The Counterpublic Papers vol. 3 no. 28

There’s a certain type of story the Washington Post and New York Times runs every now and then, featuring a voter who’d voted for Trump but realized he made the wrong decision. Last week the NYT ran a twist on this story, posting a video about the Arizona school teacher strike and the number of Republicans who finally realized that cutting taxes wasn’t the solution. Something like this doesn’t just come out of nowhere. There’s really no inherent reason why teachers looking at crumbling schools and their own paychecks decide to strike. (Remember when gas hovered around $4/gallon around most of the US and some argued that when it got to $4.50 people would riot in the streets? No. More like, people would carpool.) Something had to happen—in this case the other strikes happening around the country, combined with a sense that the narrative striking teachers in those other instances used in talking about their strike, was true. Someone had to perform a lot of work to get people to realize that their own politics needed changing, that there was something wrong with the way they thought the world worked. I can’t do that work, and I applaud anyone who decides to do it.

About a week later the Cosby verdict came down.

Since facebook’s devolution, there are really only three or four arguments that reappear on my timeline. Particularly around playoff time there’s Michael Jordan vs LeBron James. I know white men have an opinion on this, but on my timeline whenever this argument pops up (i.e. whenever i feel like starting something) it’s black folks involved. Primarily black men. The folk who support Jordan usually bring up the fact that he’s 6-0 in championship series, while folk who support James usually bring up the fact that on more than one occasion he’s taken teams that have no business advancing past the second round to the championship, and he’s been great for pretty much 15 years straight. (James by the way, even though I resemble a lot of the Jordan demographic being that I’m of a certain age.)

There’s sugar vs savory (cornbread/grits). This is a black thing and then also a southern thing—I don’t have a whole lot of white southern friends but I’m betting they go about as hard on this as black folk (south or no) do. Some of us eat grits with sugar and butter, and some prefer it with salt, pepper, and bacon/cheese flavoring. Some of us prefer cornbread to taste cake-like, while some of us prefer our cornbread to taste more like buttermilk. This argument’s interesting, because while the Jordan/James argument gets heated, no one ever moves into the terrain of authenticity, this one does. Folk who don’t think grits should ever be eaten with anything even tasting remotely like sugar will be quick to call one’s identity into question if said person (who just so happens to look like, talk like, act like, and have the same name as, well, me) suggests that maybe perhaps grits were in actual fact made to be consumed with sugar. (It’s also interesting because the two preferences often flip-flop—folks who like cornbread sweet over like grits savory and vice-versa.)  (Savory. Sugar. Since I’ve moved to Baltimore I’ve garnered an appreciation for savory grits—a christmas dinner at Morgan State introduced me to the North Carolina specialty shrimp and grits and for the first time I got it—but if I could destroy every single box of Jiffy I would.)

And then there’s Cosby. There are folk who believed he was guilty almost immediately. And there are folk who believe he was set up. Even after the number of people who came forward. Even after it was clear that these rumors weren’t constructed. Since the verdict this week, there’s a new hitch, with some simply suggesting that he’s being found guilty while whites (Trump, Weinstein, Lauer, etc.) have as of yet not even been tried. Now I know that there are white men and women who’d argue all day for Jordan or James, I just haven’t seen them. I know there are white men and women (again likely from the south) who’d “cut you to the white meat” if you had the nerve to suggest grits should/should not be eaten with sugar, I just haven’t seen them on my timeline. I think there are about as many whites who believe Cosby was set up, as there are blacks who voted for Trump.

Whenever the Washington Post or the NYT run one of the feature stories about trump voters more than one person derisively comments that these folk should’ve seen the light somehow in the first place. That whatever they get it’s their fault.

And I suppose one could argue it is.

But what strikes me about these attacks is that they work on the assumption that the person doing the attack and perhaps the group that person identifies most with isn’t capable of making the same type of decision. Isn’t capable of looking at data face to face and deciding not to see it. And we all are. Tribalism has no color.

(The Cosby Show was wonderful. Cosby’s comedy is side-splitting. He is a rapist and a criminal. I can hold both of those ideas in my head at the same time.)

….

Events this week:

Monday (tomorrow) one of the 1968 projects we’ve been working on for most of the year is going to come to fruition. All day conference at the Hopkins Medical Campus, held at the Turner Auditorium. Highlights include a panel featuring Sen. Barbara Mikulski, Taylor Branch, Rep. Elijah Cummings, and Lt Gov Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a conversation between CAS Co-Director Katrina Bell McDonald and Ericka Huggins (Former Black Panther), and a concluding panel featuring activists and organizers from 1968 and 2018.

Wednesday, Red Emma’s is hosting an event on the upcoming state elections, designed to get Baltimore’s left community to be more active in contesting Governor Hogan (who is up for re-election). Marc Steiner is hosting. I’ll be the keynote speaker.

Thursday, Red Emma’s and the Center for Africana Studies is co-hosting an event featuring Maurice Hobson, author of THE LEGEND OF THE BLACK MECCA: POLITICS AND CLASS IN THE MAKING OF MODERN ATLANTA. No modern American city captures the black popular and political imagination than Atlanta. I’m not involved (well, CAS is helping to bring him) but I’ll be there.

It’s supposed to be 90 degrees this Friday. Last day of class Tuesday. May’s going to be mad, but finally, finally it’s here.