my six year old daughter lives with a false dichotomy. she can't decide if we are rich or poor. so she says we are both. good idea for six year olds, bad idea for grownfolks.

i've been working on a couple essays for the past few days and i can see that my blogstyle has taken over my mind. so i'll just drool out stuff i hope your attention span can bear. what i'm trying to do is put a definitive working paper on how to correctly observe racism in this country. to be consistent with my semi-permeable 'givashit' barrier, someone has to die for me to pay attention. on the other hand, i am aiming to be a republican of the first order. see the conflict? no? let me clarify.

as i've said, the african american task is mostly complete. we made civil rights happen. this, by the way is why i believe libertarians are really full of shit. (i'm in a cursing mood this evening, because doc just got slammed in family court). the libertarians are full of shit because they're all yuppies, firstly. they haven't elected nary a soul to any significant level in this country. they claim to be great defenders of civil liberties and haven't made the first liaison with the people who laid down their lives to force the nation to make civil rights work. black libertarians are more scarce than black republicans. libertarians are supply side republicans who are too lazy to do fundraisers, except with credulous venture capitalists. i've got your liberty right here.

so back to my conflict. in order to be a republican, i needed to have graduated from human rights to civil rights to social power. i'm at the social power stage. the problem is that people don't generally kill or involve militants for social power. consequently, people don't generally die in contests for social power.

if i am to pay attention to racism, then people have to be dying. and people are not dying here in america, they're just living as second class citizens in relative poverty and shame. that's bad enough, but it's not that bad. my gut tells me to get as uppity as stephen l. carter, ellis cose and skip gates. that way i can rail against stiffs against me and my people as well as sidney poitier. the problem is nobody should really give a shit about that kind of struggle. it's not a popular movement.

since my aim is to work the energy and strengths of black nationalism into republicanism which will guarantee the success of the african american task for another 50 years and that's all about social power, i'm going to have to gradually defer to that kinder, gentler direction. therefore i will go my daughter one better and divide racist offenses into three classes.

Class Three - Background Noise

This will include all such insults, slights and disrespect as is generally expected to be found everywhere in this nation. Examples include but are not limited to being ignored by cabbies, flying confederate flags, nazi propaganda, being mistaken for the help, being shown costume jewelry, being asked one's opinion of, or to account for the opinions of the Fungibles, and most nigger calls.

Class Two - Political Intransigence

Class Two racism involves denials of public accomodation or private standing which are not criminal, yet grossly unfair and unjust. Such acts would include imposition of glass cielings, racial profiling, white flight, medical misdiagnosis, educational tracking, false arrest, false imprisonment, racist vois dire, racist jury nullification, denials of service with plausible deniability, any institutional individual or institutional racism which must be tried in civil courts and all such active bigotry one associates with hate groups which fall short of incitement.

Class One - Crime

Theft, criminal defamation, cross burnings (now), hate crimes, murder, rape & all that stuff for which America has never made any real effort to repair.

it is clear that as an african american, i face all of these classes of racism. but i do understand that life is like a shit sandwich. the more bread you have, the less shit you have to eat. so for the sake of my sanity, and due to evidence i have seen, i procede through life oblivious to class one, believing that adequate amounts of money and brains can spare me the agonies of class two. class three is inevitable and pervasive, and it is a waste of time and energy to complain about it.

class two is what separates the democrats from the republicans. the democrats believe that they can encourage morality without criminal prosecution. republicans know better. but nobody is forcing the republicans to do anything about class two. yet. black nationalists were ready to take up arms in revolt against a nation ripe with class one and class two. any black nationalist worth beans could stare down perpatrators of class three in 5 seconds flat. so there seems to be a closer alliance possible between the head busting militant black nationalists and the head busting law and order republican pigs than anyone noticed. flowerchildren were a bit too stoned and all that weed made them think blacks wanted to tune out as well. they've grown into the politically useless bobos... but i'm going off on a rant here.

let me end by saying that i am only optimistic that feudal networks of wealthy and connected blackfolks are going to successfully insulate themselves against class two racism. and while it is clear to me that there are wealthy enough democrats who can say that some of their best friends, or even families are black, the fact that class two is still a large problem has more to do with the default of republican party than the failed wisdom of the democrats.