.

Qiu goes through a regimen of skin-whitening products twice a day. She is one of many customers who have turned Asian whitening creams and lotions into a multimillion-dollar industry in the United States.

But that's just the beginning.

Take a daylight drive through Asian immigrant enclaves like Monterey Park and Irvine, and you'll see women trying to shield themselves with umbrellas - even for the short dash from a parking lot into a supermarket. While driving, many wear special "UV gloves" - which look like the long gloves worn with ball gowns - to protect their forearms, and don wraparound visors that resemble welder's masks.

At beauty salons, women huddle around cosmetics counters asking about the latest cleansers and lotions that claim to control melanin production in skin cells, often dropping more than $100 for a set. Beauticians do a brisk business with $65 whitening therapies. Women dab faces with fruit acid, which is supposed to remove the old skin cells that dull the skin, and glop on masks with pearl powder or other ingredients that they believe lighten the skin.

There are doctors who, for about $1,000, will use an electrical field to deliver vitamins, moisturizers and bleaching agents to a woman's face in a procedure known as a "mesofacial."

Whitening products have been a mainstay in Asia for decades, but cosmetics industry officials said they have emerged as a hot seller in the United States only in the last four years. Whitening products now rack up $10 million in sales a year, according to the market research firm Euromonitor.

But their popularity has sparked a debate in the Asian American community about the politics of whitening. Qui and others say the quest for white skin is an Asian tradition. But others - younger, American-born Asians - question whether the obsession with an ivory complexion has more to do with blending into white American culture, or even a subtle prejudice against those with darker skin.

The market research firm says cosmetics companies have taken note of the sensitivity, saying their Asian skin products in America are intended not for "whitening" but for "brightening."

"It's not a politically correct term because it seems to imply that looking Caucasian via a white complexion is the desired beauty goal," said Virginia Lee, a Euromonitor analyst.

The money alone freaks me out. To spend so much just to turn one's skin a certain color is for me, ridiculous. But outside of the monetary concern, the moral question must be raised: is changing your skin tone to possess the intangible concept of 'beauty' ever positive? Must a pursuit of the good life include the social benefit of Whiteness in American society? In the post-politically correct Bush Administration, can a nation that promotes pale, white complexions as more desirable than other epidermal tones simultaneously promote individual self-worth as an ideal of the good citizen? The answers are not obvious. Margaret Qiu contributes to an American industry based upon the exultation of Eurocentric physical forms as the epitome of beauty; to consider her actions justifiable, one would have to argue either that the pursuit of any beauty ideal is in itself not harmful, or that skin-whitening products, surgeries, and techniques do not desecrate personal self-worth or the physical form in any way. I do not believe that a person can reasonably argue such perspectives.

When Nicole Kidman is placed upon the hegemonic Western world as a pinnacle of female beauty, we tell every woman in our diverse civilization that if you don't look like her, you are not attractive. Then we let Cosmopolitan and other publications convince women that they are truly ugly. Either they are too fat, too wrinkled, too dark, too short, too tall, too wide, or too weird. Their hair doesn't have that special stringy neo-Neanderthal straightness, or their posteriors are too prominent. Their teeth are too crooked or their feet are too big. Their breasts sag too naturally, or they have breasts larger than a nine-year-old Jesus juice-oholic. Their skin is too blemished, or their skin is too dark.

Recently, I engaged in an online dick-waving contest with renowned armchair feminist Fromaway over the role of modern feminism in a diverse, multiracial female population. One would think that the feminist implications of skin-whitening creams used by Asian American women would be obvious for feminist groups; Reappropriate.com has an amazing post on this very article that examines some of these issues. Still, I don't believe that many prominent feminists would take up a cause like this. Writers like Catherine MacKinnon are helpful public intellectuals when attacking the role of pornography in the lives of Americans, or fighting to cement rape as a crime against humanity in international law, but when people of color enter the room, American feminists must grapple with both the exclusionary racist past of the women's suffrage and feminist movements, as well as modern mainstream American indifference (especially on the Left) to an Eurocentric beauty ideal that places White women (again!) at the center of the debate. Call it the 'Cosmo complex'; the omnipresent, omni-suggestive deluge of skinny, airbrushed, Caucasoid video vixens found in all facets of media production, from the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, to Maxim-esque lad mags, to local weathergirls on the evening news, to Las Vegas showgirls, to Nicole Kidman and Angelina Jolie, to Hugh Hefner's Playboy, to the Bush twins, to Ann Coulter, to Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, to Laguna Beach, to the Real World, to practically every issue of People or Time or Newsweek, or any rap video you've ever seen, to any porno flick you've ever watched, to any popular chick from high school or college you've ever hated, dated, needed to murder or wanted to befriend or needed to become.

Think about it: all American women and men are constantly exposed to the White female beauty ideal. This damages all of us, certainly all women, but I would contend that all of us are not assaulted identically. Men pursue sexually who they think they will be successful with, but a majority of men (regardless of race, unfortunately) attempt White females because of the longtime social programming we all endure. The oft-used Waiting to Exhale contention that successful Black men validate their professional and financial success by dating and marrying White women (any White women, no matter how not attractive) to African American women's exclusion in a perverse status symbol conflux of racist, sexist, and classist attitudes is a reasonable and fact-based contention. Women of color, suffering under this Cosmo complex, are constantly told not that they are just 'not attractive' but rather that they are ugly, unwanted, and condemned to be either alone or subjected to the misogynistic whims of minority men given license by society to engage whatever sexist practices they devise. Domestic violence, extra-marital promiscuity, economic control, forced domesticity, sexual retardation - whatever men of color do, however repulsive, is permissible on some level beyond the usual Wilt Chamberlain, R. Kelly, Sean Michaels hypersexual natural porn star stereotypes because freedom of choice in sexual coupling is in a very real sense denied to women of color by the Cosmo complex. When most men look towards Ashley Judd or Kirsten Dunst as attractive, the chick walking by looking like Jill Scott or India Arie really doesn't have a chance in the dating pool. D.L. Hugley once joked in his amazing 1999 stand-up comedy special Goin Home that he couldn't move to Africa under any circumstances. "I need a woman with a perm, fuck that!" Indeed.

Given this backdrop, Asian American and Latin American women (and lighter-skinned African American women, in my opinion) are placed in unique and interesting circumstances, similar but not identical to the social phenomena of racial passing. They absorb all Cosmo complex programming like the rest of us, but given equalizing factors like language proficiency, education level, and mainstream social immersion, a certain transracialization may occur whereby the Latina or Asian American woman may choose to assimilate to the point where the Cosmo complex works for her, rather than impedes her sexual chances. Still, in street-level race relations, so much personal choice surrenders to commonplace racist and sexist attack from misogynist men of all shades that most women never meaningfully choose their relation to the Cosmo complex. The point? Whatever internal cultural reasons that may preference lighter skin in some Asian American cultures, the physical adherence to those cultural mores has a mainstream political impact in our domestic American sphere, one that not only reinforces and justifies a generally oppressive social phenomena, but also provides chances for upward mobility through a possible cultural synchronicity that many conservative Republican proponents of 'model minority' stereotypes of Asian Americans and Latino assimilation into Republican Party religious conservativism may exploit. In essence, skin-whitening emerges as a reverse blackface flattery White America can't help but support.

Skin-whitening creams degrade individuality and demote uniqueness to promote monotone conformity to a ruling class defined in part by racial classification and general European genetic heritage. In the African American community, skin-whitening creams have a painful, sad history, filled with chemical burns, disfigurement, and the broken promise of passing. Better writers than I have assailed the degrading shame skin-whitening creams have wrought upon Black people; better writers attacked the pathetic clamors and petty morality of those hoping to end skin-deep Blackness with daily application. Still, I find this trend among middle-aged Asian American women particularly troubling because it emerges as a photo-negative of an entrenched trend among college-educated, youthful Asian American women - tanning. The forty and fifty plus Korean mothers who avoid sunlight like the vampire Lestat from Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire exhibit no higher moral principle than their twenty-something Cornell alumni daughters who visit tanning salons regularly to preserve that special coastal burn during the unending December of Ithaca's winters with patently unhealthy ten to twenty minute bursts of ultraviolet radiation, just to compete with Sandy and Kimber and Bethany for the sweaty, impromptu, Heineken-saturated animal attentions of homoerotic Captain America-wannabe frat brethren during the wet T-shirts and forgotten phone numbers of Cancun's drunken debauchery. Both groups engage in dangerous alteration of their natural, original epidermal state to gain mainstream White approval in some respect; I never met anyone who consciously tanned their skin because they wanted to achieve an unorthodox look.

Tanning and chemical whiteface flip double consciousness past application; try as we might, African Americans can not promote the eternal reflection of DuBois' American Negro upon individuals whose conscious attempts at transracial uniformity with the dominant racial classification defy the logic of both conservativism's rugged individualism and liberalism's cosmopolitan multiculturalism. The twenty-one year old female Asian American chemical engineer can no more proclaim her uniqueness from the tanning bed's claustrophobic solar flares than her middle-management microchip manufacturer mother can boast her culturally diverse, equal opportunity Arlington, Virginia workplace as a positive arena for minority retention and achievement. But of course, neither person would proclaim anything from such positions. Hell, African Americans don't sell double consciousness to every colored American they find, even on college campuses. No one cares that much. Instead, we expect the worst from one another to feel the pain less when others prove us right. The eternal quest for racial transcendence remains more a mental war than a social conflict, as Americans always prefer to judge with smiling, silent, clenched teeth than to dialogue with sharp, contentious, honest tongues.

Chino XL once described Mariah Carey as "Black when it's convenient"; one could apply his apt commentary to a celebrity like Jennifer Lopez, who seems to rediscover her Bronx-born Puerto-Rican heritage with every new album release. The important responsibility though, is that in a world where political affiliations, personal morality, and even outward racial classification has become Industrial Light & Magic smoke and mirrors masquerade for so many, those who develop and possess defined self-identities, racial and otherwise, speak openly on themselves and their experiences, so that the distance between reality and fantasy remains meaningful enough to matter. I do not believe in any sense that all Asian American women desire Whiteness; rather, I am troubled by women of color who so desire to prove racial solidarity for whatever reasons that they embrace physical self-desecration to achieve beauty. When light-skinned African American women tan, or wear natural hairstyles to 'prove' Blackness to their peers, I am similarly nauseated. I don't inspect every Black person's African American Express card with Kanye West's egotistical visionary squint on the face.

We've entered an epoch in American race relations where semiotics may overpower common sense, and we should all remain wary of these consequence through knowledge and personal analysis. In today's Washington Post, Roban Givhan's intriguing article Warning: Killer Curves in Spandex offers a take on the racial/ sexual signifier phenomena that's worth reading. Because in a world where women try to achieve both that particular shade of facial white (sickly bone White Michael Jackson looks 'terrible' according to Margaret Qiu) and try to affect in K Street offices that particular blend of cheeky hip-thrusting, bouncing bottom, and Juggs-magazine voluptuousness, everyone needs to recall their original sociopolitical positions. The medium can define us, especially when we relinquish our creative control over our various identities to mainstream groupthink. Once the Cosmo complex exerts control, you're already more cosmetic than corporeal.

Maybe you're Maybelline.

Recently, ABC announced it was canceling Welcome to the Neighborhood, a highly publicized reality show revolving around a close-knit, conservative Republican cul-de-sac in Austin, Texas, where white families decide which of seven different families, one African American, one Hispanic, one Korean American, one Wiccan, one White homosexual couple (with an adopted African American baby), one White couple covered in tattoos and piercings, and another White family where the mother is employed as a stripper, are allowed to move in to the 3,300 square foot home on their block. No, I'm not making this up. Obviously the producers of this show never heard of housing discrimination laws.

Designed to be a mid-summer replacement for Desperate Housewives, ABC seems to have desired a mix between busybody suburban intrigue and identity politics reality television. Honestly, I'm going to scour the ‘Net until I locate an episode or two of this travesty against humanity. Ever since Kevin Powell telecast his African American Studies-influenced belief that "Black people can't be racist!" to that poor little White girl on the very first season of MTV's The Real World, the easiest and most effective manner to boost reality television ratings has been through racial conflict. Omarosa Manigualt Stallworth became a household name on The Apprentice through Mark Burnett's manipulation of her every waking moment into the most sinister Black villain since Denzel Washington in Training Day. Sly Stallone's The Contender briefly flirted with middleweight boxer Ishe Smith as tall, dark, and psychotic. And the litany of Negroes without sanity that have muddled through close-quarters interaction with our Girls Gone Wild mainstream White Americana on MTV's The Real World continues to blossom, even after the sad passing of show creator Mary-Ellis Bunim. Just ask Karamo.

Hell, I did. Angel and I met him briefly at a panel discussion on reality show treatment of homosexuality a few months back; I was mainly struck by the illogical star power and minor celebrity anyone who has been on television exudes to people who have not had to ignore cameras while performing basic hygiene rituals. Karamo was a regular Black man. Nothing more. I did not agree with his perceptions on Real World race relations, but was pleasantly surprised by his openness on the subject. Honestly, we disagreed on one major premise: my belief that the producers of reality shows like the pioneering Real World mine racial conflict for ratings success, yet strongly encourage the participants (through skillful post-production editing) to "solve" their racial conflicts in ways that encourage the usually sheltered, usually suburban, usually White protagonists to embrace ideals of tolerance and open-mindedness. Essentially, the minorities are allowed on reality TV shows as villainous race foils, all in an effort to evolve average White folk into Better People.

How often is the personal growth of one individual White person the major plotline of a reality television season? Easily the most extreme example of this production choice was The Real World: New Orleans, when Julie Stoffer, a lifelong Mormon and student at Brigham Young University, joined at age twenty-one the ninth season of seven strangers picked to live in a house and have their lives taped to find out what happens when people stop being polite, and start getting real. (Damn, I really can't believe I just wrote that from memory. Sad.) Most episodes revolved around her Bambi-eyed outlook on the fast-paced world around her, where homosexuals lived just down the hall from her room, and racial interaction assistance abounded. She was once admonished on-camera by mixed-race cast member Melissa Howard and African American cast member David Broom on the negative connotations of the pejorative 'colored' as acceptable terminology for African Americans. During the Clinton Administration. Seriously. Julie, as bubbly, semi-attractive (by majority standards), holier-than-thou Abercrombie girl, swam in oceans of air time that season as she discovered American diversity for the first time, for someone else's viewing pleasure.

Definitely not mine; my demographic does not overlap with the suburban, White, middle-class, 18-25 MTV target audience enough to prevent such callous misuse of race color for White benefit. Countless times in that season, Melissa or David or Danny, the openly gay cast member, sat with Julie for some heart-to-heart with string quartet accompaniment, where they tried to indoctrinate her past her homespun, Utah-chiseled perspectives of devout spirituality and judgmental ethno-narcissism into the situational immorality of drunken MTV feelgood over-exuberance. New Orleans presented the perfect backdrop for Julie's conversion from 1950's stalwart conservatism to 1990's capricious liberalism; hedonism sweats, dances, moves, and simply plays better on television because it appears fun. At least it did when David Broom played into every hypersexed Mandingo stereotype imaginable with all of his omnipresent, interchangeable females running around. After David, Black male sexuality in reality television was as absentee as public outrage against Mexican President Vicente Fox and the new Memin Penguin stamps. Open dialogue is always preferable to closed door silence on racial issues, but dialogue does not end discrimination anymore than public speeches cease private prejudices.

We can't continue as Americans to arrogantly persist with the belief that by and large, we are decent people. We're not. Americans are selfish, manipulative, hedonistic, vice-addicted capitalists who derive profits and suffering from even the most holy, sacrosanct, and/ or mundane situations. Honestly, that's what makes reality television so appealing - the perverse American voyeur bred in all of us from our judgmental Mayflower origins loves to watch others dismember themselves and their reputations for his and his family's enjoyment. The reality of reality television exposes John Q. Public's unabashed desire for sacrificing his fellow Everyman to a warped third-person cannibalistic bloodsport Murderball where no one gets away clean and everyone walks away upset. Our modern day Purityrannicals deplore sex and violence in entertainment media without end, shout an ever deafening crescendo of holier-than-thou Parents Television Council hyperbole that drowns an entire nation of formerly free thinking individuals within conservative Christianity's muddy waters. Hell, even that capricious Clayface chameleon Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) cashed in her free choice credibility to appease the Orwellian Right. Memo to the junior Senator - no video game ever enticed me to have sex or shoot someone. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, one of the most technically detailed and patently fun video games ever made, is a hotbed of -ism imagery, resplendent with racial epithets, pimping, drive-bys, police brutality, terrorism, and other random criminal behavior. So is every major city in the United States! Try cleaning up the real urban blight before you FCC the fake one.

To escape, in perfect Peyton Place fashion, we pay away our shame to cable companies willing to supply starving immoral America with our popularity phantasmagoria, celeb-reality TV. To appease the salacious-starved masses, network executives greenlight shows dependent upon race conflict to provide ratings success. Given this backdrop, I'm not surprised that ABC planted its summer hopes upon Welcome to the Neighborhood: it's good business to lampoon the different and pink and yellow and brown and black for White audiences. The sad thing is that it works, on all of us. If Corporate America's water coolers could talk during the first season of The Apprentice, they would have related mainstream America's utter disgust for Omarosa; President Bush could have reverse-Jessica Lynched her into Iraq just to have another reason to invade. Omarosa Manigualt Stallworth, the perfect Black weapon of mass distraction, a bold, brazen Black woman blessed with too much sense and sensibility, refused to Stepin Fetchit for her White coworkers, and in doing so metamorphosed The Apprentice into the nation's number one minstrel show. It'd be tragic if it wasn't so pathetic.

But before someone asks me for a solution to the meat grinder of modern media output, here's my suggestion. Allow the most radical group of minority media commentators and pundits to produce their own reality show, given one unique and non-negotiable premise - the emotional and intellectual health, safety, and purity of White participants will not be preserved by anyone involved. No, I'm not looking for a season of Dave Chappelle's "The Mad Real World" produced by Ego Trip; I want a Real World where the next half naked barely legal American Eagle billboard who cries her eyes out about making jokes about Black people isn't given a calming piano interlude and a "hey, it's okay" group therapy session. Someone can just curse that little White girl out. I want a reality show where a obvious sorority distrust of a mild mannered hardworking sista is called racism, on camera, by the men who have nothing to gain. I want a reality show where the buxom, loud, boisterous, bottle blond with a penchant for starting public altercations when drunk can't escape responsibility for racial epithet usage through pyrotechnic crying over past sexual assault. I want a reality show where people work a manufacturing job for twelve hours a day, or come home from work smelling like French fries, low quality meat product, grease, and baby vomit. I want a reality show where a person with piercings and purple hair with hot pink highlights isn't a pariah. I want a reality show where the piss-drunk, blonde Muscle & Fitness squarejaw walking around threatening people with butcher's knives spends a night in jail for attempted assualt before his Jungle Fever episodes. I want a reality show where people can discuss current events without blind Britney Spears "The President is always right!" apathy. I want a reality show where feminism isn't reduced to wearing low-cut matching t-shirts eight sizes too small or street-level panty peep shows for twenty dollars American. I want a reality show where people pay their own fucking bills!

Anything that could toss the reality back into reality television would be welcome, thank you. America needs television it can relate to that doesn't play upon its worst instincts of race and sex oppression and exploitation to hold public interest. That way, when issues of individual difference emerge, people can work stuff out on equal footing, and editors won't need to massage footage into the Better People scenario. It's not impossible; CBS' landmark The Amazing Race provides fun episodes based upon themes everyone can relate to: competition, the wonders of exotic locales, and the frustration of modern travel. Plus, even when participants expose the 'ugly American' syndrome on camera (usually the privileged White chicks who get to African and Asian countries and complain about the language barrier or the local cuisine or the unabashed poverty ("It's so dirty here, why don't they just stop breeding?" - Christie) no one tries to propagandize racist liberal 'tolerance' to anyone. It just exists, and viewers can make their own conclusions.

So perhaps we should all become a little more mindful of the personal choice we still possess. Reality tv doesn't have to suck so badly; we can insist on shows that don't insult vast stretches of the American population to provide drama. Hell, given the choice, The Amazing Race is always preferable to anyone's Survivor, Apprentice, or Real World, for one major reason - it's the only reality show where Black people can win in the end. It's about time!

Red State, blue state
I hate, you hate....

Will Chief Justice Rehnquist retire? Will President Bush fire Karl Rove? Will Lex Luthor/ Brainiac achieve his plans of global domination on Justice League Unlimited?

These, and other pressing questions dominate today's political blogosphere, since we're so afraid of domestic terrorism that Desperate Housewives and Lance Armstrong are all that soothes the American beast. Hell, we're so angry these days, with the war, the Supreme Court, with abortion, with people who want to end legal abortion, that we could just spit. Or split, as it were.

Secession is always a bad idea.

Ann Coulter, speaking at our alma mater Cornell University, once expressed her support for modern succession; it never ceases to surprise me how eager the modern Left is to echo her sentiments. The Civil War decided the succession question: with more domestic American blood and sacrifice than has ever spilled since, our forefathers made the answer clear. No one just runs away from being an American just because they don't agree with the tyranny of the majority.

Further, the post-Election 2004 tongue-in-cheek Blue State departure complex always 'forgets' an important point: most African Americans live in the Red states of the American South. According to Census 2000 data, out of a total population of roughly two hundred eighty-one million Americans, 34,658,190 consider themselves Black or African American alone. Out of that thirty-four million, 18,981,692 reside in the South. That's 54.8% of Black America. Quoting the Census 2000 brief: "The South had the largest Black population, as well as the highest proportion of Blacks in its total population: 20 percent of all respondents in the South reported Black compared with 12 percent in the Northeast, 11 percent in the Midwest, and 6 percent in the West." Sixty-four percent of U.S. Counties (3,141 in all) are fewer than six percent Black, but ninety-six mostly Southern counties have populations that are more than 50% Black, St. Louis City, MO being the one non-Southern exception. The South is Black America; just look for yourself at this Census 2000 population map showing percentage of African Americans by county. Seeing is beliving, and Black is beautiful.



Since the obese, fundamentalist Christian, warmongering, poverty-stricken, unhealthy, tax revenue draining, uneducated, chickenhawk South contains the vast majority of Black people (many of whom oppose abortion, feminism, gay marriage, and most other current tenets of Northeastern liberalism while fanatically supporting the Democratic Party), it's kind of hard for me to understand why so many leftists are so eager to simply discard the very group that have been the most consistent and stalwart supporters of the Democratic Party. We know what we stand for; the equal opportunity and welfare state policies of FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society, along with modern day support for affirmative action in education and employment, ally African Americans to the Democratic Party in droves. African Americans are socially conservative and economically liberal; they don't so much oppose Adam and Steve as they want Adam Smith to work for them. That's not to say that Black folk aren't homophobic: generally speaking, of course they are. But I believe Black homophobia operates much the same way as the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy of the Clinton Administration's Armed Forces - it offers no possibility of publicly recognized humanity or individualism, but allows one to do their job for the most part by shuffling along with head bowed and mouth shut.

The point? Even oppressed Black people never followed Marcus Garvey back to Africa en masse; what makes Northeastern liberals so hellbent on leaving? The mainstream African American community is too concerned with economic inequalities, voting rights violations, untenable internal crime rates, and astronomical STD infection to concern itself with physical political separation. Election 2004 was not a national divorce based on irreconcilable culture war differences. Legalized marijuana and socialized Starbucks do not replace the American Republic. Even polarized pseudo-pluralism is preferable to Vegan America. Latte liberalism does not convince the Democratic Party to embrace hybrid cars and sustainable living environmentalism; hell, Environmental Action can't convince the average person to dismember President Bush's Clear Skies Initiative (especially it's relaxed prohibitions against mercury pollution) without begging for money like homeless hobos hopped up on Thunderbird. Given this, why must my fellow liberals embrace despair and escape North in yet another paleface imitation of African American history?

Every leftist fringe philosophy or oppressed minority these days appropriates the Civil Rights Movement to justify its current gripes with the American system in ways that horrify African Americans, still locked out in 2005 of the institutions of power of our nation in large numbers. Token Blackness emerges all over, from the advanced placement classroom to the corporate boardroom to the White House Situation Room, but African Americans have no more increased their political clout today than during the Kennedy Administration. What has African American support for the Left benefited African Americans? Al Gore failed miserably to publicly discuss open and systematic elimination of African American voters from their constitutional rights during Election 2000, when it could have helped him. The Democratic Party rallies it's Black base during every election, but crime and poverty still ravage Black neighborhoods. Hell, every time the Democratic Party rolls over to support another savaging of the New Deal welfare state to appear conciliatory to conservative Republican voters, fewer tax dollars go to support failing public schools, Social Security, and properly equipped (and overseen) police departments.

Now the Left wants to leave Black people stuck in the Southern hellhole they've never cared for and helped create?

This 'letter', however sarcastic and humorous, is a perfect example of Northeastern liberalism run amuck. Moby's similar post-Election 2004 depression prompted a similar flirtation with secession, and the public face of the always antagonistic Move-On.org was just as incorrect. Maybe I just don't get the joke; I see nothing funny about the idea of trapping roughly nineteen million Black people in the poverty-stricken, faith-based bondage of President Bush's Holy Texan Empire. I suppose that the United Blue States of America will be some sort of leftist utopia: practically no race problem since most of the yellow, brown, and black people won't be there, where everything's all right, 'cause it's all White. Can you imagine the road signs?

"Welcome to the United States of Canada! Where everyone's White as the driven snow!"



Thanks to Sheldiz for posting the Craigslist letter on her blog.

Addendum: It just occurred to me that I missed a major point in this post. Real quick, the useful point expressed by the Craigslist letter is not satirical. The Democratic party has abandoned the South for the last twenty odd years of presidential elections. This "pseudo-Southern strategy", more than any other paternalistic liberal factor cements African Americans' political impotence within the Democratic party. What the Rev. Al Sharpton, Rev. Jesse Jackson, and Julien Bond need to do is convince Democratic strategists of a workable Southern strategy that could make use of the 34 million Black people who suffer through their lives with no political clout in either major party. Sure, many people have made these points more eloquently than I am now, but I took another look at the numbers and it really scared me.

It's morning in America, madam. Do you want more?
Good morning America, how about some hardcore?
Feminism's circumcision persists in hip-hop
Lil' Kim convicted of perjury, refused to talk shop
The sentence? One year and one day in jail,
The Shawshank? Platinum album sales.
Martha Stewart leaves the pen for her new reality show;
Being Bobby Brown redefines the phrase 'video hoe'.
It's His Prerogative! He coons when we want a coon.
It's Her Prerogative! Crack's whack but makes Whitney swoon.
Kaboom! Justice O'Connor ignites ideological schism,
Luther Vandross passed, R. Kelly recycles rhythm.
Just don't ask Terry McMillan about her next book deposit
Since everyone knows who Stella "Trapped in the Closet".
A million questions for this world, the truth you decide
Why does an Bob Dole need a Viagra sex drive?
Why does America cry when a White woman hides?
When did we go from Fab 5 Freddy to the Fab 5?
Since I don't wear pink, I ask clarification,
But I'm not a diamond in the rough, this isn't Late Registration.
No backpack rap singles, no Jacob the Jeweler exultation,
No conflict bling, no shallow sanctification.
Today we endure post-colonial phantom menace
Not Industrial Light and Magic's post-pubescent apprentice
Not a psychotic padawan with the bluest blue eyes
Just the irrepressible hate no Yoda can exorcise
But we don't stand up, protest, or even change the lies
We choose indifference, export freedom fries.
Disenfranchise billions and billions so profit margins rise.
Ronald's the best genocide your money can buy.
But globalization's feedback loop imports terror
The casualties of London make al-Qaida that much scarier.
No prior warning, no reservations for the innocent
No negotiations with illogical heretics hell-bent
On Western decimation. The clash of civilizations
Is mutually assured destruction, posthaste eradication.
Thirty-seven people reduced to ash and cinder cadavers.
Human sardines trapped in subterranean caverns,
Waiting to die. There's only fear and loathing in the West
We defend Vicki Vicodin from Cruise knows best.
Why be depressed, Brooke? So many luscious pills...
Voluptuous volumes of soma, negligible ills...
And what of the children? The walking dead
Apathetic, disaffected, The Massacre in their heads
Four million albums sold to America's future
Murder, misogyny, all in good humor -
But not really. For to be 50 Cent
Is to assassinate your fellow Blackman to pay rent.
Sniper sellout, uber-thug Thomas Sowell
Chromium melanin automaton like Colin Powell.
Marketing the unbearable lightness of blackface
To all those John McWhorter knows aren't Losing the Race
The mainstream forgets itself in the minority minstrel;
White men never miss Dave Chappelle on Comedy Central.
So send La Amistad to Durban
Disguise that brother in a turban
And tell Kunta "Season 3! Before the Christmas tinsel."