I don't write much these days.  Formerly I wrote quite a bit about
radical politics and social transformation, but I've grown weary of
that practice and it never really seemed to amount to much anyway.  In
my experience it's often thankless work if you're promoting
revolutionary changes because there aren't that many who can truly
appreciate radical ideas.  And, even if some do appreciate the ideas,
they usually couldn't help you in many ways even if they were so
inclined.  Anti-materialistic philosophy often effects the choices
people make in their lives (in terms of acquiring and dispersing even
the most fundamental necessities).  And these days a guaranteed home
and food supply, to say nothing of ample leisure, is often considered
something of a luxury.  The progress of the civilized world has led us
to a place of slums and hundreds of millions being severely
malnourished.  I could, and will, go on highlighting the serious
shortcomings of the modern global system -- but that's just a backdrop
to the ideas I will be trying to develop in this article.

This is difficult for me because I am loathe to discuss the topics of
the title which relentlessly cause so much stress, in so many ways, in
so many lives.  I think these things are important to consider and
thoughtful consideration is still something that I have a bit of
respect for.  So I am going to present some ideas here which will
inevitably be received as somewhat controversial by so many backwards
regressive types who run roughshod over everyone and everything they
can.  Controversy is not my goal. Neither is addressing the criticism
of small corrupted minds.  Once again... it's thoughtful consideration
which I hope to engage in, and possibly inspire, to some degree.  If I
could make these ideas into single soundbite or a pill which you could
pop for enlightenment, I would -- but I am not Fox News or Pfizer.
These ideas are best presented with a well developed background and
so, as wildly as the world is spinning out of control,  I'm not going
to rush what I have to say.  If you don't have the attention span to
take a few minutes to consider these subjects (about which some of you
might even fancy yourselves as experts), then you are possibly part of
the problem.  And I don't herein present myself as infallible, but I
will try here to be honest and, again,  only hope to make some of us
think a bit.  The tone of this article will be blunt, casual, and
frank -- it's the only way I can write it.

RACE

Like many Americans, I have very limited knowledge about my racial or
ethnic history.  I know that I am pale and ate at McDonald's as
child.  If people feel they can or can't trust me because of these
things, I can understand the conditioning that would lead to that
narrowmindedness.  But to provide a background of my own experience,
here are the specifics that I know about my own personal ethnic/racial
makeup...  One grandfather claimed his relatives came from a country
between France and Germany which no longer exists.  Obviously this
doesn't tell me much and, frankly, I'm not sure where he's talking
about or if he had any real clue himself.  He and his family were
farmers in Arkansas, perhaps cotton-pickers like my grandmother and
her family.  For how many decades or centuries they were there doing
that, I simply don't know.  They were incredibly poor, like so many
others, and there is no family crest which contains our family history
beneath it.  They are pale people with black and blonde hair.  My
grandmother's family was very pious in the Baptist strain and she
still reads the Bible every day.  Her husband's family (the family of
my aforementioned grandfather) seems to have struggled from an early
age since his father died when he was very young and, culturally,
about all I can say about him is that he was a worker -- on the
railroad, in the navy, building cars, etc.  That grandfather was
referred to by many of my friends as "the most racist person" they had
ever met -- and I need to tell you that this paper may get disturbing
in many ways that some of you might have a hard time reading.

My other grandfather (on my Father's side) was 1/2 Blackfoot:Sioux.  I
met him only on brief occasions when I was very young but I recall
that he was a thin man with jet black hair and dark skin.  My father
had similar (but less prominent) features and I only retain the bone
structure of their faces (my skin is pale and my hair is dirty blonde
like my mother's).  My father's mother I know almost nothing at all
about.  She was a plump woman and I once had a dream that she was
jewish.  They were dirt farmers, she and my grandfather.  Once I was
attacked by a mother hen when my little cousin and I snuck into their
chicken coop with a toy gun.

Culturally my father retained some things, very few things, that I
ascribe to his Native American heritage -- and that basically amounts
to his being an adamant sportsman.  When I was a child he and I would
go fishing before school, after school, and again late at night to
check the trot lines.  He was an avid hunter and I've eaten much
venison, and even the occasional creature like a squirrel.  That is
all I culturally credit to his native American heritage.  Beyond
that... he was assimilated into several other less pleasant cultural
activities -- like working in the factory and driving a big truck.
Yee haw.  His childhood was very violent from what I have gleaned in
regard to his brothers and sisters who were apparently very abusive.
These are violent tendencies which he brought to my mother and I, but
I won't go much in to the extent or the details about that -- except
to say that one time when I was a child I tried to bludgeon him with a
bat when he was beating my mother.  I ran out of my room and swung it
at him but he caught it in his hand and I had given him a weapon.  I
ran to the neighbor lady across the street who was teaching me to
read.  But these are issues of westernized culture, which transcend
the race and ethnicity of my heritage which I know so little about.

My father ended up being my idea of a "good 'ol boy."  He was always
trying to do whatever was culturally popular with his group of
workers.  To tie this with race (in way that is only as random and
abstract as life usually is)... I remember him being on a softball
team one season as the token "white" guy.  It's an odd recollection
and, as strange as it sounds, I remember him telling me that I was
black on several occasions.  I think this was some sort of mind-fuck
that you'd just have to experience to truly appreciate.  He wasn't the
most overtly racist guy in the world (certainly not compared to my
grandfather on my mother's side) but he wasn't beyond making racist
jokes (outside of "mixed" company) which, I guess, in a sense, were a
joke about race overall as I look back on it today.  It's hard to
explain and I don't justify or forgive any bullshit concepts he held
or may have expressed.  I'm just trying to give my experience in the
hopes that it may give others some insight into the issues that
surround us so often.  I can only speak about what I know, and this is
what I've got -- it's not theoretical.

My aforementioned racist grandfather was a real number.  Light-hearted
sometimes, but not one to deal with people's bullshit.  He had a work
ethic.  Often in his life he held down more than one full-time job (so
as to be able to provide for his wife and five kids).  He hated the
television show "All In The Family" because he practically was Archie
Bunker!  He made Archie Bunker seem tame, but it must have seemed like
everyone was laughing at him when they laughed at Archie.  Oh man, he
was such a curmudgeon too.  I'd get a "Peace & Justice" newsletter in
the mail (I lived with him for several years) and he'd begrudgingly
give it to me as he berated me for being involved with "this peace
bullshit."  BUT... he wasn't all bad.  I don't say this (as some would
try to see it) to prove my credentials, but my best friend in high-
school (and a lost love of my life) was a black girl.  We talked on
the phone constantly and she'd come over often.  Grandpa would be all
peaches and cream.  It was so surreal, but I think he was genuinely
fond of her.  Like so many others, he couldn't maintain his utterly
despicable behaviour in the presence of a truly wonderful individual.
He'd say a few things when she had gone but... he couldn't and didn't
say much.  I'm sure I pre-empted his worst (as I had learned to do),
but he also must have truly felt the pain of his hypocrisy.  A similar
thing happened when I had a relationship with a Jewish girl for about
a year.  I remember telling her some of the things he had said in the
past, not realizing how uncommonly awful they were, and she was upset
-- but again, around her, he was peaches and cream, and I truly
believe that he appreciated and recognized these lovely young women as
just that.

Perhaps some of you can relate to incidents like these I've described,
others maybe not so much, but these are some of my basic experiences
in regard to race and racism.  There are some others I can relate (and
perhaps will) but I write this in the hopes that it may inspire some
thoughtful consideration.   My mother was against racism (one of her
few good qualities) and she and others I have known (combined with a
healthy dose of the The Cosby Show) are probably why I wasn't
indoctrinated in worse ways.  But I recognize racism in others, and
have from an early age.  I remember Katrina, the only black girl in
class, crying in the third grade because someone said the "n-word" and
then the teacher tried to get the idea across (unsuccessfully) that
"nigger" wasn't a bad word.  Then, in high-school, during my sophomore
year, there was an integration project put into effect that closed
West High School and led to kids from the west side being bused across
the river to Jefferson High School.  Racial tensions were very high.
There were some hall monitors who were employed as diplomats, of
sorts, but some of them were actually very racist.  I remember one of
those monitors berating a girl I was talking to in the library because
he knew about kids like me "who wear the leather jackets and cry when
their friends die (of suicide)," and so he wanted to know why she was
talking to me.  But the real event was a full blown race riot at the
high school.  My friends and I were just getting back from lunch and,
as we were walking in, several dozen of the long-hair kids (we called
them "stoneys" and they liked AC/DC, Metallica, and Cameros) all
started running out.  Then, dozens more of the black kids started
pouring out of the school after them exchanging blows with them the
whole time.  It was pretty serious and the next day was the lowest
attendance day in school history.  I took pride in finally not cutting
class and being a small fraction of the student body attending.  I
don't know what more to say about that incident but it was 1990 and
racial conflict was plain as day.  Smaller skirmishes continued in my
school till I was finally expelled for lack of attendance and general
mischief.  Suffice it to say that, like many others, I dealt with
overt racism, from all sides, at an early age -- and I recognize its
reality in many forms.

Once in my mid-twenties, when I was in Oakland CA, I had a
conversation with a guy who was involved with the modern Black
Panthers and black power movements.  It's fine that, "Free Mumia" et
al, but the thing that stuck out in my head was his denigration of my
ancestral reality in regard to my Native American grandfather.  It was
his position that every white boy with a drop of indian blood couldn't
claim any of that heritage, in any way, because they still looked pale
and could get by in modern Amerikan society easier than a person of
color.  To a degree I could see his point but on the other hand... I
have anti-industrial and pro-primitivism tendencies (and I would
revive the old Native ways if it were in my power).  Just because I
may not look a certain way, or because I am only genetically related
to some degree, that should not preclude me from from my tendencies to
identify with those people in any way at all.  This seems to be the
system's method of pigeonholing people and robbing them of any
cultural heritage or of any desires to reclaim it.  You are black, you
are white, you are asian, etc.  And there is a tendency to simplify it
even beyond that because all the masters really want us to be is
subservient consumers.  Race is tied with cultural heritage and, if we
want reclaim something in life more substantial than what the techno-
industrial system provides us, we are potentially a destabilizing
factor within that system.  The more standardized the basic realities
of race and heritage become the easier we are to market to and the
easier it is for us all to get along side-by-side at the factory on
the assembly line.  It's the basic formula of the melting pot -- wipe
out, assimilate, or enslave (and if it can be done without the people
knowing or caring then it's all the more effective).

There is something of a paradox in strongly identifying with people of
similar racial makeup or appearance.  Ideally, if it led to preserving
sustainable cultural pathways that had been in place for generations,
that would be a good thing.  But when we add strong racial identity
with the techno-industrial system we get something more like the
Nazis.  And even if we don't end up with the wholesale genocide of
other groups (as when races are co-opted, assimilated, and
homogenized), when it happens that a people take on the habits of
techno-industrial civilization their fundamental values change and, in
the name of progress, they become equally destructive in other ways.
It can be as pronounced as the devastation caused by Chernobyl &
Bhopal or as subtle as a cop of color oppressing the poor people of
his own neighborhood -- all in the name of law, order, democracy, and
progress.

Obviously there is much more to racism than these few experiences
described thus far, but personal experience can not help but to make
us ponder.  It should make us ponder.  This is a problem that relates
to class and historical identities.  It relates to the tendency that
some people have to dominate others and maintain power and control.
So many other horrible things are happening in the world but still we
are forced to confront the reality of racism, blind stupid hate, for
the most superficial reasons.  This is a subject not conducive to
frank talk and open discussion and many are very engrained in their
backwards indoctrination.  Knowledge of that reactionary
indoctrination makes it difficult to overcome because no matter how
people identify, there will be some with whom they identify that have
these backwards ideas.  And there should be no shame in having
beautiful black skin or long blonde hair, but there will always be
someone around who dislikes you for those very cosmetic reasons.  And
self-preservation or the desire for upward social mobility can make
people prone to use their racial appearance to get ahead and stay
ahead of the rat race.  I'm not saying it's a good thing, but it's
something that happens and there are too many stupid people
indoctrinating too many children of every race, creed, and color -- so
it's probably not a situation that will go away any time soon.  But
while your appearance may get you ahead somewhat with some groups...
the lack of upward mobility, and the oppression of others, makes for
general social unrest around the world.

African Americans are undoubtedly treated unfairly in the USA and
around the world.  Tiger Woods may go to the the country clubs, Phil
Ivey may bluff Doyle Brunson in the biggest poker games, and Barrack
Obama may even become president, but if poor general conditions
continue to exist for the vast majority of dark-skinned people, even
the success of those men may be seen as tenuous.  I'm not saying that
Tiger, Phil, or Barack should necessarily do anything much different,
but we should all be mindful of the bigger scenario and realize that
we all suffer -- black, white, rich, and poor -- because of the
backwards state of the world and superficial racist politics.

And that brings me to why I got it into my head to write this
article.  In the past I have been opposed to the oligarchic two-party
corporate industrial politics of the USA, particularly in regard to
presidential politics,  but if there has to be a figurehead for the
beast, maybe it doesn't have to be the most bat-shit crazy, spoiled
corrupt cracker that we can find.  Maybe if we can get into office
someone who has undoubtedly experienced oppression and racism from the
under-side... maybe we can see some things change for the better.  I
don't want to sound overly hopeful, nor do I want responsibility for
any of the corrupt things he inevitably does in office, but I think
Barack Obama (or perhaps another Black politician later) might be able
to pull a Putney Swope and effect real change.  (For those of you
unfamiliar with the film Putney Swope, it's about a brother who backs
into the Chairman's seat of a major advertising firm and institutes
some black power values.  It's hilarious.  It doesn't end all that
well as I recall, but it's the basic idea of what I'm talking
about.)   And I don't think Obama will be nearly as radical as Putney
Swope (in fact I fear the opposite) but I feel like a president of
color might effect some change.  And even if Obama (or another black
politician) were to campaign with the claim that more black Americans
would go to jail and get worse health care,  I can't help but to
believe that persons of color would be holding out hope that, if
elected, they wouldn't be as awful as they seemed while
campaigning.

But there is the rub.  Obama could end up being the Democratic
equivalent of Clarence Thomas and not really change all that much in
regard to the status quo of any American (much less any African
Americans).  Are we supposed to take at face value his recent praise
of Ronald Reagan?!  Even if that was an attempt to woo a few insane
Republicans, it's still scary politicking and I'd hate to think he
might actually be sincere.  We need very fundamental changes in the
USA and the ideas he implements need to be bigger than the ideas he's
campaigning on.  Perhaps he's trying to stay mellow and subdued and
conservative during the campaign, but there are a few things I think
he could say that would transcend race and improve the conditions of
the average American.

POLITICS

First... the war on Iraq.  Beyond oil, this is also just another war
on dark-skinned people around the world.  Millions are dying in Iraq
(directly from the bombing, collapsed infrastructure, and now civil
war) and American soldiers of every race are dying in this unjust
war.  The American public opposes this war and a more aggressive
withdrawal plan could be presented with support from the vast majority
of the population at home and abroad.  The financial cost of this war
alone should be enough to finally convince the masses that it must
end.  It's a simple position, it's a popular position, and withdrawal
is a key election issue.

And the cost of the war, while effecting all Americans,
disproportionately effects African Americans who already receive much
worse health care and other rectifying social services (this is money
that could be spent on housing, education, and the arts).  End the war
and promote health care, preventative health care, and you have
another very popular position.

And then you have the issue of the prison-industrial complex and the
war on drugs.  This is an issue which again effects all Americans but
African Americans disproportionately.  Perhaps again he's being
conservative after his admitted use as a youth, but these are issues
which the American population can relate to and it could easily be
framed in terms of economics.  Rehabilitation is cheaper and the
easing of racial conflict brought on by the system would also be a
boon.  America is becoming a police state.  People don't like it (they
should like it less) and they can be persuaded to vote against the
police state.  His mixed support for the Patriot Act is very
troubling.  In the future we can only hope that he will take stronger
stands against this type of totalitarian legislation.  These are
issues which effect all Americans and people around the world as well.

Finally... the environment.  This again is an issue which effects the
poor and persons of color disproportionately.  But it is an issue
which transcends race, class, gender and even partly lines.  It is an
issue which could be undertaken by a prominent candidate like Obama
without fear of losing votes.  The grassroots environmental movement
is a very large voting block and, by making quality propositions to
regulate industry and to actually reduce consumption (a politically
peculiar idea which needs to be promoted), the world could be
preserved for future generations and made a better place to live.
Wars over resources would decrease and health would improve in every
area.  This could be made a key election item.  (I would like to point
out as an aside that bio-fuels are inefficient and that the
agricultural run-off is polluting the waterways.  We need to consume
less, not find different things to consume.)

CONCLUSION

I honestly don't hold out much hope for the system at all.  I'm
skeptical that any decent person could ever be elected president.
Worse, if a wise and moral person were ever allowed to take office
they would be taking responsibility for a system that has already run
amuck and which may be beyond redemption or repair.  Or, if they were
to actually try and force the major reforms necessary, the system and
the population would have to endure some hardships which they may not
be prepared to handle.  For example... to avert further environmental
degradation, nay disaster, our per capita consumption would have to
decrease.  And, because many people's standard of success and
happiness are tied up to corrupted ideals of materialism, this change
would be seen as a negative.  The economic waves created by some of
the necessary changes to the techno-industrial system could lead to
other perceived hardships like unemployment and the associated
problems with that.  And this change would not just be isolated to the
U.S. (as other nations would have their economic systems thrown into
upheaval as the U.S. attempted to become a more sustainable and humane
entity).  Even if the U.S. were able to transition smoothly, the
consequences of other governments collapsing could bring terrible
consequences here.

Another ethical problem people create for themselves by voting is the
responsibility that they then take on for the problems created by
those elected officials.  Heaven forbid that anyone should vote
successfully and elect a totalitarian warmonger, but simply by
participating in the election process you are giving legitimacy to
whomever gets elected, whether you've voted for them or not.  This
seems especially true since the presidential election was so blatantly
stolen in 2000 and most probably in 2004 as well.  Nevertheless...
those that seize power legitimately, or by sleight of hand, can
proclaim that the process was carried out and that everyone who
participated should respect the outcome.  The whole thing is presented
and treated like a game in which no one should behave like a sore
loser.  If only it were a game.

So this article does not amount to an endorsement of anyone or
encourage you to vote, but it does hold out hope that someone (or some
group of people) might someday be able to somehow make a positive
change in the system -- but bringing about that change may be far more
complicated than many imagine.