Cobb

i expected this to be a broader thing, but it appears to be another fashion of radical chic. it's a decent jumping off point though. i'm trying to figure out if any of the names mentioned aside from loury and carter have been heard of outside of nyc. it definitely sounds like the crowd i would have hung out with, and i cannot tell you how incredibly pleased i am to hear that kevin powell got his ass handed to him. that's delicious.

i tend to believe that the racial thing will hew closely to class in the states. i also agree with the social aspects of it with respect to the notion that racist acts don't necessarily have racist motivations. it something that dovetails exactly with what i have written about a lack of anti-racist praxis. you can't really know unless you take the hard line, otherwise you will always have a lack of disciplined sensitivity. it's sad that it has fallen to the 'nerds' to expend their energy to maintain this disciplined sensitivity (as if that alone is their duty and calling), but when the world doesn't change after it's been explained, i don't expect them to care. i don't care much any longer, but i am more desparately aiming to make dollars and stay out of trouble...

on an international level, i have kurds in mind. reading in kaplan's travels 'the ends of the earth' i find a parallel between them and african americans. the kurds are a kind of centralized diaspora in central asia. they don't seem to require a nation and they are certainly not in the proper moment in history to be assigned one by a turf carving super-colonial power. yet they can change the balance of things where they are. i think ultimately that african americans will become such a moderately coalesced ethnic group within america. i think that the facility with which african americans will get along across class lines will be maintained, more or less, in the future. i think of this because i strongly believe that african americans will look for each other as they climb through the american class system. just as folks like me are quick to make examples of 'the ceo of avis, the ceo of american express, the ceo of aol time warner'.

But directly to the woman of PhD. I've dated a couple in my life. Or have I? OK one was an M.D. and the other was undoubtedly on her way. If she doesn't have it by now, I'd honestly be shocked and amazed. She too was an English major. One more thing. If I ever leave my wife, I'm going straight to the Claremont Colleges. I can't remember her name for the life of me. I remember the face, the hair, the voice, the skull of Yorick in her hands. So for what it's worth, here's my two cents.

If you think that the average black woman gets into it about the behavior of black women, you haven't seen a thing until you've heard this kind of criticism from an intellectually sophisticated black woman. They feel that they have to dumb down, there's a feeling of distance and insecurity about feelings they might have for an average black man. Women all around them fall for the okey-doke and get their hearts broken. They catch diseases and black eyes. Those foolish women... But then exactly how foolish does a woman have to be to catch a black man these days? This is their eternal calculation.

There is this kind of strange assumption that a woman who can beat the the odds at a predominantly white institution should be able to beat the odds of tragic black love. So for me, instead of enjoying the sense of equality, I couldn't curse or smoke or drink or fall outside the mold. So everything we did was 'slumming'. We were on display. The non-dysfunctional black couple. It made us dysfunctional. In both of these relationships, I was pushing to feel the way a woman who thought as much as I did felt. I too wanted something transcendant. In the end, we were all just too full of ourselves to trust in and wear comfortably the push and pull of ordinary relationships.

In retrospect, I don't think it was an extraordinary thing. One of the women was third generation medical doctor, she was able to diss me appropriately. The other was emergent. Our failure hurt her more. It hurt me more as well. So I look at it now in the context of class a bit more than I did then.

I expect my oldest daughter to be an attorney and then a judge. The younger of the two is the smartest of us all, a real polymath. It's impossible for me to guess what she might do - she succeeds at everything with ease. My father still kids me about not getting my PhD, and that's probably his way of kicking himself for only getting a Master's, since his brother probably kicks him with his PhD. But I certainly won't kick my daughters for not getting the degree. I will kick them if they hookup with a knucklehead. I hope I provide a decent example.