STEPPING BACK TO CONTEMPLATE THE LYNCHING OF TRAVON MARTIN

 Heretofore it was my practise to immediately let loose on my opinions concerning the many troubling issues of the day.  Those times have long since changed, replaced by a new philosophy in which I take time to watch, listen and digest the news of the day.  I adopted this technique and to be honest, borrowed it from my Father, for two very good reasons.  First of all it allowed me to calm my easily roused temper down before blurting out anything I would regret or retract later.  Secondly, It afforded me the distinct advantage of approaching a topic that was relatively new with a wellspring of insight past, present and future to add to whatever argument I might develop in my musings…

The history of lynching’s of Black American men as an unofficial national sport and pastime is still a living reality all Black men must be wary of in America.  Then as now little cause for the sporting murder of a Black man is required, since it is considered to be sporting.  Likewise, when a Black man is hunted down and assassinated for sport little or no attention, explanation, reaction, enforcement or justice is either offered or expected, because, after all… it is merely a national pastime, a time-tested, American tradition…

In spite of the fact that many generations of Black and White freedom fighters, luminaries and humanitarians have fought to end this practise, it continues to be a blemish upon the visage of American culture.  People whose bigotry and racism prevents them from seeing this nightmare objectively will have a different perspective, to them it is a "Matter of Right"! Clearly both views can neither be correct nor can they continue to coexist without precipitating the kind of social hysteria and outcry as the recent lynching of Travon Martin has created.  The murderer of Travon Martin is described as, "A Local Vigilante".  What does this mean in common terms? It means that his murderer had no more authority to identify and pursue any potential, "Threat" to the community than the equivalent of a neighborhood watchman, and what community arms its neighborhood watchmen with weapons of deadly force in a quiet one-horse town?  Again we are speaking of a small, obscure southern jurisdiction where the act of crossing the street is a noteworthy event.  Travons murderer was clearly a favorite of the local police who resurrected an obscure special exception in the laws that was clearly applied in error; every aspect of this case pointed to the fact that Travons adult assassin was not only not intimidated by him, but aggressively preyed on him ultimately to his death, even to the point of defying the instructions of the police.  Clearly when the local Sanford Florida police decided to cover up this obvious murder case they opened up a Pandora's box the likes of which they could never  have imagined in that otherwise uneventful, slow southern town.  For those who remember the social atrocities of the late 1950s and before this case has all the trappings of a lynching.  It reeks of bigotry and hearkens back to a way of life that most Americans thought had died with the civil rights movement of the 1960's.  Some Americans have asked themselves, "Why Now"? What social variables present in The United States could have inspired this man and an entire police force to revert  to such Archaic measures?  Have they been inspired by the recent vulgarities and bigoted outcries of the Tea Party?  Are they overstressed by the precarious economy? Or is it just a reflection of a depraved way of life in the rural south that has never quite been touched by civilized social evolution?  How could trained officers of the law believe that a grown and sizable man armed with a gun could be intimidated by a small child unarmed?  How? Or was he intimidated only by the fact that this was a young promising young Black man who's talents would some day lift him far above the dull, banalities of the tired southern town of Sanford Florida? Zimmerman is no case study for the American success story, he appears to be an emotionally troubled man who has had little success with his aspirations in life other than being a troublesome vigilante who has had numerous brushes with the law in his zeal to enforce his own sense of justice.  At the time of Travons assassination Zimmerman was a loose cannon and in spite of many warnings to stand down he ultimately fulfilled his fantasy of killing a young, innocent, defenseless Black kid.  This atrocity has garnered support internationally from humanitarians who have reached out to express their anger and frustration.  Where exactly, and when will this type of insane genre of social atrocity end?

Now we have witnessed recent lynching’s of Black men across America; in Southern states, in New York City and Los Angeles and what is more disturbing, by none other than officers of the law, it is a common staple of the psyche of Non-Black Americans, it has historically been treated as a common right, an act of manifest destiny, an expression of racial superiority and of sexual dominance.  Why I would not be at all surprised to see T-Shirts and television ads selling the promotion, “HAVE YOU LYNCHED A BLACK MAN TODAY?”  One could find reasonable argument that, given the current act of violence against Travon Martin, it would fit comfortably within the fabric of American culture.  I would be remiss if I did not also mention that in addition to Black American men having to fear lynching from others, they must also fear them from their own race manifested in the form of Black on Black crime… The cumulative effect is that Black men are literally besieged by the immanent threat of assassination regardless of their age, level of intelligence, occupation, political or religious affiliation, (or not), sexual preference, etc.  When a Black man steps out of his door, leaves his job, or even walks within the confines of his own neighborhood he is constantly a target for violence.  And not random violence but a very focused and deliberate, premeditated violence against his very being as a Black man in America, this my friend is very, very real.

The dizzying legacy of lynching  opens up a diorama that folds out like a pop-up greeting card with an endless ocean of tombstones each generically labeled, R.I.P. with a bottle of gin, a child’s toy, or some other sympathetic memento tattooed to the chilly-white marble headstone for all posterity.  Travon Martin has joined the ranks of the thousands of unknown, forgotten, uncelebrated Black men whose bodies have fertilized the soil of this country only to grow a tree of hatred. 

So what makes Travon Martin’s case any different from the thousands of Black men who have been lynched over the greater than 400 years since we were stolen from Africa and bought to the Americas? What makes his assassination different from that of Emmitt Till, a young promising young man visiting relatives in the south, on vacation from his home in Chicago?  How does his case greatly differ from that of Abner Louima, a man brutalized and sodomized with a broomstick by police in a station in Brooklyn?  And how does Travon Martin’s case differ from that of Rodney King or the many other nameless Black and Latino men lynched and brutalized by the Mark Furman’s of Los Angeles?  Yes, I deliberately resurrected the name of Mark Furman, a man, a policeman , exposed for having perpetrated unjustified assaults, arrests and goodness knows what other acts of unlawful violence on young Black and Latino men.  The reality of this craziness leads one to only one conclusion; the lives of Black men are under constant threat in America!  But that does not answer the question does it? What makes Travon Martins case unique among the ranks of others even more abominable than his own…

What makes Travon Martins case different from every other lynching and assassination of a Black American man in America is that we are able to do take action right now to be sure that the criminal who killed him is punished to the full extent of the law and that the negligent police officer’s and beaurocrat’s who failed to take appropriate action in spite of obvious signs that something was dangerously wrong with the way they were mishandling this case are also punished by the long arm of justice!  We can take action now!  As my mentor, Frederick Douglass famously said….

AGITATE! AGITATE! AGITATE!

FIN

Written by David Vollin on 3-24-12



IN Continuatio:

THE VOLATILITY OF POPULARITY AND SOLIDARITY OF HUMANITY...

Only a few weeks ago the entire world was speculating, reminiscing, celebrating and mourning the Tragic life of an international pop-star; Now the world is fused in one gasp of anticipation regarding the untimely murder of an innocent Black child living in the rural south of The United States.  As we move from one social tsunami to the next it reminds us of the volatility of popularity.  Like the Roman gladiators of old, crowned king for a day because life was only gifted one day of true brilliance before death.  There are two distinct sides to the wave of popularity.  The front of the wave is the most intimidating.  It rises as a great roaring and glistening arch effervescent with the threat of immanent encompassment… it is an offer that cannot be refused.  Its heavy crest defies gravity itself…  the back of the wave is a towering wall of power bent away, forgetful of us, moving toward destiny at a rate too great for comprehension.  Looking at the back of the wave we know we have survived…  A peculiarity of the wave is that it represents time as one continuous golden day; Nighttime does not ensue until the wave has sufficiently passed.   

Popular events have the power to bring millions of people together and if only for an instant, the power of its solidarity is like the realm in-between the face and the back of a mighty wave.  Its face enamors us until we are all but encompassed by its mass.  The tween-realm of the wave the meat of the wave is the very essence of the popular trend.  But the wave will pass.

I am always amazed at the power of the metaphor to construct impossible edifices.  The metaphor is an exponential variable in the equation of popular culture…  If it existed, the equation would look something like this:

{[(event/phenomenon) + (event capture by popular culture)]ᴹ ÷ (cultural relevance coefficient)}ᴹ

Where:

M = Metaphorical exponent

Right now we are at the front of the wave of the Travon Martin Popular Wave.  Whitney Houston’s wave has already dimmed into the distant horizon at its day’s sunset…  Travon’s wave has captured the imagination, passion and energy of the day.  While we are all riding within the “Meat” of this wave there are several things that it is important to recognize and likewise take away with us when it has passed:

·         Travon’s assassination has so much potential to leave communities riven with racial dissention has actually had a reverse effect galvanizing White, Black, Asian and Hispanic peoples across the globe.

·         Travon’s assassination has allowed us to see that the long struggle for civil rights has not ended in these United States.

·         Travon’s assassination has challenged us all to resist treating hatred with hatred.

Use this brief time wisely people… defeat racism and bigotry at its own game.  Reach out to your brothers and sisters of all races as allies and prepare yourself to be able to receive their charity and compassion to move history forward together.

We should not have ever heard of Travon Martin save for the fact of his assassination, a cowardly act of hatred and ignorance, has nonetheless martyred him for all posterity.  But like Emmitt Till and countless, nameless others before him his wave too will pass out of the limelight of popular culture.  But while his name rings among the highest bells let’s let Travon Martins name have such a ring as to be heard across the country and the world as a metaphor for justice…

FIN

Written by David Vollin on 3-26-12

BEING UP FRONT ABOUT WHO YOU ARE DATING: Makes Everyone’s Life Simpler

After you have been seeing or dating two or more persons and see that the attraction and/or interdependency level is intensifying you will need to make a disclosure to each person regarding the status of your relationship as a good faith gesture.  The value of this action is twofold:

1.       It absolves you of any guilt should you be accused of leading anyone on.  You did the gentlemanly thing by fully apprising your prospective dates of the existence of each other.

2.       It forces you to make a critical assessment of your relationships so that you can decide whether to pursue them or not.

3.       A gentleman will never disclose the names of his dates, this must remain confidential.

Gentlemen, I cannot stress enough how important it is to handle this disclosure with the utmost of care and class. 

·         Never be arrogant about the fact that you are seeing other people lest you imply that this makes you somehow more desirable or use it to force an ultimatum.

·         If you see that this disclosure, in spite of your intent to be kind and rational, has upset your date politely apologize and discontinue the discussion.  At this time you will need to assess how serious your date has grown in your relationship; if they are much farther along emotionally than you feel you will ever be, now is the time to manage this disparity in order to preserve a friendship and avoid hurting their feelings.

·         I do not have to tell you that people are not machines or computers, they have real feelings and you must be sensitive to the way that you share data with other human beings. 

·         Ideally, a true gentleman has already covered this subject generally so that it will merely be a revisitation of an earlier topic, dropping a bomb like this on someone you have been seeing for a protracted period of time is ungentlemanly.  If you have waited overlong to make this disclosure, knowing that it must be done, flowers, dinner at an upscale restaurant and even an amazing gift are definitely a must in order to minimize your new role as a “Scoundrel”!

A Gentleman never just discontinues communications with a date with whom he has established a friendly rapport when he opts to discontinue the relationship in favor of another beau.  Never burn your bridges gentlemen!  Even a rejected date will remain a future friend and ally when proper closure has been made.  This means that you must take time out of your busy schedule to bring proper closure or status update face to face, not via email, text, cellular or letter unless you are physically located in a different geographical area and cannot practically make a personal call.

1.       A gentleman concludes a brief relationship with a polite card and flowers and perhaps a small gift or keepsake.

2.       A gentleman is sure to return any personal property at the conclusion of a relationship.

3.       A gentleman who has done due diligence and advised his dates of the existence of one another, (without disclosing names of course), will also provide a small gift, card, flowers, etc., when making a general status update to each of his dates. 

It is typical for a gentleman who is a bachelor to potentially be dating two or more people simultaneously.  When you first meet a date this reality should be almost certainly expected and most certainly not begrudged.  As the relationship grows, it is typical for old dates to be replaced by newer ones, but if this develops into a trend without the number of dates being reduced or if the number actually grows then you are advised to be vigilant of the obvious direction of the trend; you are either a perpetual bachelor or dating one. 

Always be up-front about the status of your dates.  Never lead them on to believe that they are the only ones if they are not.  Even if they are, if you plan to keep your options open you should, as a gentleman, fully apprise them of this eventuality.  If you stay up-front you will see that it is much easier to manage dating and you will also avoid the one thing a true gentleman wears as his hallmark… A reputation as a true lover. 

FIN

Written by David Vollin on 3-19-12 

OUT OF THE COURTHOUSE AND INTO THE FIRE!

Today I spent seven hours in the Washington, D.C. Superior Courthouse waiting to be selected or rejected as a juror in the trial of a young black male who committed robbery and assault with a firearm in several locations in what appeared to be a rampage of violence. As I walked out of the courthouse I realized that I was probably safer there than on the streets; anything, anyone could come upon me at anytime, anyplace… I was completely vulnerable to the unreasoned predation of any criminal on the street. But that was but a distant concern as I walked along the gilded avenues of one of The Nations Capitol’s most prosperous retail districts, China Town. Ironically China Town has experienced a rash of growing crime due to its economic success, it is a magnet for young kids who want to rob and fight for a quick buck or even better, for valuable telecommunications devices worn by Washington D.C.’s technologically elite. 

After I had got home I read a the post of a member of my Facebook Group, the companion to this blog called, "For The Brothas", about a young boy and girl dreaming of fame and sucess and about their mother and father supporting them. It touched me deeply because of my earlier experience at The Moultrie Courthouse.

For some time I have known that I was more likely to be victimized in a deliberate act of crime by a black male teenager or a young black male than any other physical threat, even cancer or other serious disease... this had deeply troubled me. When these kinds of moods hit us the very first question we ask ourselves is, “Where were the young black males parents’ when all this madness transpired”? Since I would not be sitting as a juror in this case I guess I will not know until after it is decided and the results are made into a public record.

One of the hallmarks of American life I will never fault is freedom of the public to participate in the proceedings of the law. But in the world in which we live we must truly be cautions of how such freedoms may be misused. I noticed that almost half of the jurors bowed out right at the beginning. Did they sense something? The judge and attorneys on both sides were clearly confused, they were all white. I knew that something very unexpected had transpired because the jury selection lasted well beyond 5:00pm.

 
Although I would have been glad to serve my Fair City as juror in this case I must say I was relieved not to have been chosen. And under the circumstances, one cannot say what would have transpired… My imagination took flight with the two young hoods but it was merely a fictional construct, they might have been the children of one of the jurors… they may have been gathering data for a High School research paper on the criminal court system processes for all I knew… Technically I should have been ashamed of myself for even conceiving such a thing. Me of all people… always positive minded and optimistic about life. I would have surely scolded another person for sharing such a thing with me and advised them to buy out of the racist stereotypes that oppress us as Black men. I guess this revealed another vulnerability of mine… That deep rooted instinct for self-preservation that questions and rationalizes its way to the surface of our consciousness before being super-egoe’d away by what we call street etiquette.

Street Etiquette is a unique brand of bravado that allows us to proceed even and especially amidst dangerous circumstances to show that we are both aware of the danger and unafraid of it. I knew in my mind that I would have been a fair and just juror... but that would never be able to be proved... Knowing the odds I even corrected myself... having taken the most obvious bottom line, the one that as a Black man would be easily taken with me.  I have since repaired my sense of dignity and objectivity, after all I am far from being perfect.  But somehow then and even now I cannot shake the possibility that I had narrowly missed walking out of the courthouse and into the fire.

FIN

Written by David Vollin on 3/6/12

The Streets are full of options... which choices will a young man make... too young to even be on the streets but nonetheless.... there? Who has failed him? His parents, his community or Both?

Clear consequences follow the mishandling of freedoms we take for granted... In some cases these consequences may not be deserved but what about those in which they are? Is the struggle of the Black man to gain respect on the street sufficient excuse for crimes committed against innocent human beings? Will we allow those who have not sufficiently prepared themselves to re-enter civilized society return to our already assailed communities to push it deeper into the abyss or will we take back our communities from those who have turned them into degenerate slums redolent with crime?

Knowing that the ranks of America's prisons are replete with Black men, what has the Black community done to push for legislation for programs that will properly rehabilitate them and teach them skills they can use to gain employment and self-respect once they return to the civilized world?  Has the Black community fought for legislation to allow criminal records to be suppressed in certain circumstances when a criminals debt to society has been met? Ask yourslef why men are being released and then forced to suffer further descrimination whenever they apply for a job if they have truly paid their debts to society?  If the debt is not fully paid better to keep them, tech, train and heal them before releasing them into the world...

Our community spends much time and money managing and rehabilitating the additcted, the imprisoned or the recently released that it often fails to allocate sufficient time, money and manpower to the sucessful rearing of our young.  Also, we cannot insulate our young from the ever pouring sea of recidivism... our community cannot ever recover because it is constantly being assailed by a stream of men and women newly relesed from prison and drug rehabilitation programs which are much needed but that have not sucessfully rehabilitated them and prepared them for useful and gainful employment. 

At the turn of the last century, 1900, Blacks were eager to become educated, education having been denied them for all of the 400 plus, centuries of their enslavement in the Americas.  Education was seen as a clear way out of the spiral of poverty and ignorance.  Educated Blacks were held in  highest esteem by their communities.  It was a privilage and honer to be educated and no one respected that more than Black Americans did.  We nourtured our children and even though parents had not been formally educated they went through great pains to make sure that their children were properly educated.  Black men and women devoted their lives to the education of young Black children.  The educated classess of Black Americans gradually opened up new jobs and economic opportunities for Blacks since we were denied access to the established white economic stratification. 

Finally when schools and government were desegregated Blacks had the chance to forge ahead into the general economic world of America.  Blacks fled from many historically Black institutions to get their 40 Acres and a Mule which they felt was owed to them for centuries of free slave labor, which had allowed these businesses to enjoy thier healthy level of economic prosperity.  Unlike many other ethnic goups which had come to America, Blacks did not preserve and protect their communities.  After the Civil rights leaders of the 1960's had been assassinated they became disillusioned against the intellectual movement for Black liberation and turned to contraband, pandering and drughs as part of a massive street movement.  Numbers rackets, including pandering and drugs had always been present in the Black community historically as an underground source of income off the radar of white Americans.  But after the 1960's this subculture gained such momentum that it overtook the intellectual movement and became the primary focus of the Black communities besiged in the ghettos of Urban America.  Drugs and compromised ethics only drove the Black community further into the gutter compromising efforts to uplift itself.  Because post WWII America was untouched by the devastation of that debacle we became the worlds leaders in manufacturing.  The millions of manufacturing jobs requiring unskilled labor allowed Blacks that had no education a chance to earn wealth.  But as those jobs failed gradually moving toward the twenty-first century a growing number of Black Americans, having no or insuficient formal education to fall back on in an increasingly technical society were again both unemployed and unemployable.  But while drug money still looked lucrative the Black community still did not recognize how important education was.  By then many urban Black communities had become so dangerous to live in that education was the least of concerns for young children that struggled to just survive in a world that had no use for Baldwin, Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, Thurgood Marshall, or any other Black American intellectual and the educational tradition they represented.  Today we have a very dismembered Black community that cultivates a culture which moves in the opposite direction of the ethics and standards of the great Heroes of African American History, our legacy of intelligentsia.   The Black American think thanks seem to have failed to capture the imagination and attention of thier own community or devised a sucessful strategy to jump-start and clean them up.  It's not just a Black thing... the trend apperars to be a cultural one invoving all Americans of all races.  Black Americans seem to have been hit the hardest by this trend... I hope and believe that we will but sometimes wonder if we can ever pick oursleves up again... I sometimes sit and wonder, "What would Frederick Douglass think, what would he do"?

FIN

ARCHETYPE-SAPIENS

each time I looked into still, blue water

i saw a man

my image darker than the deep pool, beneath me

framed by the sun

a visage smoothed, of every feature

given to me

i was the cast of that primordial model, and of all

consanguinity

Written By D. Vollin 3-4-12

I REMEMBER HIP-HOP

there was nothing hip-hop could not en-rhythm as its theme…
it loosened the black-mans-magic as lyrical ornamentation for a desperate cityscape
splashing newly crafted meter onto a riot-ravaged world
... soulful as the last viscous drop of pig-foot pot liquor
we put our fingers into the pot, tasting and in turn
explicated the clear and subtle differences between chitterlings and hog-maws…
and that is how I remember hip-hop…
 

its form was the instantaneous mitosis of pure artifice…
a genealogical riot, a Darwinian mutiny
a cosmological hymnal celebrating every particle that was fortunate enough to be
translated from the traditional-southern-gospel-African-American-vernacular-post-slave-dialect,
to the neo-Duboisian-bourgeois-post-pantherian-retro-bee-bop/beat-revivalist-afro-urban-post-motown-dialect,
its what Dunbar would have written being mused by Ellington on the eve of April 4, 1968
it is how I remember hip hop…

 Written By D. Vollin 2-12-10