Today's moment of irony…

…there’s nothing like making a post apologizing for an extended absence from blogging, then following up that apology with a similar absence from blogging.  Not that bright am I.  Or maybe I’m just too busy for my own good.  One of the two.
Either way, just wanted to say hi.  Plenty of priceless stories are coming. Those include a chance encounter with an androgynous person that only proved to be female when she told us about something she’d like to do once she grows testicles.  There’s this hot ass heat.  There’s my insistence upon treating the job fair like I’m trick-or-treating, straight taking whatever I can get just because…well, the stuff’s free.  And you can never have to many traveling coffee mugs.
And there’s the realization of my addiction to the Internet, which became abundantly clear to me once i realized me and the WMD were staying at the last hotel on Earth without wireless.  Even the Motel F’n 6 offers free wireless.  We’re just up in that piece watching ESPN Classic.
But such is life.  I figure a major update will come Monay morning, after I’ve recharged…and written the Jump, of course.  Be easy.
Oh….I forgot.  As I type this, Barack Obama is speaking at the convention.  I gotta figure out what it means that I could care less, particularly at this stage in the game.  It sounds like he’s just asking who wants free food.  Everyone does.  I’d just like to know where it’ll be coming from.  Dig?

12 thoughts on “Today's moment of irony…”

  1. It says that politics is just another game–I felt the same way about Hillary when she spoke on Thursday. Barack-or any of the rest of them-ain’t sayin’ anything new. The hustle is about getting in–and getting paid.
    And if one more person says anything about a “dry heat,” they’re gonna get dealt with!
    That didn’t make no sense! Lucifer? He’s doing a couple of shows in the afternoon in front of the Bellagio!
    This was my first conference as an ex-journalist–and it was a surreal experience. Walking around the job expo seeing folks pimpin’ those tapes and resumes, it brought back memories (and it makes me glad I’m not on that side anymore.)
    Enjoyed seeing all you cats. We gotta do it again!
    Bo: you gotta teach a bruh those blackjack skills!

  2. Very interested in hearing what you conclude about not caring about Obama’s speech.
    Ironically, after hearing him speak at the convention it was the first time I actually DID care … but I’m pretty sure I know why.

  3. ETS-I don’t necessarily have too many reasons not to vote for him–except for the fact that I do find his occasional metion on the ‘acting white’ hypothesis as an explanation for black underachievement to rather annoying. I spent my fair share of time studying the evidence for this in graduate school, and I don’t find it convincing. I think that saying black kids who talk a certain way are ‘acting white’ is likely no more prevalent than, say, white kids calling each other nerds or geeks. On a more personal note, I got my fair share of being told that I talked ‘too proper’, (sort of synonymous at times with ‘acting white’ some would say) and I’m about to defend my doctoral dissertation. So in short, I can’t figure whether or not Obama genuinely believes what he’s saying or is catering to his white constituency. (Just to cut out the other objection that I know will arise, I know there are plenty of black folks who think this way too.)

  4. Obama didn’t have the typical American high school experience growing up. “Barry” attended Punahou (a “tough to get into” private school) in Honolulu. I’m sure it painted him as having a silver spoon growing up in some people eyes, and some may feel he can’t speak for the “general” population (white or black). But I understand where he’s coming from when he says that taking your education seriously as a child or teenager is not something that you should allow to be affected by peer pressure… whether you’re called our for “acting white,” or “being a geek,” or whatever…

  5. Tiffany, as I’m sure you’ve studied, the issue of black underachievement is a complex one …. and self-hate among blacks (labeling our own as white for achieving) is one of the reasons.

  6. ETS-If you notice my post, I never claimed that Black folks accusing others of acting white was a non-issue. My concern is whether its contribution to black underachievement is significant enough to warrant the attention paid to it. One of my professors, Sandy Darity Jr. (also an economist) along with Carolyn Tyson and Dominic Castellino was an investigator on a project entitled “Breeding Animosity: The ‘Burden Of Acting White’ And Other Problems Of Status Group Hierarchies In Schools”. Their study of North Carolina children showed that Black children don’t inherently carry a cultural bias towards higher achievement. However, by and large, students often carried biases toward high achieving students (very few of them were race-related). The problem seems to be that the more rich white students were overrepresented in mentally gifted and AP programs, the greater the amount of resentment. Hence, any students that were able to ‘cross-over’ into the AP-types of classes were seen as interlopers or sellouts.
    Again, I have yet to see any convincing evidence that the acting white hypothesis can explain even a small portion of black underachievement. But we do know that when income-related disparities, particularly at young ages (a la Head Start) are reduced, this does much to eliminate race-related education gaps. So, knowing this, do we spend/waste our time on the acting white hypothesis or pour resources into what we know works?
    On a slightly unrelated note (back to Bomani’s original post) there’s nothing to me (either in his experience or rhetoric) that suggests that Obama will make a superior president. Hence, my ambivalence about voting for him.

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