Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Lookin' for Love in all the wrong places.

I think Johnny Lee put it best when he sang "Lookin For Love."
I was discussing the search for love, relationships and women with Peter and Jud after the inauguration party tonight. Peter and I were commiserating about annoying tendencies of that dating/selection scene. I brought up one about the photo section and some people's selections. I get really tired of the pictures of white girls standing in a dusty field or a jungle clearing or on a white sandy beach posing with locals (mostly children) that are always, and I fucking mean always, people of black, brown, yellow or red skin tones. This has come to be identified as the 21st century equivalent to a prevalent '90s malady of white people talking themselves up in the context of having black friends, or all my black friends say........Quit showing it to prove something. Do what you do, love and hate the entirety of humanity, but don't try to polish the turd that is you by placing it next to a bunch of African kids you took a quarter off of your privileged college life to "help". (this notion, by the way, ties into the previous post and the nod to Baldwin). So, anyways, maybe this is just the lonely, backed up me finding anything and everything wrong with prospective mates (nod to Mr Hicks), or maybe I'm just right. Who knows and, probably, who fuckin cares?

don't turn my tenets into tenements, cuz then all I'm housing is projects and resentments, the next time we meet it'll all be harsh sentiments

One of my worries after today is that the white liberal mainstream and the media will own this moment of Obama's inauguration in a way that proliferates the same ol same ol. Essentially, when we remember the basic tenet of a lot of what James Baldwin said was that true and compelling Black Liberation went, intrinsically locked together, hand in hand with a liberation for White people as well, because they needed to be liberated from the incumbent power structures and thought paradigms that create and enable things to be as they are. Now, I know a lot of people will answer my cynicism with something to the effect that electing Obama is the proof of such major change, but I disagree, we still have humongous racial divides/issues/problems in our society (as well as gender, sexual-orientation, ad nauseum). So, are white people any different on Nov. 4th than they were before? A little, but not in the big way that is necessary for true change in this instance. Are they different even after today? Maybe even a little more, but we need to start truly confronting our issues and stop skirting them based on our PC desires to remain comfortable and feel good about ourselves. This is not that well worded, argued, whatever. It's just a though-fart, just needed to get this out that we need to keep the ball rolling and not just sit complacent after making the change of electing Barack Obama, which is, in case you think I'm a total downer asshole, totally fucking awesome. Let's just keep expanding the possibilities and realization of those possibilities of awesomeness.