Let us begin with a little-known fact about Caelius Spinator, he was the only white person in his Montessori class and the only white male in the entire school. I do not say this to claim I transcend race or am enlightened about race or any other egocentric white liberal fantasy about American racial politics. No, I'm only mentioning this because I've always found being in the minority in a temporary and local sense is highly educational. And the first thing I learned was to keep my head down. To be honest, the only thing I remember from Montessori school is the times tables and an extremely mangled version of Jehovah's Witness theology that involves some small child confusing the word "saint" with "Satan."
My present city is extremely racially divided. My institution sits near extremely wealthy, almost completely white neighborhoods, not far from the excellent local community college, whose student body is mostly African-American and Latino. My institution has about as many African-Americans as I can count on one hand, possibly more. It is a world-renowned institution. I have asked someone familiar with undergraduate admissions, who informed me that it is estimated that less than 700 African-Americans each year in the entire country are qualified to be admitted to my institution and almost all of them will choose Ivy League schools because of their closer connections to power etc. Lowering admissions standards for these students would doom them to misery and failure. I was admitted to my institution as an undergraduate. I wonder if I was qualified. The low diversity of my institution in this particular respect says to me something about the failure of America to educate all of her children according to their aptitude. I'm happy to see that campus is more diverse in the summer, thanks to the institution's programs to bring minority students from high schools and other colleges to the institution for enrichment and research experience. But I spend most of my time in a world mainly dominated by white and Chinese males.
So this evening I went north to a hair salon on the border between the wealthy and mostly white section of town and the impoverished and mostly non-white side of town. And here, too, I was the only white male until a homeless man I know from church entered and discovered that the race now finally was between Obama and McCain. Living proof that the sermons at my church are not all about presidential politics.
So I was first on the bill, being introduced by a local talk radio personality (who makes his living I suspect in comedy). I surprised everyone by reading one short poem and was asked, "Is that it?" I have a rule not to read more than twenty lines or so at a time, since a disastrous reading of my John Merton and the Weight of the World during my senior year in high school, which while a credible attempt to imitate the alliterative meters common in Anglo-Saxon poetry, is a bit tiring to the ear. But one lady in the audience pointed out that this was an important issue.
And then it became a poetry jam proper. One young man wrote a beautiful love poem to "spoken word." There was a gentleman who had spent six months in jail reading Isaiah and read an excellent compilation of extracts. One woman read an anti-war poem, whose constant refrain was how she wished she could write about something else. But much of the poetry was about racial oppression. Perhaps, the highlight of the evening was a youth counselor with a very cool staff (Akinola school of race-sexual orientation politics, shall we say), who read a poem with the repeated refrain, "Kill the slavemaster!" At that moment, I felt very sorry for the middle-aged white woman to my rear who had mentioned she was a Republican for Obama. Though she probably figured out she was in for a rough night with the level of pre-game Republican bashing.
Then there was an appearance by a former Black Panther, who resides in the area and is presently charged with conspiracy to murder a police officer in San Francisco 36 years ago. The case was dropped back then because of doubts about some confessions made under torture. After September 11, the government apparently started investigating anyone with a possible history of domestic terrorism, because juries might be more sympathetic to cases involving violations of civil and human rights. He endorsed the Green Party candidates. The Republican for Obama snuck out, perhaps noticing the resemblance between this meeting and some fundraising events during Obama's early career.
Then finally came the platform meeting. The big theme of the meeting was debt. People are in debt and the credit card companies are calling back balances. Predatory lending has torn a hole through urban African-American communities, offering older people some money to keep the wolves from the door for relatively little equity at usurious rates. One young woman complained about cuts to the state's university system by our environmentalist plutocrat governor. I pointed out that the federal government really can't do much about a state university system except restore need-based financial aid to 1979 levels. Yay, Pell Grants. That was a hit. Student loan debt apparently is staying with people into their 50s. Many people were taught and believed that education was a means to improve their economic lot. As one of the poets said, the American Dream is phony. Instead, they find themselves in poorly paid white collar jobs (if employed at all), living worse than their working-class parents. Primary and secondary education also are problems, but it's clear that people do not realize much of this can be done on the state, local, and individual level until our esteemed youth counselor encouraged people to prepare their children for school by buying books and reading to them, everything from literature to law. Apparently, he's defended himself successfully from two serious sets of felony charges.
At some points, you need to remain silent. One woman, probably influenced by a non-allopathic medical education, claimed that mandatory vaccinations were a means of stultifying children and asked whoever heard of cervical cancer in reference to the HPV virus. I'll just observe the rate of cervical cancer is higher in African-American women, like almost everything else. After Tuskegee and with what pharmaceutical companies do in other countries, vaccine suspicion is understandable.
I pitched railroad electrification, of course, explaining how it could act as some control on the price of food and other goods in the event of rising fossil fuel prices. I also promoted streetcars over buses for similar reasons. Even in Laodicea, many of the people in this meeting are regular public transit riders. They seemed to understand fossil fuel prices contributing to higher fares. And I quite enjoyed having an activist for fairer and more transparent credit practices warn the audience about the coming days of $8 and $10 gas.
But what I took from the meeting is how difficult modern life is for all of us. We find ourselves at the financial mercy of many systems we have little time to understand from mortgage lending to insurance to Social Security. I would encourage anyone with expertise about these matters out there to find ways to educate adults in plain language about how to decode and use their health plan etc. Churches and community groups should consider such efforts.
OK, I'm off my soapbox for the night. The Lord grant us a peaceful night and a perfect end.
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