Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Mass Media of the Day

iTunes dowload:
"Old Man River" by Paul Robeson (Live at Carnegie Hall)

Obscure movie:
"Nothing But a Man (1964)," dir. by Michael Roemer

Relevant Internet Reading:
"New Millenium Nigga"
http://musingsnmn.blogspot.com/
(In particular, the video blog "What's Your Dream" and the print entry "Keep it Clean," both posted in February 2007)

*Random Pieces of Trivia:
-The original lyrics to "Old Man River" stated: "I'm tired of living, but scared of dying, but Old Man River, he just keeps rolling along." In Paul Robeson's version, he changed it to "I must keep fighting, until I'm dying, and Old Man River, he just keeps rolling along." It was Robeson's habit to change lyrics of old songs to reflect the current experience of Black America. He performed this version of the song in 1958.
-Though it was one of the first films to be released featuring a primarily African-American cast, "Nothing but a Man" was directed and produced by two Jewish men.

Thirty-Nine Years Later: A Random Sampling

-Victor goes to a private Christian university in Southern California. He cites the "I Have a Dream" speech when you ask him about the American dream, and to hear him tell it his people still have not achieved it. It routinely escapes Victor's notice that he is able to afford a school whose tuition costs over $30,000 a year.

-Lamar is a twenty-eight year old medical intern with a specialty in cardiology. When asked about the American dream, he will most likely shrug and give you the stock answer about opportunity. If you ask him whether he feels he has achieved it, he will indicate his stethoscope and say, "what does it look like?"

-Oprah Winfrey is perhaps the world's biggest proponent of the American dream, passing out like candy on her internationally syndicated television show.

-Darcelle is an officer in the United States Air Force. When asked about the American dream, she'll point you to the words "freedom" and "liberty," which can be found in any speech, pledge, document, or song that features the name "America." And you can forget about asking her whether or not she feels she has achieved it - she protects it every day.

-Barack Obama says this of the American dream: "For that is our unyielding faith - that in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it." As far as whether he will achieve his own American dream - check back in November '08.

-Jaden is ten. He lives and goes to school in Crenshaw, a low-rent area of Los Angeles. What do you think of the American dream, Jaden? "I think it's cool," he says, grinning.

That may be the most profound answer yet.

You Can't Legislate Morality...or Apparently, Dreams

I'm a big fan of the aforementioned Martin. I understand most people are - and not just because black history month just ended. His influence seems to me to pass way beyond February.

If you're going to take advice from anyone on the American dream, there are worse resources than a preacher with a Ph D, or for that matter, an American icon.

"It wouldn’t take us long to discover the substance of [the American] dream," he says. "It is found in those majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, words lifted to cosmic proportions: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by God, Creator, with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.'" Martin is a literalist as well, it seems.

This was the dream of the forefathers, and for an exhaustive account of the details that went into it, one could do worse than to read the Federalist Papers. However, for the moment, we will accept the end result of those papers as the summary of the dream: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness....for all. In reference to this dream, Martin has some further things to say on the subject:

"The American dream reminds us, and we should think about it anew on this Independence Day, that every man is an heir of the legacy of dignity and worth....We are challenged to really believe that all men are created equal. And don’t misunderstand that. It does not mean that all men are created equal in terms of native endowment, in terms of intellectual capacity—it doesn’t mean that....what it does mean is that all men are equal in intrinsic worth."

That is what the dream means, according to Martin. So he must have found it ironic then, that a dream so uniquely American that it had been named such had not been even remotely realized within his time.

I don't have to tell you that Martin led a revolution to this end, that he ultimately became a martyr for it. Yet another irony in the life of Martin - to be martyred in a non-violent revolution is a tragic end indeed. And yet, he did what he came to do. It is no wonder he is often looked at as an almost Messianic figure - his death led to a greater good - desegregation, an improved effort on the part of the American government for civil rights, a society where black children are afforded the same rights as white children (for the most part). If Martin were alive today, I think he would be pleased to see that the racism of his day was largely a thing of the past.

However, I have my doubts that he would be satisfied. In his Independence Day sermon on the American dream, he went on to say the following: "This is why we must join the war against poverty and believe in the dignity of all work. What makes a job menial?....What makes it menial is that we don’t pay folk anything. Give somebody a job and pay them some money so they can live and educate their children and buy a home and have the basic necessities of life. And no matter what the job is it takes on dignity."

The racism of yesterday, I believe Martin would say, has given way to classism. Black children are affored the same rights by the government that white children are. However, poor children are not afforded the same rights as rich children, and we often confuse that for racism because they so often look like the same thing.

Poverty is a constant problem for the citizens of the nation, and every new politician has a way to deal with it. As '08 approaches, we will hear more and more about their ideas for change, so I do not feel compelled to go into them now.

The fact is, what Martin was speaking of in this particular sermon had a lot less to do with governmental policies and a lot more to do with individual outlook. It is the reason he chose to deliver this speech in his home church, instead of in front of a national monument, as he did in his other more famous speech. Martin was speaking to the hearts of his people - every single one of them, individually.

Racism and classism, according to Martin, are moral problems above all else. But as the ACLU and other organizations for the rights of the American people often remind us, morality cannot be legislated, only law. You cannot tell a person how to be good, under the law.

The American dream - it's life, it's liberty, and it's pursuit of happiness - is centered around the entity of the individual rather than the government. It is the government's responsibility to ensure the rights of its citizens, and many would agree that following the Civil Rights Movement, it has taken care to correct its mistakes in this matter regarding racism. However, though its citizens rights are ensured under the law, their dreams are not - and this includes Martin's dream:

"I still have a dream this morning that truth will reign supreme and all of God’s children will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. And when this day comes the morning stars will sing together and the sons of God will shout for joy: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.'"

If history is any indication, there will never be a day when all men respect the intrinsic worth of other men. It certainly will not come as a result of the government mandate, but instead as a personal mandate, a mandate of conscience. Perhaps then, we would do well to revise our dream from affluence and fame, houses with little white picket fences and college educations, to simply treating each other how we would like to be treated. I believe this is what Martin may have had in mind.

Martin did an amazing amount to secure the fair and continued rights of his people - the "untouchables" of society, but I have to think that were he still here today, he would not be satisfied. I don't believe, however, he would be marching in any more revolutions. I believe he would be preaching quietly to his people, about love, and respect, and how to be good. There is only so much a nation's government can do, after all: it can ensure its citizens the opportunity of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The rest we must do ourselves. That's the dream anyway.

Martin's Dream?

...should be obvious enough by now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbUtL_0vAJk

But his American dream? Can be found right here:

http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/sermons/650704_The_American_Dream.html

Whether it came true or not? Well, that's up for debate.

Friday, February 23, 2007

The Natives are PISSED.

It seems appropriate to start out any exploration on the American dream with the natives of said country, so since I'm a literalist, we're going to start with my friend Roger, who is a Native American.

I lied about two and a half things in that sentence. 1) The Roger in question is not actually my friend. We've met on enough social occasions to be called thus, but to tell you the truth, we're not all that fond of each other; 2) His name isn't Roger either, but we covered that in my welcome post; and the other 1/2 has to do with the fact that the professor of my aforementioned course on the American dream came up with the idea of covering Native Americans first, not me.

Now that we've gotten that disclaimer out of the way, here are the things you need to know about Roger:

1) He prefers to be called an Indian, not a Native American;
2) He was one of the foremost members of the American Indian Movement in the seventies;
3) He thinks the American dream is bullshit.

The easiest of these to explain is the first one. As Roger explains it, Columbus wrote in his journals of Indio, not Indians. According to Roger, the name for the native tribes Columbus and his men stumbled upon came not from his mistaken theory that they had somehow landed in the West Indies, but from the Spanish term Indio - or, "of God," the idea being that Columbus was so impressed by these tribes that he deified them in his writing. I, of course, have no way of verifying this assertion, and nor does Roger. But that's not the point. The point is that, in Roger's mind, he would rather change history to suit his purposes than accept a politically correct term that he views as a condescension from a race he despises. And he does indeed despise them, the "them" in question being white Americans. He will tell you this openly, being the most refreshingly open racist I have ever had the curiosity to meet.

The thing is though, you can't really blame him. The wounds inflicted on Roger and his people from a surprisingly large swath of the aforementioned race are probably more fresh than the wounds on any other race in recent history. In his case, the wounds have become infected and gangrenous, to the point they have embittered him towards anything remotely related to what inflicted this wound on him in the first place: the white man.

Which brings us to number two. Roger was involved in many standoffs between the Indian movement and the American government in the seventies. It was a time, to hear those that were there tell it, of a sort of chaotic hope for revolution; the organized civil rights movements of the sixties had given way with the assassination of Reverend King to rowdy, violent demands for change. It was the time of the Black Panthers, and the time of AIM - the American Indian Movement. Roger was there when they took Alcatraz, and he was there when they raided the headquarters of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, taking what documents they could use and burning those they could not. He was also there for the standoff at Wounded Knee.

They were coming off a long series of purported victories, and hope was running heedless and high. Things in the Oglala Lakota town of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota were dismally bad, due to the goons elected by the BIA to keep the peace, who instead took advantage of its people. The Tribal Council met with and heard from both OSCRO (Oglala Sioux Civil Right Organization) and selected members from AIM (including Roger, among others) as to what to do about the problem at Pine Ridge. To hear Roger tell it, the men were all but bullied by the women of the Oglala tribe into taking a stand.

Take a stand they did. They took over Wounded Knee, and the next seventy-one days were spent in a stand-off with the BIA. Unfortunately, it devolved into violence as two Indian men were killed as well as a BIA officer. At the end of the stand-off, they surrendered willingly, believing they would be protected from any reprisals and that the issues raised would be investigated as promised by the government. This never happened, and on May 5th some sixty people were arrested, though none were ever convicted. Roger was one of them.

Since then, not much has changed for Roger's people except for reparations in the form of Indian casinos. For him, this is not nearly enough. He lives by the treaty of the first Wounded Knee Massacre, when his people were promised sovereignty over their land (South Dakota), and it was never delivered, and he is still waiting for that its delivery.

It should be obvious by now why Roger believes the American dream is bullshit. In fact, he blames it for the bad things that have happened to his people. The American dream, to him, is opportunism, and it is this opportunism that took advantage of his people. Roger would say that the American dream belongs to the white man. His dream is a dream of the past.

For the life of me, I cannot figure out if the problem here is Roger not adapting to the American dream, or the American dream not adapting to Roger. Many Native Americans have managed to live out their own "American dreams" perfectly happily - moving off the reservation, getting jobs, buying houses, starting families. But others (most certainly Roger) would argue that by doing so, they are abandoning a majour tenent of their culture, which is the communal aspect of reservation (formerly tribal) living.

Roger is not suffering, per se. There are people who are much worse off than he, who has three houses in Arizona, California, and South Dakota. He gets on well, but it's likely you will still see him around wearing long hair and a t-shirt that says "Fuck Nixon." To him, Nixon represents his image of the white man: manipulative, condescending, or to put it more simply, "full of shit." His grudge against Nixon extends to the entire American dream, and I can't imagine he is the only one to have ever held a grudge against such a sacred entity. For everyone who has accomplished their own American dream, it seems there is another who has been screwed over by it, and no matter where you look it seems there is always dissatisfaction. At least that's how it looks from the rez, and how it looks to Roger.

A Welcome and an Explanation

This blog was started in effort to form a conceptual map of the American dream. Since I'm in favour of both literalism and random samplings, this map will be formed geographically by choosing random representatives of different geographical and ethnic areas of the US. Names have been changed to protect their anonymity.

As far as the "Me" in the title is concerned - I am an American expat who has made the rounds throughout this country and a lot of others, met a lot of people, had a lot of dreams, taking a class on this very subject, and still couldn't tell you in a sentence just what this whole idea of an American dream is all about. That's kind of what this is about. That's really all you need to know about me, because contrary to what the title suggests, this blog has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the three hundred million other people populating the United States, what they want out of life, and what they get. So let's see what they (and I) come up with....