HEATHCLIFF IS THAT YOU?

         " A word to the wise isn't necessary, it is the stupid ones who need all the advice"
                                                                                                                     Bill Cosby


William Henry "Bill" Cosby Jr was the author of language, cultural imagery and iconography that influenced my childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. The stand-up comedian, actor, musician and author who would get his Doctor of Education from the University of Massachusetts broke barriers in television not just for being  the first black man with a leading role on NBC's I Spy, but crushing the myopic, dystopic, monolithic portrayal of the black family and expanding the narrative of the richness of black culture in America by executive producing the eponymous ground-breaking "The Cosby Show" from 1984 to 1992.
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Bill Cosby not only became transcendent as"America's dad," but he became an enormous economic engine for NBC spawning an additional spotlight into black culture by expanding the narrative to include a snapshot of life at HBCUs through the creation of the show " A Different World".  Our collective chests swelled with pride as this brother from Philly, a four sport athlete, Navy veteran and just plain ol' funny guy was blazing the networks with unprecedented positive exposure of our culture.  We would anxiously wait to see what college he would be "reppin' by wearing one of their sweatshirts during an episode.  A Different World literally encouraged tens of thousands of black students to explore the previously hidden environs of historically black colleges and universities and become doctors, lawyers, engineers, software designers, college professors, Fortune 500 executives and university presidents.

Bill was OUR dude!  It seemed every university in the country was wrestling to get him to be the keynote speaker at their commencements. He was awarded a battery of Honorary Doctorates.  I will never forget when he accepted an invitation from my alma mater; Florida A&M University.  The anticipation was epic and the atmosphere was electric.  Mr. Cosby was gregarious, warm and naturally....funny.  FAMU, like so many other institutions of higher learning considered it a feather in their cap to have had the corporation that was Cosby Inc to have adorned the halls of their campus.

After the Cosby show went off the air and Mr. Jello pudding stopped being the imprimatur of guaranteed ratings sweeps, Bill seemed to change.  In the early 2000s he started to become very critical of the black community, more accurately what some would characterize as the hood element.  His "pound cake" speech; his public remarks in May of 2004 in which he was critical of African Americans who put higher priorities on sports, fashion and "acting hard" than on education,self-respect and self improvement drew howls from everybody from Michael Eric Dyson to the Congressional Black Caucus.  For the most part we were dismissive. We chalked it up to Cosby getting older and sitting on top of his stack of nearly half a billion dollars. Like our elders who spoke their mind, he was just going off because he could.

And then the rumors,........ followed by allegations,.......... followed by settlements.

All at once, Claire Huxtable's chill, pipe-smoking, bad-dancing, surgery-performing husband slowly began to turn into somebody we could not have known. Some could have possibly forgiven him for being a "playa from the Himalayas."  But over the course of four decades, allegations about not just infidelity, but drug-assisted sexual assaults from over 50 women began to flow like magma from a volcano.  Our Dr. Huxtable was transforming into a salacious, non-board certified, monster known as Dr. Clyde Hyde!  Universities started revoking their honorary doctorates and the venerated and iconic show bearing his name was yanked off of every network, even BET!.  This insidious dichotomy, this Shakespearean tragedy in which people were saying "oh hell no" to Othello was borderline iconoclastic.

Suddenly, the name Cosby, Huxtable, Healthcliff became anathema!  There is a sad irony in the progressive loss of William Cosby's sight.  It is lock step in conjunction with our inability to even remotely transplant him back into one of the most robust chapters in television history where black folks all over the country literally set their watches to the broadcast time of two of his creations. Heathcliff, it was never you!!!

                                                            BAE-WATCH



Summer seems to be the one season in which we are made intimately aware of our bodies unlike any other time of the year.  As a son of the South, rising temperatures make the prospect of being layered in anything  other than shorts and a t-shirt foolhardy.  The Sunshine state offers many natural amenities that encourage you to come outside and not only play but beckon you to explore our abundance of lakes, sinkholes and some of the world's most beautiful beaches providing the opportunity for a water wonderland type of escape.  The challenge with the call of the outdoors, especially pools, water parks and large bodies of water is that the requisite garb requires that your "beach body' be on point.

A typical trip to the coast can either be seen as adventurous or angst ridden. My family's recent trip to the beautiful, emerald green water of a nearby coastal hot spot was an epiphany of sorts. Television has always curated what I call the masculine and feminine ideal.  Simply put, the body types highlighted on almost every prime time show, outside of caricatures, are a mixture of imagery drawn from runways, fitness magazines and a lens that rarely if ever captures what the average American now looks like.  Body dysmorphia is rarely a topic associated with men. As my wife and daughters enthusiastically changed into their bathing suits, I politely declined the offer to join them-resisting the powerful childhood affinity I had to swim in any body of water I found myself near.

The parade of humanity that walked up and down the shore line displayed a kind of confidence, a freedom in defiance of Michelangelo's David one comes to expect when any one dares disrobe in public.  Even with the sun bearing down on me like molten lava, and a pair of trunks available in the truck, there was nothing that would compel me to exchange the cool caress of Gulf waters for the slow bake I was enduring on the shore.

I don't know if former elite athletes who in peak condition looked like an anatomy chart now struggle when the cuts and  "dents" as my best friend used to call them seem to have been erased with age and lifestyle changes. This is more than feeling like you have fallen into the category of "dad bod'. What I was battling was more than an awareness of my mortality; it was a recognition that no matter how powerful one might appear to people, my muffin top shrouded any trace Herculean elements that I might be able to identify.

I have often noted that just around the age that the average woman reaches menopause, men of the same age begin to look like they are in their first or second trimester of pregnancy.  I am being transparent not to body shame, but to share how even the most stoic, seemingly confident people wrestle with this whole concept of being fit, Being a permutation of your best self can create enormous internal strife.  What kept me on the shore baking like a California raisin had more to do than me being partially naked and afraid.  Fearful that with each piece of clothing removed, my Kryptonian passport would be revoked and I would be relegated to the zone of mortals bereft of even a silhouette that looked like themselves in their former glory.

The epiphany was simply recognizing that in the confines of that vacationer's paradise, people who were at various stages of undress, nakedness if you will, were carefree.  Free of the enormous weight of soul-withering self criticism and just simply enjoying the incredible natural concourse of sand, ocean air and saltwater.  No pretense, no airs,  It's refreshing how people act when they are no longer bound to the dictates of what is deemed beautiful.

I THOUGHT

     


I thought I would never see the day when people chose to be entertained versus being informed

I thought I would never see the day when people would willingly, almost sheepishly, sacrifice liberty for the illusion of safety

I thought I would never see the day when human life would be discounted to such a level that to express a concern would spawn vituperative scorn

I thought I would never see the day when adults would wantonly make decisions that would have disastrous effects on children

I thought I would never see the day when the moral arc of justice would bend in the direction of injustice

I thought I would never see the day when august comportment would be replaced by base, primal behavior as normative

I thought I would never see the day when the United States of America lost its moral compass

I thought I would never see the day that people would prefer to interact with a device more than with other individuals

I thought I would never see the day when to say I love this country would be deemed arrogant and become a pejorative called exceptionalism

I thought I would never see the day when having a bibliocentric world view would singularly be construed anti-everything

I thought I would never see the day when absolute truth would be perniciously executed in the public square and folks would gleefully celebrate without context or understanding of consequences

I thought I would never see the day when civil discourse literally became a foreign concept

I thought I would never see the day when a nation's insatiable appetite for drugs ( prescribed, illicit and legal) would rise to the level of a deadly obsession

I thought I would never see the day when familial dysfunction would clog the national bandwidth as entertainment

I thought I would never see the day when I realized that praying for my family, friends, community and this nation would not just be a luxury, but an ABSOLUTE necessity.

                                         A Letter to Dez Bryant

Should have quoted him

Dez, I couldn't help but pause when I read your Instagram quotes.  You start by saying you usually mind your own business.  You then say that it is not our job to carry the burden, but to lead by example.  I am trying to understand what compelled you to now be a spokesperson for your people by echoing the sentiments of a retired basketball player? For your statement to hold court it would have to be substantiated by facts versus a very popular, tired trope that all of the ills indigenous, but not exclusive, to the black community lie singularly in the choices that they have made and any convo to the contrary is simply parroting the victim culture that in some people's minds is unmerited or exaggerated. Let me be clear, I BELIEVE in personal responsibility

The closing line of venerated television broadcaster Walter Cronkite was “and that’s the way it is” to conclude the major network’s evening news program.  It seems that the specious argument that the occurrence of racism has subsided to the point of being relegated to the margins of our culture has become the new trending topic.  I know you meant well in your pronouncement, and the Conservatives have been reposting your “blurb” with impunity but let me give you a little context Mr.”I Quote Charles Barkley” for history.

If one speaks of micro aggression or racially-tinged innuendo, articles or codified pejoratives being used in business or leisure communication there is now a backlash of charges of race baiting or the more ominous phrase “pulling the race card.”  Revisionists now have expunged any narrative that gives context to why this social cancer is not only still present, but is palpably metastasizing. 

The question becomes in what form has this societal ill morphed?  The rabidly racist had become pariahs, ( well at least until the last Presidential election) hiding in the digital underbelly of social media and ostensibly banished as outliers and aberrations or relics of the days gone by.  The pundits would assuage that any voicing of inequity, injustice or discrimination is predicated on a “culture of complaint”, victimization or whining in which plaintiffs are simply seeking concessions versus being required to meet the established criteria like everyone else. Even worse, the mere suggestion that an individual or organization is a purveyor of racist ideations, practices, policies or procedures is asinine and replete with an ulterior motive of getting over.

So, in this post-racial era there is a national mandate to absolutely forget the past and its incendiary parts.  Give no context to oppression, terrorism, injustice and de jure and de facto practices that at a minimum were affronts to the Constitution.  The retort has become life is about choices.  You can’t reasonably expect people to continue to give latitude to decisions that you make as justification for your cause be it Black Lives Matter, anti-police brutality rallies or

 protest against discriminatory lending and housing practices.

Racism as a social construct has intrinsically been about control and oppression of a targeted people group.  Its insidious outcroppings have been the extralegal practice of lynching, racial profiling, disparate sentencing guidelines, redlining, higher interest rates on everything from cars to mortgages and restrictive covenants and deeds.  It also spawned eugenics which advocated egregious pseudo-scientific experiments that included everything from deliberately infecting participants with highly contagious diseases to medical experimentation that was fatal.  Remember, all of this is post slavery! But, you seem to have limited your historical narrative to the stalwart verbal musings of Mr. “Turrible” who is well versed in the turpitude of American history?!

Legions of successful blacks are highlighted as proof positive that the wealth, education and class disparity rest singularly with the choices of those on the margins.  The 70 percent of households that are without fathers, the black-on-black crime, the unemployment rate, the recidivism rate, the over representation in social metrics that are negative are all because of choices of the identified group.

The penchant to ascribe many of the disparities to systemic racism doesn’t pass muster.  William Ernest Henley’s humanist poem “Invictus” declares that we are the captains of our fate, the masters of our soul, so this dribble about inequity and injustice tied to race is a dissonant chorus of reckless irresponsibility. So, we will continue to disagree on this topic even with a mountain of empirical data to show the nexus between the past and the present.  Black people, the message is clear: Shut up, get up, pull your boot straps up, own up, get your hustle up, pull your pants up,(you know something about that) clean your neighborhoods up, put your guns up, get your grades up, get your representation up, build your wealth up, get your home ownership up, get your business ownership up, get your identity as an American up,……. wake-up this is a new era and your pandering usage of this tired trope of racism will no longer be tolerated.  And that, is still, just the way it is!!!

On the 8th Day

                                                               

                                                                      On the 8^th Day

From the moment I stood in the room alone with my dad’s spiritless body, the cadence of time accelerated with a rapidity that compressed days into hours, and hours into moments that just allowed me to grab the sustenance I needed to greet the cascade of mourners and well-wishers.  In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, I was fatherless and the son of a widow. For the first time in my life, the epistemology of son ship had to be revisited.  Existentially, I am still the son of my father but the veil of death has given me pause; a new permanent tense to address fatherhood-he was.

The seven days, the 168 hours, the confluence of planning, meeting, calling, cancelling, notifying, buying, untying, discarding, undoing gives you an illusion of subduing the stillness.  All of the accoutrements that are tagged to my father are now on static display, frozen in time, never to be held, directed, worn or guided by his savvy, insight and wisdom.  Death, the stranger that we will all be introduced to has interjected a dissonance that is disruptive and cohesive. My siblings and I have marshaled our time and resources to protect our mother for her gradation of pain would be the most intense of the three of us. At times I would see the erudite, seasoned world traveler morph into the fragile, devastated teenager mourning the loss of her first love, her heartbeat, her Boaz.

No one told me that the little boy in me would grieve the loss of the first real-life superhero he ever knew and emotions would vacillate between the present father, son, and husband to the lost little boy who does not know how to mourn the immortal.  Psalm 91:1, 2 became my solace.  It states, “He that dwells in the secret place of the most High, shall abide in the shadow of the Almighty, I will say to the Lord He is my refuge and my fortress, my God in Him will I trust.”

We are given the feast of kings for consecutive days and invite all those that provide to also partake. Mi familia is now more than ever the body of Christ manifest through kindness; the aroma of the fruit of the spirit effervesces throughout my parents’ home.  The staccato of the phone punctuates the robust conversations filling every room in the foyer, den and kitchen. Day becomes evening, evening becomes night and mornings roll out like the baker’s bread. Alas, the close of this eternity where we will see for the first time since I prayed over my father’s body, him lying in repose, the last of the things he occupied on static display.

The unfettered presence of God is beyond the reason, understanding and comprehension of our finite minds yet a part of you wants the spirit of your loved one to repopulate the body they left behind and give you one more moment in time. But the magnificence articulated in scripture makes it clear that even the compounded love of everyone in this chapel has no order of magnitude to compare with the love of God that my father experienced the moment he transitioned.  So, we anguish and celebrate simultaneously. He looks peaceful, without pain, discomfort or anguish. My father has ascended into the bosom of Jesus, the one he ultimately lived for.

The celebration of his life required a certain comportment, restraint, dignity.  The temple filled with rapturous sounds from choirs that shook the rafters with powerful melodies, hymns and songs. The cavernous hole seemed to begin to fill somewhat with the exuberance of the service, an event my father would have enjoyed especially with the overwhelming turn out of family, friends and acquaintances.  Our words were heartfelt, hilarious and touching. The pastor delivered what was most important to my father, the word of God and the honors at his internment were powerful and awash in respect.  This celebration bolstered our spirits through the remainder of the evening and allowed us to reunite with decades-old friends. The chapter closed at midnight and the advent of the eighth day would have to be in part fueled by the residue of the previous week.  The presence of my father filled the home that was now to be singularly occupied by his bride of 57 years. It is now that Abba father, Daddy God, begins to provide the comfort, the peace, the strength to do more than muster for the day.  To greet each new moment of each day with a verve and energy that He alone can provide in abundance.  Our new normal is predicated on an attempt to navigate without the patriarch that provided stability, guidance, humor and comfort. He is faithful to give us what we need. 

A Better Place

                                                        A Better Place

                      

                   Better is the existential constant being pursued by all of us

                    While leaving the carnage of good and okay strewn in the streets,

                                 Hamlets and homes from shore to shore

                                 The crush of affluence singes the nerves

                          Slowly weakening one’s ability to rest in sufficiency

             The stench of poverty removes, deadens one’s sense of taste and smell

                         Food is no longer for pleasure; it’s now sustenance and life

           Better is illusory, it’s the next moment, the next opportunity, the next relationship

           The next job, the next house, the next high, the next thrill, the next record broken

                           And it creeps away into the surly bonds of eternity

                            For better is omnipresent, sitting between now and next

                            It drives commerce, technology, leisure and romance

                         It is the precursor to next, casting constant shade on now,

                       withering this piece of eternity, making it not as sweet, as good as it

                                         needs to be for you and me

An Homage to NFL Sundays (The Back draft)

                              

                                             

In about a week, an event tantamount to the lottery will  occur in the city of Philadelphia.  It will symbolically represent the culmination of the childhood dreams of millions of young men from every walk of life, from every part of the country.  I couldn’t help but be captivated by an open letter to all the potential draftees from perennial Pro-bowler Larry Fitzgerald.  In his letter, as only one who has had the experience could, he encapsulates the palpable emotions, anticipation, anxiety and sheer rush of having your name called by the commissioner of the NFL.

More importantly he poignantly shares the iterations from high school, college and now the exclusive, hyper-competitive environment of the professional gridiron, replete with athletes that are all hungry, talented and seeking a place in one of the world’s most exclusive fraternities.  He cautions them to not make simply getting drafted the biggest accomplishment of their lives. With sage articulation he advises them to evaluate their inner-circle, understanding that some of their homeboys won’t make the cut.  He doesn’t attempt to propagate abstract notions of this field of endeavor, Fitz keeps it straight 100 with no chaser.

In an age of selfies-, self-aggrandizement, and swag, he tells them to come in observing the veterans who have become what they seek to be and SHUT UP!  His anecdotal renderings are instantly credible because he is that seasoned, successful veteran who has held it down both on and off the field.  Somehow, even after reading that compelling composition, I couldn’t shake a nagging, back story that has become a part of the ambient temperature of feel-good narratives that will be spun up through the draft this evening.

For a number of these NFL prospects, tonight represents a literal, generational change of fortune with instant riches possessing the capacity to alter their future family tree.  This proverbial lottery will not only remove them from the ominous existential threat of violence that is a quotidian part of their urban hamlets, but serve as an “underground railroad” for family members and friends stuck in the sweltering confines of de-industrialization, failed social policies, suffocating poverty and urban blight.

What I frustratingly feel has been lost in the backdrop of these ongoing, feel-good stories is this lack of context that created these pockets of despair or what I call urban “Dante’s Infernos.”  James Harden, star point guard for the Houston Rockets, described his neighborhood as a bowl.  The only things that seem to be able to create enough momentum for escape velocity from these vestiges of our apartheid past is extraordinary academic aptitude or mutant-like athleticism. An exposition featuring the full living palette of our nation’s sordid history that spawned and ultimately contributed to the festering dysfunction in these bowls is at best a sidebar that we have become culturally oblivious to.

Our vicarious connection was made organic through beats and rhymes and videos of street poets spewing hood lyrics of genocidal violence, drug infestation and inner-city despair.  This dystopian theatre allowed us to hear without seeing, touching or, if truth be told, really caring.  We were mesmerized by the poetic brilliance yet polarized concerning causation.  For every one of these young men that are able to grasp the golden ring of the NFL, thousands are not just left in their wake, but will continue to populate the Siberian wasteland that is their home.  The almost billion dollars in contractual agreements that will transfer instant wealth to these twenty-somethings will affect little material change on the “domain of lost souls” from which they escaped.

Like the designated land for dumps that are part of the municipal ecosystem to treat waste, these ghettos, hoods, hamlets or whatever you choose to call them will geographically exist on the periphery and be noted as the birthplace of these now venerated professional athletes.  What is unspoken is that in some instances, the deleterious imprint of these confines shapes the decision making of these newly-minted thousandnaires and millionaires.  The systemic dysfunction comes with emotional and social ties that constantly call like the alluring and dangerous Sirens of Homer’s Odyssey.

Those that heed the call of their homies who pledge allegiance to the code of the street find their lifetime dreams derailed, delayed and in some extreme instances denied. Like Icarus failing to heed the instruction of his father not to fly too close to the sun, their tribal attachment to the inferno sears their ties to their childhood dream leaving them crashing back into the barren land they had worked all their young lives to escape. This tired trope is not a frequent occurrence but the point of this missive is not about how often it happens.  The real objective is to get people to start asking why these desolate places exist on the scale and scope that they do. 

The last feature I saw highlighting the “escape” of another promising athlete fully engulfed visually the random substance abuse, fratricide, poverty and other societal ills as if they were implacable. We seem to have collectively accepted not just that “the poor will always be with us” as anecdotal, but that the archetype for poverty will overwhelmingly be this people group devoid of de facto and de jure practices that facilitated it.  It is my hope that these Horatio Alger stories will stop being so antiseptic and start peeling the hideous scabs away and drill down into this uncomfortable, real-life Twilight Zone.