My President is Black

I'm probably a little late on this but it stuck with me. I just watched the performance of Jay-z and young Jeezy at President Obama's Inauguration last week. I found out about this because Bill O'reilly talked about. Not that I normally watch Fox news but... well yeah I do from time to time just for a laugh.

If you don't know already Jay and Jeez were filmed performing Jay's new song "My President Is Black" . During the performance there were many comments from them where they called ex-president Bush a Bitch and used the words "Motherfucker" and "nigga" a lot.

"Im so proud to be black right now, I don't even know what to say... nigga... " - Young Jeezy



But back to the song itself.

Now I normally wouldn't have much issue with any of this: I mean this is Hip-Hop right? Hip-Hop is a medium for young urban people like me. We use words like Motherfucker and Nigga. I use it. Cause sometimes you've got to put a motherfucking Nigga in his place, you know, even if I'm a 39 year old multi-millionaire married to Beyonce. It's just the language of the streets you know, where I came from like 20 years ago.

I get it. We got a black man in office. Therefore a song.

Yes, a song. And since Hip-Hop is THE black music of the time, actually some rhymes. It should be rhymes that will reflect the sheer genius of Barack Obama's historical campaign. Something that will pay homage to the millions of Black people who died between the first day a negro stepped foot on American soil to the day one became president. It will be intelligent, sensitive, and humble. It will be ripe with all the possibilities that are open to the minds of our children right now and champion our resilience:

"My President is Black. my Maybach too and I'll be goddamned if my diamonds ain't blue... my money's dark green..."

yup. fire.

GoRealer

Invoking a Sense of Grey

A lot of people are up in arms about President-Elect Obama asking pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration on January 20th.
Pastor Rick Warren is the author of the top selling book, "The Purpose Driven Life" and is also a big supporter of the proposition 8 initiative that was passed in California in November banning gay marriage.
Gay marriage is an explosive issue in America all of a sudden, it has aligned itself with abortion as being the two issues that are the dividing line of morality in our country.
Proposition 8 was passed because people are scared of change. They are scared that their concept of marriage will change. But the throughout the years it has changed drastically. Marriage in it's original concept is a business arraignment between two families. What we know of as marriage today is a religious institution. Two people declare their love for each other before God. They stand in front of a priest or a rabbi. But If the Church doesn't recognize the marriage then you just don't get married in a church. People get married at City Hall. In fact the Mayor can marry you. In that case don't even call it a marriage then, call it a Civil Union. But that Civil Union should afford those two people the same right as any other people who marry as far as the law of the state is concerned. right?
Nope. the Church defines what marriage is. What happened to separation between Church and state you say? Well that's a wonderful concept and ideology but it isn't a law or an amendment in the constitution. It's a suggestion of a concept written in a letter penned by Thomas Jefferson referring to the first amendment.
What seems to bother me most is that people who are not gay nor can have children let alone abort one feel so threatened by these issues. I, myself fall into this category. and when someone asks me what my view is I say I don't have a view because it doesn't affect me. But I have realized that that is only partly true. I am affected in that when one persons freedoms are taken away or when one person isn't afforded the same rights as another because of their orientation then that marks the beginning of the end of our democratic way of life.
But Barack Obama is a smart man, why would he invite Rick Warren knowing their differences in opinion regarding things like abortion, and gays?
Appealing to the masses is tricky business especially in this country. I learned that a few years ago when decided to put out an album. Like Jay_Z said you dumb it down to double the dollars. Not everyone is going to get Talib Kweli. Only the "progressives" and the "elites". But shouldn't we be striving to be better, to understand more? When you are pulling double shifts to feed your family on close to minimum wages and you get a chance to relax, puff an el and listen to some tunes you don't want to be trying figure out what the emcee is saying. You just want to hear some slightly witty, silly shit over a good beat. simple. You want to know that republican means good and demorcrat means bad. or visa verse. simple. It's the same even when we go to the movies. Within the first 20 minutes of any action movie you know clearly who the good guys are and who the bad guys are and those lines never get crossed. This clean cut way of thinking cuts across many lines culturally. In religion, well, Christianity at least, God is good. Anything that is not good is of the Devil and considered evil making the clear enemy of God, the devil. simple.

In the abortion issue there are those who are pro-life and those who are pro-choice. This battle has waged on for so long that those who fight on either side actually believe that they are the opposite of the other just because they oppose each others view. But that can be no further from the truth. Someone can actually be pro-choice and pro-life- but that would be too much for the average american to understand and come to grips with. They wouldn't know who the enemy was. And we need an enemy, believe me. This is where I think the brilliance of Barack Obama is at work. Americans have to fundamentally change the way they look at issues. One of Obama's quotes that really stuck with me was when he said that no one is pro- abortion. we're not on two clean cut sides of an issue. If we listen to each other we might just get a broader understanding of where we are coming from.
Baracks choice of Rick Warren to do his invocation is a statement of grey, explaining that nothing is as black and white as it seems.

gorealer

F'n idiots

Plaxico Burress is an idiot.

I don't think too many people will disagree with that statement. Wait here's another: Michael Vick is an idiot. I bet I'm 2 for 2, right? How about this, OJ Simpson is a monumental idiot.

I find it hard not to see them and be embarrassed. Obviously it is because they are black. Each of them had careers that I could only dream of having and made piles of money. Plaxico will lose his 137 million dollar contract of which he's already received 10 million of if he goes to jail; Michael Vick has already filed for bankruptcy because he is totally broke. When he gets out in June he will be on his knees to the NFL begging for re-instatement.

I guess I wouldn't be as embarrassed if we didn't just elect the first Black President of the United States. And though it was a landslide victory I know there are people out there just waiting for him to fuck it up so they can say "ya see, can't give those ngiggers nothing". Whoa, whoa, whoa... the "N" word... yeah, I know but I'm sure in a few years if you google "Dumb Nigger" you'll see a picture of OJ Simpson.

I don't think when Elliot Spitzer was busted with that call girl, white people we're embarrassed. They said "fire his ass"! So why am I so troubled?

I remember back in 1995 when OJ was was acquitted of the murder of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman. I remember the throngs of black students on campuses across America cheering. the opinion on whether or not he was guilty was split down racial lines. It was quite similar to the explosion of cheers when the news channels announced that Barack Obama had won the Presidency except it wasn't so racially split. well, at least not in NYC. But I bet if you polled those students from 1995 now asking whether they thought OJ had done it or not, I'm sure a lot would say that they think he did. But back in 1995 it wasn't about whether he had done it or not, it was about things being fair. By 1995 young people had been used to police brutality- ala Rodney King and Yusef Hawkins- and innocent black men being accused and imprisoned- ala the Susan Smith case- for things they didn't do, so much so that those who were guilty were looked past. We did little about gang violence and found reason to excuse gangster rap until it killed Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G. It wasn't until 2007 when Don Imus called the Rutgers Female basketball team "a bunch of nappy headed hoes" did we really start to address the language used within the black community. But the speed in which the ban on the "N" word that Al Sharpton and Russell Simmons implimneted went out of the news and out of our minds is a clear indication of where we are as black people in 2008. Nowhere.

In fact I'll go as far as to say that I don't think there really is a "black people" anymore. What defined us as a people in the 60's and prior was a common enemy. Whether you were from the South, the North or the West, to white people all Negroes were the same. Though racism still exists in many aspects in America, there are other issues within the black community that are more pressing and don't get addressed, like the question: why do young black men have to wear so much jewelry and have so much cash in their pockets that they have to protect themselves with unregistered guns when they go to the club? huh? why?

Maybe there just isn't a black community anymore. I do remember when I was growing up, if I was to act up when my parents weren't around, there was always an adult to straighten me out. But now when I ride the train during after school hours and the kids are out in full force, acting up, I look over and see that some of the adults are dressed just like them, quiet.

Hey this is my opinion and what I have witnessed in my city. This is a blog, not professional journalism so feel free to disagree with me. But maybe it's just a latent instinctual reaction left over from the civil rights era that makes me cringe when I see someone like Plaxico Burress throw away such a promising career over something so stupid or when I see the surveillance footage of a brother punch an old woman in an elevator to steal her purse or when I see OJ, who might have gotten away with murder, not move out of the U.S. and just keep a low profile.

F'n idiots.

BLACK POWER

So people, my GOREALER blog got picked up by an online magazine called BlackPower.com

It goes live next week, check it out.

gorealer

Everything is Everything

EVOLUTION WARS

The battle of Science (Evolution) vs. Religion (Creationism) is heating up faster than a cup of water on a bonfire.
It is really hard for me to remain unbiased in this debate. I guess I am no journalist.
I find it hard to believe that after all of what science has given us in this world, there are some that would really want an alternative to evolution taught in schools.
I am by far no Atheist. I have a fundamental issue with Atheism as much as I do with conventional Religiosity. Is there a divine creator? I just don't know, plain and simple. And there is no one on this planet that can, without a doubt, prove to me that there is or there isn't. So we are left with speculation and faith, basically what organized Religion (specifically Christianity, Judaism and Islam) is comprised of. While on the other hand Science, defined in the dictionary as "The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena", is based on trial and error experimentation.
A religious person will say, "I have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow", while a scientist will say "based on the frequency of previous sunrises, I am 99% sure the sun will rise tomorrow".
Of course there are things that the science cannot prove away. But Science is ok with admitting that. Our perception of the world is taken in only by five senses and a brain that functions on maybe 10-12 percent capacity. But I am a little skeptical of replacing science with an ideology that was used to explain why the sun rose thousands of years ago. It also baffles me that we are even having this conversation in 2008.
In Matthew Alpers book, "The God part of the Brain", he states that "our concepts of spirit and God are derived from the mechanics of our brain" and that is shown in the fact that every civilization on earth since the beginning of man has had some concept of a God or gods.
In other words the human brain isn't happy with things it cannot understand so we find reason either through science or religion.
In this age of information at our finger tips there seems to me at last a shift in how people are thinking. The heating up of this debate is in kind due to the information evolution we seem to be in. There is a desire to seek out the truth in every instance. Ones opinion doesn't count for much anymore. If your father says, "this is the way this works" you can quickly go on the internet, find some facts and refute it.
This excerpt from Waking Life describes this evolution maybe a little less clearer but extremely thorough:

Regarding the presence of an intelligent designer or God, all I have is my opinion and I'll share it with you. But it is just MY opinion.
I grew up going to church quite often, sometime 3-4 days/nights a week. Also I went to an all boys Catholic Junior High and High School. I've been in passion plays and the subject of God and belief is scattered throughout my work. Therefore I think I know the bible pretty well.
Like a lot of people in my age group, I now have a problem with organized religion and unrelenting faith. I feel it does more harm in the world than good. There is something fatalistic and unrealistic about there needing to be an ultimate good and an ultimate evil and a final battle between the two at the end. Every action movie is based on that ideal and even our political process and policy decisions are based on that. Heroes and Villains. I think the world is much more complicated than that. The problem with religion is that it limits God. Whatever religious fundamentalists don't stand for or dislike is explained away as not coming from God. The God I would understand there to be is more infinite than math, wider than the entire universe. For me God is everything's connection to everything else, a quilt so to speak and each microbe of us a stitch within that quilt. But hey, whatever you need to get through the day right?
Let's just not hinder ours or our children's ability to search for truth.

This is an excerpt from a speech by the late Carl Sagan:

"We have a theology that is Earth-centered and involves a tiny piece of space, and when we step back, when we attain a broader cosmic perspective, some of it seems very small in scale. And in fact a general problem with much of Western theology in my view is that the God portrayed is too small. It is a god of a tiny world and not a god of a galaxy, much less of a universe.
Now, we can say, "Well, that's just because the right words weren't available back when the first Jewish or Christian or Islamic holy books were written." But clearly that's not the problem; it is certainly possible in the beautiful metaphors in these books to describe something like the galaxy and the universe, and it isn't there. It is a god of one small world, a problem, I believe, that theologians have not adequately addressed.
I don't propose that it is a virtue to revel in our limitations. But it is important to understand how much we do not know; there is a tiny amount that we do. But what we do understand brings us face to face with an awesome cosmos that is simply different from the cosmos of our pious ancestors.
Does trying to understand the universe at all betray a lock of humility? I believe it is true that humility is the only just response in a confrontation with the universe, but not a humility that prevents us from seeking the nature of the universe we are admiring. If we seek that nature, then love can be informed by truth instead of being based on ignorance or self-deception. If a Creator God exists, would He or She or It or whatever the appropriate pronoun is, prefer a kind of sodden blockhead who worships while understanding nothing? Or would He prefer His votaries to admire the real universe in all its intricacy? I would suggest that science is, at least in part, informed worship. My deeply held belief is that if a god of anything like the traditional sort exists, then our curiosity and intelligence are provided by such a god. We would be unappreciative of those gifts if we suppressed our passion to explore the universe and ourselves. On the other hand, if such a traditional god does not exist , then our curiosity and our intelligence are the essential tools for managing our survival in an extremely dangerous time. In either case the enterprise of knowledge is consistent surely with science; it should be with religion, and it is essential for the welfare of the human species."

time stops for no one so gorealer to the future

Freedom Lights

Forget the Freedom Tower.

Judging by the state of the economy right now by the time the new tower is erected there won't be any banks left to occupy it.

If they really wanted to honor the dead they'd turn that entire space into a park and let the lights forever shine.

And don't parade the families out there every year to read off the over 3000 names of the dead.

It is very bad taste.

Just my opinion.

gorealer

Paradox of the Urban Cliche

So Im having my workshop reading of my epic poetic one-man play. I'd love it if you could make it.

muMs
ONE NIGHT ONLY!
Saturday, October 4th@ 7pm

The Hip-Hop Theater Festival presents a workshop reading of The Paradox of the Urban Cliche

Written and Performed by Craig "muMs" Grant
Directed by Sarah Sidman

Augustus Jefferson Caesar, his block proper name Ceez,
almost unseen, learns the hard way,
the disciplines of love and responsibility
amongst the broken glass and white tees
of his known universe: the block.

@ New York Theater Workshop's 4th Street Theater, 83 East 4th Street

Tickets $10
www.hhtf.org
Call 718-497-4282