The Movie Precious, From A Black Woman's Perspective

Why African Americans Are Divided on Film's 'Precious'-ness

By Erin Aubry Kaplan (LA Times)

Long before it opened, "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire" had racked up plaudits for its groundbreaking depiction of the inner life of a black, overweight, ghetto-dwelling teenage girl. But since its release, a story-outside-the-story has developed that's equally fresh and complicated: black people's reaction to the movie and what it means.

Verdicts about high-pitched movies from black viewers and public figures are usually swift and decisive -- "Do the Right Thing," "The Color Purple," and the recent Robert Downey Jr. performance in "Tropic Thunder" come to mind. But that's not what happened this time out. That's partly because the embrace of "Precious" by the white film establishment has been a bit disorienting for black folk, even off-putting. But it's also because the tough stuff in "Precious," whether you like the movie or not, is striking chords of recognition for many black people that are making them not angry or enthusiastic, but uncertain. That's new territory.

The many issues raised in the course of this one story -- class tensions, self-image, racial progress, how Hollywood bears on all of the above -- have hit black viewers squarely in the gut, rendering the usual right-brain arguments about stereotypes inadequate. For black filmgoers, assessing black-themed films is generally a political process; "Precious" has made it emotional.

That discomfit was evident recently in a packed theater with a largely black audience in Marina Del Rey. The viewers were characteristically vocal at first -- gasping, clucking tongues, even tittering at the initial haplessness of Precious (Gabourey Sidibe) and the villainy of her mother, played by Mo'Nique. But as the film got more intimate, zeroing in on issues such as Precious' illiteracy, the repeated rapes by her drop-in father and her casual wish to be white with "good" hair, people fell silent; it was as if they were no longer viewers, but participants.

They applauded at the end, but filed out of the theater much more soberly than I've ever seen a black audience file out of any performance, especially one that had a clear impact. It's quite a contrast to reviews and commentary that ranged from supportive to effusive on black-oriented websites including The Loop21.com, Racial icious.com and thegrio.com. But even the praise has a bit of apology about it, as if to allow for the fact that blacks can -- or perhaps even should -- admire "Precious" without necessarily liking it.

Not everybody is buying into the nuance. The unrelenting inner-city misery that frames "Precious," including a foul-mouthed welfare mother and an absentee father, has raised plenty of alarms among blacks, notably film critic Armond White. In his review for the New York Press, the famously curmudgeonly White excoriated "Precious" for being an "orgy of prurience," "a Klansman's fantasy," racist propaganda cast from the infamous mold of "Birth of a Nation." For White, "Precious" is bad art because it is a bad representation, a reminder that for black people, art and politics are inseparable.

Yet one of the unusual things about "Precious" is that it doesn't try to separate those things, and so forces us to think beyond the negative/positive binary that often keeps discussions about movies like this airless and superficial.

Certainly other black people share White's condemnation. But that condemnation has dimensions: C. Jeffrey Wright, writing at UrbanFaith.com, a conservative Christian site, fretted less about the images in "Precious" than about the fact there are too few black films released to provide a diversity that would make the movie less controversial. That's a fact nobody on any side of the discussion would disagree with.

Nonetheless, Wright decries the movie for its lack of what he calls "achiever values." And here we get into the thorny issue of class. For black people that means not solely money and education, but a concern about how we are being represented in public. How blacks are represented in movies always galvanizes such concern, and "Precious" is no exception.

"We just don't want to see black pathology on screen," says T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, a professor of critical race studies and hip-hop at Vanderbilt University. "There's clearly a segment of us that worries about what white people think."

That worry, she says, is usually about representations of the black poor, a group that's long been an anathema to whites -- and to some blacks as well. "Precious" exposes that unflattering divide. "Americans despise poor people, and they really despise poor black people," Sharpley-Whiting says. "Unfortunately, we [black people] buy into it."

Widespread debate

The good news is that the Internet encouragesa broader discussion of these complexities than black people have had in the past. At thefreshx press.com, a site geared to young African Americans, one blogger who had read White's review but hadn't seen the movie wrote that he was leery of incest being portrayed as a "black" thing, but he supported a filmmaker's right to tell his own story.

Another objected to White's comparing "Precious" to "Birth of a Nation," saying that missed the real critique the film was making about the troubled internal dynamics of black communities. "We've made a lot of strides, but what are we really doing to bring those who haven't been as fortunate as our college-educated selves out of the gutter?" she wrote. "This is a very real opportunity to bring a very real problem into the mainstream where it belongs."

At Racialicious.com, a blogger named Tiffany grumbled that she was "tired of the black aristocracy getting up in arms about anything that isn't 'The Cosby Show.' " Ironically, White himself bolsters that point: When he huffs in his review that " 'Precious' hyperbolizes the class misery of our nation's left-behinds . . . the Obama-era unreachables," he's at least acknowledging those unreachables and their plight.

But how can that plight be authentically represented? Is it ever possible for a black character -- dark, light, poor, privileged, whatever -- to vault above, or through, the stereotypes and emerge chiefly as a person and not a trope? Rarely. "Precious" breaks that ground, but it feels like alien terrain because blacks have been defined by extremes for so long. In an interview with Essence.com, director Lee Daniels says the harsh themes of "Precious" should be taken at face value. "Life is life," he said. "Life is what it is."

But grim subjects such as institutional poverty, illiteracy, child rape and incest are reasons enough to stay away from any movie, and many black folks say they will bypass "Precious" for that reason -- too much of that trouble in real life, they say.

Richard Yarborough, an associate professor of English and African American Studies at UCLA, says there might be something else to the aversion for not just blacks, but all Americans. "The abject degradation of black people in 'Precious' is as close as you can get to a modern film that may be similar to a film about slavery," says Yarborough. He points out that slave-era films such as "Beloved" and " Amistad" didn't do well at the box office, and those were mainstream movies with big budgets and established directors. Those movies also presented widespread black exploitation and oppression as phenomena of the past; "Precious" has no such buffer.

"If people aren't going to see slavery in a historical context, why would they go see a movie about slavery in a modern context?" says Yarborough. He adds that the legacy of slavery -- racism -- is another issue that feels much too close for movie-watching comfort. "Racism is not dead," he says. "The immediacy of racism and the pressure it still puts on [blacks] is tremendous. We're still arguing about the Confederacy flag."

Despite these macro-level realities, it's nice to contemplate the possibility that "Precious" could start a new trend of black movies that are more individual-oriented and inward-looking. Todd Boyd, a professor of critical studies at USC's School of Cinematic Arts, says that will only happen if "Precious" makes the kind of money that Hollywood can't ignore. It grossed an impressive $11 million on 629 screens last weekend.

But, he says, don't hold your breath. One of the enduring truths about the movie business is that even a widely acclaimed black movie made by blacks doesn't guarantee that another one will be made, let alone start a trend.

"What Spike Lee was doing in the '80s was more challenging and visionary [than 'Precious'] -- and he talked stuff while he did it," says Boyd. "He's still working, he's still making movies. But nobody talks about Spike anymore. With features, it's about the money vehicles now, like what Tyler Perry is doing. The days of the small 'impact' film are over."

Erin Aubry Kaplan is a freelance writer and contributing editor to Opinion. She is a former weekly columnist for The Times and a former LA Weekly staff writer. She blogs at threebrothersandasister.blogspot.com

Are Anti-Obama Protestors One Step Away From Calling The President A N-Word?

The Water Line Keeps Rising, And All We’re Doing Is Standing There

by Erin Aubry Kaplan

Worst thing first: the loosely confederated but commonly paranoid, almost proudly malevolent anti-America forces that pass for a conservative movement in this country is about two seconds away from calling our shining President Obama a nigger.

But that’s not the worst thing—actually, it may be best thing.

My husband is an American history teacher who’s been arguing for years that the racism that’s supposed to be such a thing of the national past has always stewed just below our surface, give or take an inch or two. The virulent resistance to Obama’s health-care reform efforts—and increasingly to Obama himself-- exposes this inconvenient truth more effectively than any argument that my husband or anybody else could make.

The big conservative march on Washington this past weekend paraded a grab-bag of grievances that all reduced down to one thing: Obama is an Other who doesn’t think like Us.

I wish this was so much political theater staged solely for the benefit of Fox News, et al, but I’m afraid it’s more than that. How else is it possible that the very centrist senator from Illinois, momentarily demonized as a liberal, was very quickly made into a socialist/fascist dictator with an oily smile and even oilier words who was trying to sneak Big Brother government past the loyal watchdogs of liberty and individual rights?

For many true and overwhelmingly white believers, Obama is Hitler meets the mythical black trickster Br’er Rabbit, a dread colored Communist who must be kept from power at all costs, because of course Negroes were most in need of social and economic redress, and must always be barred from the inner sanctums of capitalism.

Electing Obama was one thing, realizing we all must now follow the path he defines, whether we like it or agree with it or not, is entirely another.

The panic is setting in. Even the white folks who voted for him are rethinking their position, wondering seven months into this experiment if it was such a good idea.

It reminds me of a dynamic that black people know all too well—you get hired for a job in a burst of white generosity, but as soon as the going gets tough, you’re the first to be let go. Except that in the case of the President, he can’t be fired, at least not right away. So a certain segment of the population, including certain members of Congress, are trying to neutralize Obama with panic and character assassination.

I should have known this was coming, and I did. But I’m disheartened nonetheless.

I hardly agree with all that Obama’s doing, starting with ramping up the war in Afghanistan; I’m one of those disaffected progressives that he still calls friends. But to see him not even being treated like a president, when so much unearned respect was accorded George W. Bush for so long, is painful. It’s personal.

And it’s not just Republicans and conservatives colluding on the diss, it’s Obama’s fellow weak-kneed Democrats who either are blue dogs or who have no stomach for racial matters, and therefore say nothing; in not regularly calling out the bullshit of the opposition, they are standing with them.

Alas, President Obama looks as isolated right now as black people in high places have always been—isolation is the price of their success. The irony is that a president is elected to lead, not to be the prominent but innocuous face of affirmative action.

That’s the change Obama assumed came with the mandate of his election.

He was wrong.

ERIN AUBRY KAPLAN is the first African American in history to be a weekly op-ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Her musings continue to appear in the Times, Essence magazine, and on the blog 3 Brothers and A Sister. Among her many projects, Kaplan is currently working on her much anticipated book.

A Black Man In The White House Means America Is At The Mountaintop, Right???

NOT SO FAST MR. PRESIDENT...

By Erin Aubry Kaplan

It’s the end of inauguration week, and all the Obama hosannahs still linger in the air. It’s understandable. It’s barely comprehensible that Bush is actually gone and that a black man replaced him.

After eight years of pain and suffering Bush and his ilk inflicted on the electorate (to say nothing of the citizenry of the world), it’s absolutely essential that we get a chance to feel good. All that tension built up over all these years needs an outlet. We needed to give voice to it all, to dance, sing, weep, watch parades, go to balls, enthuse over Barack’s élan and Michelle’s outfits. It’s fine. Necessary, even.

But some of the joyousness bothers me, and it has for the duration of the presidential campaign. Here’s my problem: Far too many white people who had a certain smugness about Obama’s rise are now congratulating themselves openly for the historic moment, and far too many black people are letting them get away with it.

The result is that we’re all willingly falling asleep at the switch at the cause of racial justice, which is hardly over. But we’re all simply too vested in feeling good. Whites are triumphal that Obama is symbolically putting to rest the nasty racial battles of the past; blacks are misty-eyed that this is indeed the mountaintop, that we can go no higher and achieve nothing greater.

It was predictable that the conflation of Bush’s exit, King’s birthday, Obama’s inauguration and Lincoln’s bicentennial into one great, shining, badly-needed American denouement would be too much to resist. On Tuesday, CNN featured a crawl that excitedly announced that 70 percent of black people in a poll said that the Obama presidency meant that the dream of Martin Luther King has been fulfilled.

Okay, let’s start there. I hate to be a party pooper, but King’s dream had little to do with electing a black president. King was an activist who evolved into a social radical who believed that economic justice on the largest scale possible was the only way to achieve racial justice, and vice versa.

He would have been thrilled at the prospect of an Obama, of course, and likely would have supported his campaign. But King would have immediately recognized Obama as a product of a successful black middle class that in 2009 is still the exception to black reality, not the rule. He would have understood that Obama is not the expression of a collective movement, as he was, but a towering example of individualism that Americans have always admired more, especially in black folk.

But that admiration has left no room for a discussion of all the troubling facts that still define black life: poverty, imprisonment, poor education, poor employment, poor health outcomes, poor prospects overall, especially for black men.

A Pew Research poll last year found that black Americans are as pessimistic about their own future as they’ve ever been, with good reason. But the strange fact is, we’ve gotten a black president before we’ve gotten effective solutions to any of those problems.

And the mere presence of Obama convinces too many Americans that these problems simply don’t exist, or don’t matter terribly anymore. Even the most effusive black Obama supporters know this is a real danger.

I think Obama, middle-class icon that he is, knows better. But whether he can find a way to articulate concern and craft policy for his less fortunate brethren, the brethren who supported him unequivocally and who rightfully expect something in a first black president—yes, a black president for all people-- remains to be seen.

ERIN AUBRY KAPLAN is the first African American in history to be a weekly op-ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Her musings continue to appear in the Times, Essence magazine, and a host of other publications. Kaplan is currently working on her much anticipated book, to be released in 2009.

Jeremy Wright Gets Thrown Under The Bus And Rick Warren Gets Center Stage? Barack, Me No Likey!

No Prior Convictions

By

Erin Aubry Kaplan

It’s always depressing, at least momentarily, to be reminded that hope has its limits. Or that it can be qualified and moderated, sculpted like limestone, to a point where it no longer resembles hope but something just slightly above the status quo.

President-elect Obama has chosen Pastor Rick Warren to preside over next month’s inauguration, an event as eagerly anticipated as anything in modern American history.

That’s partly because there’s been so little to celebrate on a national scale for so long, folks are already putting on their dancing shoes and ready to see the whole event as a template for a better, more enlightened nation.

It’s a coming-out party for a country that wandered away from its better nature for too many years and suffered in a desert of its own making, a country that’s been wounded badly by culture wars, but not killed by them. Not yet.

This inauguration is not just a message to the world that America is back, it’s a reintroduction to ourselves.
So the invocation and who does it is critical. Invocations are not just for the religious, by the way, but for all of us whose stake in this still-evolving democracy feels spiritual and always has. Of course, I don’t expect that whoever’s delivering the blessing will wear a cloth that covers everybody’s religious beliefs, to say nothing of the secular beliefs. It’s not possible in this case that one can or even should represent the many.

But that one who holds the brief power of the pulpit on Jan. 20 will nonetheless reflect something about all of us, spiritually, politically and otherwise.

Obama knows this very well. Which is why his choice of Warren, the supposedly moderate evangelical pastor from Orange County, is such a letdown. It’s not just that Warren vigorously supported Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage initiative that just passed in California and opened up new rifts among gays, straights, blacks and other groups, rifts that are still deepening. It’s also the fact that during the campaign, Warren felt entitled to call the presidential candidates into account at his own place of worship.

The debate that he hosted at Saddleback church was really an Oprah interview, during which Warren was perfectly comfortable grilling Obama and McCain about their views on abortion and other “moral” issues that were far more about the mostly white church base than about an American base—a narrow reflection indeed.

Certainly Warren is only one symbol of the kind of faith-based power that’s ruled America for the last decade, but that’s the point—he’s a look backward, not forward. It’s not that he doesn’t have a constituency, but it’s very clear that that constituency as a guiding force should be retired, or at least minimized.

Obama’s already shown that he’s a master of compromise and soother of ruffled feathers when it comes to appointments, but he’s also shown that he can tip that compromise into capitulation. Or at least it looks that way.

I can’t help but think now about Obama’s former pastor and spiritual advisor, Jeremiah Wright. He was chased off the scene by his alleged racial divisiveness, a chase that Obama himself sanctioned in the end. Clearly that was more a political move than a move based on a real conviction that Wright’s scripture-based social critiques of America were wrong.

But now that the politics have paid off and Obama’s got the office he was running for, he can put forward who he wants to; he can articulate his own values without fear of retribution. That he chooses to put forward a very divisive Warren instead of someone one else—not Wright necessarily, but someone—says something about his values I’m not sure I like.

ERIN AUBRY KAPLAN is the first African American in history to be a weekly op-ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Her musings continue to appear in the Times, Essence magazine, and a host of other publications. Among her many projects, Kaplan is currently working on her much anticipated book.

HILARIOUS! Curb Your Enthusiasm's Larry David Can Feel Erin Aubry Kaplan's Pain!

Never Mind The First Lady, Larry Is Accused of Being An Ass Man!

EXCLUSIVE!!! "First Lady's Got Back" Author Comes Clean On Why She REALLY Wrote About Michelle Obama's Butt on Salon.com

Breaking the Silence

by Erin Aubry Kaplan

When all is said and done—and written—I really want just want to be popular in high school. I want to be liked, and better than that, understood.

People call my pieces controversial sometimes, but the boring truth is that I write because I want to resonate, not provoke.

I want to increase community, not sit alone atop some mountain of racial aloofness or pissed-off prophecy, gloating at the mess I stirred down below. No. To me, whatever I write about, I’m always saying the same thing to readers who I assume are my fellow travelers: Isn’t this wonderful/awful? Isn’t life glorious/a bitch? Don’t you wish things were more like this/different?

That was my frame of mind when I wrote a much-maligned piece last week for Salon.com about Michelle Obama’s butt. Well, it wasn’t really about her butt (though that was a lively starting point, for sure), it was about the psychological impact of having a First Lady who is black and, for the first time in history, who looks like me.

It was about a flesh-and-blood physical representation and affirmation that black women, and black people, have never, ever had before. It was about the American social register being turned upside down and blacks being suddenly at the top of the page instead of stuck at the bottom, or stuck wherever people want us stuck.

Lastly, but most importantly, it was about black people holding up long-debased ideas about ourselves—starting with physical ideas--to the light and saying: I’m not so bad. In fact, I’m great.

Ultimately, my piece was about removing the lens of white scrutiny and approval from the black gaze and seeing what lies underneath. Sure, there’s a lot of insecurity that’s built up over hundreds of years, but there’s also a lot of satisfaction that never had the chance to express itself. The Obamas have given us that chance. (I don’t know about you, but I always liked my butt, but never felt comfortable in saying so. Now, as you might have read, I’m saying so.)

It’s more than ironic that so many critics—many of them black-- bashed me for “perpetuating stereotypes” and “reducing” black women to “objects.” In affirming myself, I was doing exactly the opposite.

Are we all so addled by mainstream validation that we don’t see the difference between whites perpetuating exaggerated ideas of us, and us embracing something about ourselves that we like, that makes us attractive or unique?

I submit that, sadly, black folk simply don’t have a public context in which to talk about ourselves. In public discussions, we fall between two extremes: either we’re “reduced” to impersonal statistics or blown up as cartoon characters a la BET. There’s little in between. Whenever a unfamiliar take pops up, like mine, we tend to panic and hide behind well-worn positions. (Since the piece was published, I’ve been accused of being both an out-of-touch academic and an evil agent of BET and/or the white corporate media. Go figure.)

I know the black image wars very well. I’ve tracked them. I’ve written impassioned commentaries about them. I’ve been an advocate for black people and for justice of all kinds. But I see myself as a living, breathing character in all these scenarios, not a detached observer.

This stuff matters terribly to me.

I’ve actually written extensively about the butt before, namely in a 5,000-word essay I did for the LA Weekly back in 1997 called “The Butt: Its Politics, Its Profanity, Its Power.” That pretty much says it all. Of course, few were offended because I was mostly talking about myself, not the First Lady-to-be.

It seems to me that in the new era of Obama we already have a profound paradox: we are policing black images more than before, which means there’s now less room for discussions of race. Not unless it’s all positive and worthy of our new commander-in-chief.

Not only is that dishonest and ahistorical, it’s dull. People scolded me for trying to be funny. If we can’t be funny now—with a serious underside, of course—when can we?

I’m not a fool. Put race and sex together in any way, shape or form, intentionally or not, and you get a genuine American meltdown; all of us lose our minds, not just black folk. I didn’t expect a whole lot of warm fuzzies on this one, but I did expect some nods, however grudging, from my fellow travelers. I got some, for sure. But I want more. I need more.

I may not ever be class president. But I’m still going for cheerleader.

ERIN AUBRY KAPLAN is the first African American in history to be a weekly op-ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Her musings continue to appear in the Times, Essence magazine, and on the blog 3 Brothers and A Sister. Among her many projects, Kaplan is currently working on her much anticipated book.

Doing The Butt: Michelle Obama Works That Backside!

Finally, A First Lady That Looks Like Me!

by Erin Aubry Kaplan

Free at last. I never thought that I -- a black girl who came of age in the utterly anticlimactic aftermath of the civil rights movement -- would say the phrase with any real sincerity in my lifetime. But ever since Nov. 4, I've been shouting it from every rooftop. I'm not excited for the most obvious reason.

Yes, Obama's win was an extraordinary breakthrough and a huge relief, but I don't subscribe to the notion that his capturing the White House represents the end of American racial history. Far from it. There is a certain freedom in the moment -- as in, we are all now free from wondering when or if we'll ever get a black president. Congratulations to all of us for being around to settle the question.

But what really thrills me, what really feels liberating in a very personal way, is the official new prominence of Michelle Obama.

Barack's better half not only has stature but is statuesque. She has coruscating intelligence, beauty, style and -- drumroll, please -- a butt. (Yes, you read that right: I'm going to talk about the first lady's butt.)

What a bonus! From the ocean of nastiness and confusion that defined this campaign from the beginning, Michelle rose up like Venus on the waves, keeping her coif above water and cruising the coattails of history to present us with a brand-new beauty norm before we knew it was even happening.

Actually, it took me and a lot of other similarly configured black women by surprise. So anxious and indignant were we about Michelle getting attacked for saying anything about America that conservatives could turn into mud, we hardly looked south of her neck. I noted her business suits and the fact she hardly ever wore pants (unlike Hillary).

As I gradually relaxed, as Michelle strode onto more stages and people started focusing on her clothes and presence instead of her patriotism, it dawned on me -- good God, she has a butt! "Obama’s baby (mama) got back," wrote one feminist blogger. "OMG, her butt is humongous!" went a typical comment on one African-American online forum, and while it isn't humongous, per se, it is a solid, round, black, class-A boo-tay.

Try as Michelle might to cover it with those Mamie Eisenhower skirts and sheath dresses meant to reassure mainstream voters, the butt would not be denied.

As America fretted about Obama's exoticism and he sought to calm the waters with speeches about unity and common experience, Michelle's body was sending a different message: To hell with biracialism! Compromise, bipartisanship? Don't think so. Here was one clear signifier of blackness that couldn't be tamed, muted or otherwise made invisible. It emerged right before our eyes, in the midst of our growing uncertainty about everything, and we were too bogged down in the daily campaign madness to notice.

The one clear predictor of success that the pundits, despite all their fancy maps, charts and holograms, missed completely? Michelle's butt.

Lord knows, it's time the butt got some respect. Ever since slavery, it's been both vilified and fetishized as the most singular of all black female features, more unsettling than dark skin and full lips, the thing that marked black women as uncouth and not quite ready for civilization (of course, it also made them mighty attractive to white men, which further stoked fears of miscegenation that lay at the heart of legal and social segregation).

In modern times, the butt has demarcated class and stature among black society itself. Emphasizing it or not separates dignified black women from ho's, party girls from professionals, hip-hop from serious. (Black women are not the only ones with protruding behinds, by the way, but they're certainly considered its source. How many gluteally endowed nonblack women have been derided for having a black ass? Well, Hillary, for one.

But Michelle is bringing those two falsely divided minds together in a single presentation -- finally, unity for the real world! Talk about a power base. Thanks to Michelle, looking professional and provocative in a distinctly black way will become not only acceptable but also part of a whole presidential look that's more, well, inclusive.

Now we'll all be able to wear leggings to board meetings; we'll sport pencil skirts sans the long jackets meant to cover the offending rear at big conferences where we have to make a good impression. It turns out that Sir Mix-A-Lot, he of "Baby Got Back" fame, was not a novelty but a prophet.

Who knew? Give that guy a Cabinet post. Wait, there's more...

Erin Aubry Kaplan is a freelance writer and contributing editor to Opinion. She is a former weekly columnist for The Times, Essence and LA Weekly and blogs for 3 Brothers and A Sister.

Aside From The Recent Discovery of A Plot To Kill Barack, This Black Man's Campaign Has Gone Relatively Smooth

LIGHT OF DAY

By Erin Aubry Kaplan

The presidential election is coming down to its final, frantic moments, and one of the biggest shocks in a year of many is that, at this point, I have almost nothing to say.

This is an oddly pleasant shock in a notably unpleasant election season. Why pleasant? The stones I expected to be overturning to loudly describe the slimy creatures underneath have all been overturned.

Racism in advertising, running-mate incompetence, genuine public fury over the government’s weekly scramble to bail out the rich on the backs of the working and middle class (or what’s left of it), shrill charges and counter-charges of anti-Americanism that make McCarthy look a moderate—it has all come to the fore, and not a moment too soon.

Overtaken by our own missteps and a sense that we’re approaching a critical moment in our brief history, America is seeing itself plainly in a hall of mirrors it has assiduously avoided for the last several election cycles; we have no choice but to look now and realize that the distortions and grotesqueries are not tricks, but real. We may still be the most possible place on earth, but right now we’re the ugly America. We need a makeover. Bad.

Are we going to get one? Hard to say. Barack in the White House will undoubtedly give us a face-lift, a cosmetic boost to our flagging self-image and far worse international image as a guiding light of democracy where anybody with craft and ingenuity can make it.

Besides being black, Barack is young and handsome, cool and charismatic. He’s a big ego who has nonetheless encouraged people to project onto him their own image of a more perfect or prosperous America, and it’s worked. Unlike the top-down cults of personality led by presidents over the last 30 years, Barack is a tabula rasa that people have gotten behind like nothing and no one else.

I thought for sure his color and all the complex, troubled history it entails would have made that impossible; I was wrong. Oh, he still might lose the election, and he might very well lose it because of color. But his triumph as a new model of politician, especially a consensus-building black politician, is already complete. I thought a year ago that this was the worst time for a black candidate to run, with so much at stake; now I see that this is the only time that made sense.

A rookie psychologist will tell you that it’s only when all the crap gets dredged up into the light of day and all the lies people have been telling themselves are laid bare that they are most willing to make drastic change.

But the second and more urgent question is, will there be change, drastic or otherwise? Barack getting there won’t be enough. Looks are important, but they’re only the beginning, the means to an end. We’re almost done with beginning. The end, far from being the Christian apocalypse we’ve come to associate with the word, is what will save us. All of us.

ERIN AUBRY KAPLAN is the first African American in history to be a weekly op-ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Her musings continue to appear at KCET, the Times, Essence magazine, and a host of other publications. Among her many projects, Kaplan is currently working on her much anticipated book.

That Sinking Feeling: One Black Woman's Take On Sarah Palin

What Does John McCain's VP Pick Say About Us?

by Erin Aubry Kaplan

All my life I’ve resisted the philosophy of the Communist party members and other deeply disenchanted types that America is a lost cause. I’ve had my criticisms of this country, plenty of them. I still do. I don’t disagree too much with Communist Party’s analysis of America as a corporate plutocracy masquerading (very badly at this point) as a representative democracy.

But unlike the Party, I believe America can be redeemed. I believe it can change gears. I believe that beneath the rust and slime and infuriating hypocrisy is an ideal that’s battered but still intact, and we can save ourselves if we decide to use just a bit of it. I believe in a guiding light, even if we haven’t seen much wattage lately.

But with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin joined the Republican ticket as a vice-presidential candiate, I almost saw that light go out. The possibility I’ve believed in for the last 30 years felt, for the first time, like a complete sham, like I’d been believing in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

It’s not simply that Sarah Palin represents the worst American archetype out there—arrogant, cutthroat, contemptuous of any reality other than her own (which can often mean racist), smile-in-your-face smarmy, and proud of all of the above; it’s that this worst archetype represents so much of America itself.

I would like to believe Palin is on the fringe of our groupthink, but she isn’t. True, she doesn’t fully reflect all voters out there, with the exception of the rabid Christian right. But too many people identify with too many parts of her, whether it’s the Christian certitude, the unfettered ambition, the perky pitbull image, or most importantly, the blithe sense of entitlement and righteousness that markets itself as American chutzpah but is really white privilege with good PR.

Actually, white privilege in America is good PR. They’re the same thing. Whites get the fullest benefit of PR and the rest of us are always doing damage control, even when we haven’t done any damage.

Imagine, for a moment, if Barack Obama had chosen a personable but remarkably inexperienced running mate, like Snoop Dogg. Imagine Obama insisting that Snoop had the chops to run the country because he’s a wildly successful businessman and a “quick study.”

Imagine Obama touting Snoop’s commitment to his kids’ Pop Warner league as evidence that he’s just a salt-of-the-earth kind of guy and a devoted “football dad.” Imagine Snoop bragging about his small-town bona fides (he grew up in North Long Beach, one of a million small towns in and around L.A.)

Laughable, right? Right. So why is it that Sarah Palin isn’t equally laughable?

Why is her ignorance so charming, while black ignorance of any degree (associated heavily with hip-hop) so threatening? Forget ignorance for a moment--why is Barack Obama’s intelligence equally suspect?

The answer is that when it comes to marketing, that endeavor of American invention, there is no such thing as a really good Negro. There is no such thing as a Negro who credibly represents all of “us,” which we think of as hockey moms or lunch-bucket workers or Reagan Democrats. The distressing fact is, it doesn’t matter how credible Obama (or Snoop) is or isn’t, they can never be credible enough because of their color.

Sarah Palin only has to be as credible as a contestant on “American Idol,” and that’s evidently enough to capture our imagination. We eagerly lap up all the Palin details custom-built for mythology: the librarian up-do and glasses that coyly speaks to a beauty-pageant past, the red-carpet smile, the vague Minnesota accent.

What possibility, we say. Only in America could a relative (but good-looking) nobody come out of nowhere and nab the second-highest office in the land.

But I don’t want a nobody in that office. I don’t want an average hockey mom. Black or white, I want somebody qualified, knowledgeable, empathetic, even extraordinary.

Sarah Palin is none of those things, but the scariest part is, her supporters know that. But they’ll willingly swallow the hype because the alternative, putting a black man in charge (albeit with a white VP a hearbeat away), scares them—and a lot of us--even more.

That’s not possibility, that’s capitulation. Obama has said we’re a better country than we’ve been the last eight years. I’d like to believe him, but I have precious little belief in the country left. With the lack of light, my vision is getting dimmer all the time.

ERIN AUBRY KAPLAN is the first African American in history to be a weekly op-ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Her musings continue to appear in the Times, Essence magazine, and a host of other publications. Among her many projects, Kaplan is currently working on her much anticipated book.

With Brothers Dropping Like Flies, Is The Price of Policing Black Neighborhoods Too High?

FEELING LUCKY, PUNK?

By Erin Aubry Kaplan

When I moved to Inglewood, California in 2001, I was moving back after a long time away. I grew up just outside the city limits before my family moved into town when I was 15. It was homey and comfortable back then, with roomy houses, lots of backyards to go around and annual Christmas decorating competitions—middle-class and then some.

But there was simultaneously a sense of encroaching danger, a wariness of other, rougher elements that gave Inglewood a dubious reputation that dogs so many black communities...

When I moved back as a homeowner seven years ago, I found myself mulling over not the fond memories but those dubious elements--was moving back a move up? I was hardly proud of those thoughts, but there they were.

In the meantime, I relaxed into a real community life I hadn’t felt in ages. I talked to people across hedges and picket fences. I walked my dogs at night. I joined the block club that met monthly and planned summer parties and fundraisers. But over time I noticed a kind of stoic refusal to address the less idyllic happenings in town that had always been part of Inglewood’s profile, namely gang activity and shootings.

If the police were involved in the controversial shooting of a citizen—as has been happening frequently over the last year, most recently with the shootings of teenager Michael Byoune in May and postal worker Kevin Wicks last month—people had even less to say.

(Postal Worker Kevin Wicks)

The almost determined indifference to the deaths of mostly young black men was disturbing; at one meeting last year, a neighbor reported the shooting death of a 12-year-old boy in the area like he was reading a routine item from the city hall newsletter.

At meetings like this, I fumed—how could we claim to be about neighborhood improvement and safety but ignore the implications of such shootings? Yet I said nothing. The unfortunate truth is, I understood. We were—are-- grappling with a serious identity crisis that’s rooted in both class and race. Inglewood’s block-club denizens are middle-class strivers who applaud the chain stores and eateries that have appeared over the last several years--Marshalls, Ross, Starbucks, Chili’s.

They see all this as civic progress and want to protect it from the thugs and troublemakers. But the strivers and the so-called troublemakers are black. This means when a shooting death happens, black people have to choose who they are and which side they’re on. With a police shooting, whatever its merits, the stakes are higher: they have to decide whether they empathize more with the cause of social justice or material justice, whether the death of another young black man is simply part of the price to be paid for the material justice and well-being that for black folk has been too long in coming.

Of course, the choice between caring about property values and caring about the welfare of the entire community is eminently false. But that’s gotten lost in all the public concern about stamping out gangs has reached a fever pitch this past year in Los Angeles; “possible gang member” has become an almost generic description for black and brown males under the age of 30 who are apprehended by the police.

But the media-driven divide between black suspects and the rest of us—that is, between bad black folk and good—is mostly an illusion. Inglewood is a town that is not so big and the class gap not so wide that people don’t know each other.

Shooting victims live next door to solid citizens; they are somebody’s son or nephew or godchild. I’ve noticed with growing unease that Inglewood police has gotten an extra layer of law enforcement from the California Highway Patrol: On my dog walks I’ve seen more people getting pulled over, spread-eagled or handcuffed than I have in a long time. They are almost always young, black and male.

Recently I overheard a man on my block sternly warn my 14-year-old neighbor, John, to stay away from the streets and to keep his head down. He told John that trouble awaited young black men like him if he wasn’t careful. I wondered: Did he mean trouble from the police or from other young black men not as upstanding as John? Both. And this very upstanding neighbor of mine made it clear that he was speaking from experience.

I appreciated the guy caring enough to speak up and school a young boy, something black people agree we need more of. But the speaking up and coming together can’t stop at the end of anybody’s particular block. If it does, we’re all as imperiled in Inglewood, and in other black neighborhoods across the country, as John surely is now.

Former LA Weekly staff writer and weekly LA Times Columnist Erin Aubry Kaplan is currently a freelance writer and contributing editor to the Times' Opinion section.

Nevermind John Edwards' Infidelity, What About All The Brothers Missing In Action???

Rich Dad, No Dad!

Did Barack Obama have a point about absentee fathers in the African American community? Previously, Writer Erin Aubry Kaplan and Fox News Contributor Juan Williams discussed the racial significance of Obama's candidacy and the leadership and themes of the modern civil rights movement.

Now, here comes some straight talk about black men.

Point: Erin Aubry Kaplan

Of course Barack Obama had a point about absentee fathers. Nobody supports fathers, black or otherwise, going AWOL or shirking their paternal duties. Everybody knows that single-mother households are disproportionately concentrated in black communities and add to the chaos that has beset those communities since Africans first came to this country as slaves.

Nobody likes this situation.

With the possible exception of prison guard unions, people across every imaginable demographic -- black, white, poor, middle class, Democrat, Republican, Green -- would love for this problem to go away tomorrow. We'd all be better off, starting with all the kids living without their dads.

But the reason we're nowhere near solving the problem is that the whole issue of absentee black fathers and what it speaks to have been hopelessly politicized.

The right has dominated the conversation for years and put it in a moral, individualistic framework; this is where the right tends to put a lot of things, especially ones with racial implications (race and morality are very closely linked in the minds of many Americans).

Black fathers are therefore in a hell of their own making. The solution? Pull your pants up, stay away from gangs, look harder for a job, graduate from high school, pursue a college degree and take those chips off your shoulder (and take those tattoos off while you're at it).

To be fair, this isn't just what the right believes; it's what lots of ordinary black folks who are registered Democrats believe too. It's certainly not all of what they believe, but it is an expression of a larger desire to improve their community in any way that makes sense. Yet this is not a political view as much as it is a social one -- for black people, "conservative" often has little to do with party affiliation.

It's just one of the many nuances lost in the pundit-driven, polarizing non-discussion of blacks and fatherhood.Speaking of nuance, Obama's tough-love remarks about absentee black fathers, which he made in a church during his Father's Day speech, were taken out of context somewhat. The media zeroed in on his line, "Any fool can have a child. That doesn't make you a father." But if you look at the whole speech, Obama also talked about the role the government can and should play in bettering black people's lives.

For example, after detailing the responsibilities of black fathers, Obama went on to say, "It's a responsibility that also extends to Washington. Because if fathers are doing their part ... then our government should meet them halfway."

It was the kind of ideological compromise at which Obama has gotten very good, maybe too good. But the fact that these sentiments went virtually unreported is evidence of how narrowly we see the black father "debate" and how strongly we resist broadening that view into something even slightly more empathetic.

To read Juan Williams counterpoint, click here.

Erin Aubry Kaplan is a freelance writer and contributing editor to Opinion. She is a former weekly columnist for The Times and a former LA Weekly staff writer. She blogs at threebrothersandasister.blogspot.com

Will Write For Food!

Newspapers And Black Middle Class Hunker Down

By Erin Aubry Kaplan

Is broke the new poor? I certainly hope not.

But as the economy continues to spiral downward with the bottom of the well not quite in sight, I’m finally beginning to lose faith. Not in the likelihood of a rebound — that’ll happen at some point — but in my own status as a member of the black middle class.

I know that the black middle class has always been far more vulnerable than its white counterpart, for all kinds of reasons.

But I still assumed that my education level and work experience permanently guaranteed me work and a certain regard by peers and potential employers; being out of work only meant being between jobs or specialty gigs, not being at the mercy of economic forces that keep down that most unfortunate of classes, the black poor.

And there’s an almost spiritual component to my middle class-ness that goes way beyond money: It was my destiny, my responsibility. I was born in the early 60s, a member of the first black generation (i.e., the Obama generation) to cross the vast desert of segregation and Jim Crow into the promised land.

It was part of my job to never again suffer the indignities of poverty those practices had brought about for so many for so long. In other words, I had a duty to be successful and to stay that way.

But ‘staying that way’ is proving to be a treacherous task. It doesn’t help that I work in a field that’s currently going through its own economic implosion, print journalism. Newspapers (including my hometown paper, the Los Angeles Times) are contracting faster than you can read them on a daily basis.

There are too many freelance writers and not enough publications offering decent pay. I know I’m not alone in scrambling for work, and I know that writers of color are very often at the back of the line (that happens for all of us, whatever our line of work, in hard times).

Yet none of that eases my fear of failing at being the new Negro I always assumed I was. None of it quells my anxiety about winding up black and poor and becoming one of those statistics that, the 1960s notwithstanding, has stretched unbroken across generations. Black people still have a desert, but I thought of myself as travelling a parallel road in a more temperate climate. I’m finding out there may be no such thing.

ERIN AUBRY KAPLAN, a contributing blogger with 3BAAS Media Group, is the first African American in history to be a weekly op-ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Her musings continue to appear in the Times, Essence magazine, and a host of other publications. Kaplan is currently working on her much anticipated book.

Will Shrinking Music Programs & Hip Hop Make Famous L.A. Black Symphony Go Deaf?

A New Generation Tries To Get It's Groove Back

By Erin Aubry Kaplan

ON A warm afternoon, not long after most students around town have been dismissed for the summer, a group of 20 third-graders sits attentively in a classroom on an otherwise empty campus in the Crenshaw district.

Instead of books and desks, they have bows and violins -- a few of them, anyway. The rest improvise, their right hands carefully fingering the length of their left arms as they practice scales and arpeggios on imaginary string instruments.

To mimic the scales, they also sing -- do, re, mi -- with gusto. At points, the gusto gets a bit out of hand, and a few students collapse into giggles or fidget in their chairs. Teacher Anne Rardin grows stern. "You have to learn to sit up and keep your comments to yourself," she tells the students. "You can't do these things if you're going to be in an orchestra." The children fall silent and straighten up. It is their third day of instruction.

Charles Dickerson, watching from the front of the room over his glasses, nods approvingly. Dickerson is the primary music instructor at this school, View Park Preparatory Accelerated Elementary. This is his new gig: For the last four years, he has been music director and conductor of the Southeast Symphony, a historically black community orchestra marking its 60th anniversary this year.

This class is part of a new Southeast venture with View Park Prep to cultivate the next generation of black symphonic musicians, and Dickerson wants to get off on the right foot. The moment is ripe.


Late last year, the Los Angeles Philharmonic launched a new youth orchestra initiative -- called Youth Orchestra LA -- with a goal of targeting kids in underserved neighborhoods.

"We wanted to get kids at a younger age, to intervene early," says Dickerson. Pullum, a trumpet player who built a national reputation as music director at Washington Prep High School in South L.A., says the summer program is teaching 500 students a day, far more than Southeast can reach. "We want to empower people through music, though this is not about music per se," he says. "It's about discipline, practice and focus. We want to take over South-Central one household at a time."

Dickerson knew of Southeast long before he joined. The ensemble was founded in 1948 by pianist Mabel Massengill Gunn in what was then the largely black southeast part of town, at a time when blacks were shut out of most major orchestras. Southeast's mandate of providing a place for black players to hone their skills and receive support from one another is simple, but it has not always been easy to carry out.

When Dickerson took over, only four of the 56 players were African American. Now, 82 of the 95 scheduled to play in Disney Hall are black. Dickerson says he recruited hard to change the percentages because that's part of his job. "I don't apologize for wanting a black orchestra," he says. "I'm trying to get us back to that."

Still, the conservatory has been a big step in the direction of growth, even if the new demographics present a somewhat awkward situation for an organization built around serving black musicians. Dickerson says the biggest problem is that the pipeline is drying up.

In addition to the fact that music programs are shrinking, black parents aren't pushing music lessons the way they used to, he says. Kids are distracted by the Internet and iPods. Black kids are more interested in hip-hop than in classical, and hip-hop, unlike jazz and R&B before it, has no instrumental tradition. Money is tighter for everyone.

All of which makes the appearance of a countywide youth orchestra initiative targeting minorities especially timely for Southeast. It's history with the Philharmonic is a bit strained. since past outreach has consisted mostly of trying to draw audiences to its performances or of dropping in to do occasional concerts in the 'hood.

And yet there's also been a genuine connection. Philharmonic percussionist Raynor Carroll used to play in Southeast. Other Southeast alums play in the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and other established groups. Many get studio work in the entertainment industry.

Helping musicians move up is certainly part of Southeast's mission, but the other part is maintaining the orchestra for its own sake. Dickerson believes YOLA will help accomplish this. More amusing to Dickerson is that Pullum brought his boss into View Park to work for him. Other Southeast members working in the summer program include bassist Hakeem Holloway and cellist A.J. Fanning. Both say that nurturing young musicians is akin to the give-back energy of playing for Southeast.

"There's nothing like Southeast Symphony where I'm from," says Fanning, a 30-year-old Cleveland native. "This kind of program gives kids options besides sitting on a street corner playing ball." Holloway, also 30, grew up in Koreatown and got his master's in music from USC. "There's no excuse for taking arts out of schools," he says. "This is something I totally believe in."

French horn player Emily Booth is a music teacher and Southeast veteran who has been with the symphony for more than 25 years. "It provides a real opportunity for young black musicians to play music they wouldn't ordinarily get to play," she says. "You also learn to be in an orchestra, to be in the real world where you might sit next to a white guy. Southeast accomplishes both things."

ERIN AUBRY KAPLAN, a contributing blogger with 3BAAS Media Group, is the first African American in history to be a weekly op-ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Her musings continue to appear in the Times, Essence magazine, and a host of other publications. Kaplan is currently working on her much anticipated book.

The Obama's Magazine Cover Flap: From A Black Woman Who Actually Reads The New Yorker

Laughing & Other Matters

By Erin Aubry Kaplan

A disclaimer: unlike many people who are fretting about the current New Yorker cover of Barack and Michelle Obama as a militant couple-in-chief , I read the New Yorker.

I’ve had a subscription for a good ten years. I have a huge, coffee-table collection of its cartoons and anticipate its satirical or, at the very least, tongue-in-cheek cover art every other week like some people anticipate crossword puzzles on Sunday.

I like the art because it often has more barb than the pieces inside, which are usually substantive and informative, but which have an emotional restraint that often feels gimmicky and makes me impatient.

By contrast, the New Yorker art holds nothing back; it speaks loudly and immediately. And its intent is to be wicked without being savage, a rare sensibility in this era of media crudeness that considers Bill O’Reilly a newsman and deliberately confuses truth-telling with insult.

This Obama cover-- caricatures of Barack as a Muslim and Michelle as a mushroom-Afro’d, gun-toting solider in arms—is true to form. It is wicked.

In typical New Yorker fashion, it mocks not the Obamas, but the public hysteria surrounding their political ascension that ranges from stubborn accusations that Barack is a Muslim to speculation that Michelle is a closet black nationalist.

It trashes racism and intolerance, with a flag burning in the quaint fireplace to boot. I got it. But after I got it, I got worried. I looked over my shoulder and wondered what the rest of the world would make of such a purposeful exaggeration of not simply two black people, but two black people on the brink of a historical breakthrough in the American power structure.

Controversy Adds To Magazine's Ad Woes

And I knew many of my fellow Americans would see the picture not as an exaggeration at all, but as an imminent truth: This is what could happen if you let the wrong kind of people in the White House. I don’t believe for a moment this was the New Yorker’s thinking, but the unnerving fact is that Karl Rove couldn’t devise a Swift-boat ad more effective (he or an acolyte is probably working on something very similar right now). Yes, I got very worried indeed.

But my concern has nothing to do with a lack of humor or sophistication, as many New Yorker supporters and pundits have theorized with more than a soupcon of elitism.

My concern is actually far more sophisticated than that, rooted in what W.E.B. DuBois called the “double consciousness.” Like every other African American, I know that all black images—whether they appear in the New Yorker or the Source or on BET—tend to be read literally, not metaphorically.

They tend to confirm the mainstream’s many preconceived fears about black people as outsiders or criminals or in any case, people unworthy or incapable of regular American life. Think of the so-called black memorabilia that was a pillar of American advertising for so long—grotesque and grinning Aunt Jemimas, Uncle Bens, Gold Dust Twins, big-lipped pickaninnies tucking into watermelons.

There was something sinister even in black images meant to be utterly harmless. It’s therefore not at all surprising that as the Obamas become powerful in an unprecedented way, they become threatening in an equally unprecedented way, with critics seeking to expose the sinister qualities or unworthiness they are sure are lurking just beneath the smiling facades of Barack and his wife.

Even with tremendous support, the couple has little to no context to work with when it comes to media images because that’s historically been the case: Whites create and control black images and blacks bear the fallout.

We can laugh at the images and applaud good satire, but, as my brother says, in the bigger picture it just ain’t funny.

Not yet.

Though let’s face it, these are very unfunny times for Americans, especially black Americans. We’ve lost our humor and have become seriously irony-deficient because we’ve lost economic ground, civil rights, standing in the world, lives in a war we can’t justify.

To make things even more precarious, we’re trying to elect a black man as president after decades of conservatism that’s been openly hostile to the very idea of racial progress past 1970 or so.

The New Yorker cover illustrated brilliantly and urgently what we seem to be done saying in words. I just hope people see that.

ERIN AUBRY KAPLAN, a contributing blogger with 3BAAS Media Group, is the first African American in history to be a weekly op-ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Her musings continue to appear in the Times, Essence magazine, and a host of other publications. Kaplan is currently working on her much anticipated book.

For Me, Speaking Out Against This War In Iraq Is Beyond Personal

Fourth Of July

By Erin Aubry Kaplan

The image was so terrible as to be almost preposterous. A trick. I looked twice, three times, to make sure I was seeing things right.

When I realized I was, when I saw there was no reconciling the image or reducing it to something remotely encouraging, my heart sank somewhere beneath the soles of my shoes.

The photo essay in the current issue of The Nation’ magazine is only one page, titled “War is Personal.” In it, a wounded Iraqi war vet named Jose Pequeno sits on the edge of a hospital bed, his bare back to us, slumped forward into his mother’s arms. The mother’s embrace is full, her face tender; she looks weary but determined.

Also at a total loss. For her son is missing nearly half his head.

There is a big concave space where the head should be, a savage emptiness beyond which you see the wall and curtains of a bare room. The text explains that a grenade went off inside Jose’s helmet, that doctors told his mother he’d lost a couple of bottom lobes and wouldn’t live. But he did. I have no idea how. I’m not too ashamed to say that, in the long moments I sat trapped in the photo and all that it stood for, I wished he hadn’t.

I wanted mercy for Jose. I don’t, however, want it for the rest of us who have stood by and let this senseless war happen. We need to see more of this to put the rotten fruit of our irresponsibility in our faces. The physical toll of war on the people waging it is always monstrous, but Americans tend to justify it with an assumption that the fight was unavoidable or the sacrifice had to made for the cause of liberty.

That was never, ever the case with Iraq, and the worst part of it is, we knew that was the case well before this war got under way. We knew there were no weapons of mass destruction and that Al Qaeda and 9/11 had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein. We pulled the wool over our own eyes and now claim that, bad as things might be, we can’t see a way out of Iraq.

That is crap, sheer political cowardice. Having made such a mess, we have no choice but to make a way out. It hasn’t helped that we get zero pressure from an American press that, with the exception of the Nation and a few other publications, has been disgustingly, dangerously polite the last five years.

My suggestion is that we black out American Idolatry and 24-hour celebrity worship, substitute it all with war footage for about a week and see how we respond to the ultimate reality show. The raw visuals are what helped to end the Vietnam War, though it took ten years. We don’t have that kind of time anymore.

Nor do I have any patience left for feverish, election-season debates about patriotism. In short, John McCain the war vet and ex-POW has no business promoting war as patriotism’s ultimate test, and Barack Obama should have a better response to questions about fealty to his country than loudly claiming the p-word and wearing those wearisome flags on his lapel. What about ending the war? Isn’t patriotism about moral action? Isn’t that what Obama promised in the beginning?

But moral action is still our fight, not our candidates’. Jose and so many others, including hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, are suffering mightily for our sins. Repentance starts with acknowledging the truth, however damning. The photo of Jose wouldn’t let me do otherwise. I’ll let you know if I ever see his face.

ERIN AUBRY KAPLAN, a contributing blogger with 3BAAS Media Group, is the first African American in history to be a weekly op-ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Her musings continue to appear in the Times, Essence magazine, and a host of other publications. Kaplan is currently working on her much anticipated book.

My Kindred Spirit, AKA Barack Obama's Uncompromisingly Black Wife

Who's afraid of Michelle Obama?

By Erin Aubry Kaplan

The flap about the potential first lady's "image problem" proves how uncomfortable the country feels about a shift in racial dynamics. But as far as I'm concerned, I've found a kindred spirit.

As Barack Obama moved through the maelstrom of the primary season, I held my breath, along with much of black America. My fear increased in proportion to my exhilaration, at times outpacing it.

What would a country that had criminalized blackness for 350 years do when it woke up and realized it was seriously supporting a black man for president? I tracked the bad signs big and small, from the Jeremiah Wright crisis to reports that Obama's young campaign workers were getting shellshocked by racism in Pennsylvania.

Obama Inspires Versace Fashion Line

I kept my eye on the ball with an obsession fueled by a half-sensible, half-quixotic belief that if I and other concerned citizens were vigilant, we could identify any racial slime at its source and contain it before it spread into a national, nonsensical conversation.

The goal was not to keep Obama in a bubble, or even to get everybody in his camp -- this is a presidential election, after all -- just to allow a historic campaign to go forward as unimpeded as possible by scurrilous attacks rooted in his color.

But it turns out, I was looking the wrong way. Because increasingly the racial animus has been aimed not at Barack but at his wife, Michelle Obama.

I should have seen this coming. It was established early that while Barack was striving for the middle ground, trying to strike a balance between strength and inoffensiveness, Michelle was the loose cannon who didn't bother to hide her identity or racial concerns.

In the matter of blackness, she was the id to his superego. And unlike Barack, she was a typical black American with no transcendent story about immigrant parents and being raised in exotic locales; she had the black Everywoman name of Michelle Robinson.

She grew up on Chicago's ethnically isolated South Side -- wasn't poor but was hardly rich, was raised with a keen awareness of racial barriers but was also raised to achieve. She went to Princeton, excelled, retained her racial conscience but also eventually commanded a six-figure salary. All of this confuses white people mightily, far more than Barack's biracial status.

In their frame of reference, Michelle has no reason to be angry and every reason to be content.

Portrayed by the media as extraordinary, Michelle at heart is an ordinary black woman whose life experience and ambiguity about making it in white America resemble those of every other 40ish, middle-class black woman I know.

This is wonderful news for us -- we finally see an accurate reflection of ourselves in someone who may one day occupy the most exclusive address in the country. But for a good part of the nation, this is exactly the problem. Michelle's frankness about the ills of America and how they're connected to race taps into an anxiety about such a story becoming prominent and representing us all. Like so much about the whole Obama phenomenon, this has never happened. The black story has always...

Story continues over at Salon.com

ERIN AUBRY KAPLAN is the first African American in history to be a weekly op-ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Her musings continue to appear in the Times, Essence magazine, and a host of other publications. Kaplan is currently working on her much anticipated book, to be released in 2009.