He Doesn’t Feel Our Pain

After listening to the President’s State of the Union address I couldn’t help but to feel a sense of loss. I understand that this was a political speech in a lot of ways and will surely be the kick-off speech to his 2012 run for re-election, but with all of its platitudes and feel good rhetoric there was something missing. Could it have been that unemployment was not mentioned? Or that the poor and the middle-class were conspicuously absent? I don’t know about the state of your union, but in my union these issues are still alive and well. I have yet to hear this President connect to the pain that so many Americans are suffering from, especially black Americans.

One of the troubling aspects of the speech was how the President basically threw American manufacturing under the bus as a consequence of globalization. He stated that the American worker had to raise their game to compete for the future. That’s funny everything I read says that the American worker is one of the most productive workers in the world. Maybe instead of prodding the worker the President should have mentioned how the worker’s boss’ have outsourced all of their jobs overseas as China’s and India’s economies are the fastest growing in the world because they are making the things we used to make. The challenge should not have been that we have to give up manufacturing to these other nations but how American manufacturing can return and compete against these other nations.

This speech is named the state of the union for a reason; instead we got the state of globalization. The President should have been imploring this nation to support and rebuild our manufacturing base and buying our products. I don’t understand how promoting one’s own nation today is now considered un-American. I guess that’s because it is no longer what is good for America it is what is good for America’s multinationals. The truth be told as we found out during the gilded age is that what is good for Standard Oil is not always what’s good for America. I know there are those who will defend this President no matter what he says and does and I understand their fierce loyalty, but this is not about personality it should be about principles.

My fear is that in an attempt to appease the wing-nuts this administration is going to cave in some form on Social Security. We will either raise the retirement age or cut some benefits to show their seriousness in cutting the deficit. What is not being discussed is that Social Security was created by taxes that we all pay throughout our working lives for the benefits we receive. This isn’t some government give away where we take general tax dollars to support the weak, aged, and affirmed. There are less draconian ways to shore up Social Security but none of this is being mentioned or even part of the discussions. The problem with negotiating with folks who want to destroy what you are negotiating is that their aim is not to salvage it but to undermine it. I think Congressman Ryan made that point crystal clear last night.

This is a future in which we will transform our social safety net into a hammock, which lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency. - Paul Ryan's remarks

So on the one hand we have the President telling American workers they have to stop whining and on the other hand we have the wing-nuts telling the American workers that they are lazy and complacent. I don’t know about you but my answer to Republicanism is not Republican lite. Just once I would like this President to speak to the pain of those folks on Main Street as eloquently as he spoke to the folks in Tucson. He should give a voice to the voiceless instead of vocalizing the talking points of the opposition. I am not naïve to the process of negotiation and it is important to throw meat to the opposition to appear open to compromise, but what has been missing from this equation is the suffering of the poor and the middle-class and the enunciation of their concerns.

Last night the President spoke to Wall Street and the business communities letting them know loud and clear that this administration is open for business. The problem with this is that they aren’t the ones suffering. The Dow is approaching 12,000, the banks are sitting on boat loads of cash, and businesses are doing likewise. These folks need signals like the millionaires and billionaires need a tax-cut. The message the President should be sending is to Main Street that this administration is serious about creating equal opportunity and securing workers rights. The problem is not the American worker it is the greed of the American corporation.

“What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures,” - Samuel Gompers (1st President of AFL-CIO)

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I Support the Middle-Class is Not a Principle

Divisions are evident here in the United States. Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama lagged in appealing to white middle- and working-class voters who supported Hillary — and former President Bill — Clinton. Now, these voters, according to recent polls, are increasingly alienated from the Obama administration. Reasons include slow economic growth, high unemployment among blue- and white-collar workers and a persistent credit crunch for small businesses. These factors could cause serious losses for Democrats this fall — and beyond. - Politico

As an instructor for a male character building class one of the sessions we cover is how important specificity is in goal setting. One of the common goals I get from my students is I want to make a lot of money. The problem with this goal is that it lacks an actual completion point or destination. How do you know when you have accomplished it or if you need to reevaluate it? I mention this because this is where the Dems find themselves today. They have no specific principles to guide their goals. What they have are a lot of warmed over “Great Society” rhetoric such as we support the middle-class. What does that even mean? To me it is similar to the “We support the troops” argument of the last administration as if anyone would say, “we don’t support the troops”.

The time has come for Dems to develop their 21st century manifesto, a pledge to America, or whatever you want to call it. This would include not only the principles for the party but also the overall vision of where they want to lead this country. The people in America are looking for answers but what they are getting is bumper stickers and disillusionment. The new direction of politics is whatever you do don’t offer specific plans or ideas-stay flexible. This may serve the short-term campaign but it does nothing for long-term governance. Over and over the American people are saying we don’t want flexible we want solutions. What the mid-term election stated loud and clear is that this was not a ringing endorsement of the Republicans, but a frustration vote against the Democrats. The reason the teabaggers made so much noise was because they were the “none of the above” selection. The problem with having only two parties is that people keep going back and forth when they get frustrated and feel like they are not being heard.

The teabaggers presented themselves as an alternative for that frustration, but the truth is that they were not what they claimed to be. Many of them were recycled and repackaged wing-nut cultural warriors. Does anyone believe that the American public in two short years has forgotten the mess the Republicans created? If that were in fact the case their approval rating might be a little higher than 30%. When you only have two choices and you feel like neither is listening to you then you can keep going back and forth like most people or you just give up.

The Republicans govern like it is a dictatorship and the Democrats like it’s a social democracy. The Republicans demand and get party unity to their core set of principles; they do it through their party system. You do not get to represent the Republican flag if you don’t hold to those principles. The Dems on the other hand have a different philosophy. They are a loose coalition that shares some common elements (we are not Republicans) but for the most part have no overarching principles. It is because of this that Republicans can so easily undermine those coalitions and stagnate any Democratic majority. The Democratic leadership knows this (but the rank and file doesn’t seem to get it) and so they are constantly afraid of the breakdown of this fragile coalition by wing-nut scare tactics. Because of this loose coalition we are not offering the American public an alternative governing philosophy. Instead of progressive versus conservative we are offering them conservative versus conservative lite.

A perfect example would be the healthcare process and subsequent bill. How this should have been handled was in the following manner. Candidate Obama should have met with Democratic Congressional leaders and said if we win we plan to tackle healthcare. What we have to decide is if we believe that healthcare in America is a right of all Americans. Is this one of our principles? If it is then we have to present this to the American people and tell them how we plan to accomplish this goal. First, we will pass comprehensive healthcare reform so that all Americans can have affordable health-care without the restrictions on pre-existing conditions, caps or limits on coverage, or the fear that the insurance company will drop them when they get sick. In subsequent sessions we will continue to refine and improve this bill as we have done in the past with social security, Medicare, and etc.

By following this simple formula for not just healthcare but any “Democratic principle” you do two important things. The first is that you provide the public and your members with a cohesive and comprehensive message. You are not debating with yourself publicly. Here is our program and here is our message. The second thing you do is define the wing-nuts so when they start talking about “death panels” and socialism you can state that this is one of our principles and we have outlined our plan. The wing-nuts have no plan to address this issue and so this is about a choice between our plan and their rhetoric. It is a choice between those who want to provide healthcare and those who don’t. A choice between those who believe it is a right and those who don’t. In order to maintain control of the message you have to keep it simple. It is always a choice between right and wrong or good and evil. The wing-nuts have mastered this strategy. Remember in the run up to the war in Iraq, it wasn’t about agreeing or disagree with policy; it was about loyalty or treason.

Americans are simple people for the most part, they don’t want complex or nuanced explanations. What the American people are looking for is simplicity: black or white, cake or pie, friend or foe. If our goal is to provide the majority of Americans with a better life then we had better learn how to govern and that begins before you become the majority. You have to craft what you stand for and what you are willing to fight for. President Obama needs to call in all of the Democratic leaders from all over the country into a weekend retreat lock the doors and let them know there is a new sheriff in town and we are going to start standing for something. We are not leaving here until we come up with some core principles and issues we all agree to support and fight for. And anyone who wants to run as a Democrat must be willing to sign on to these principles. You see it does you no good to have a majority if you can’t accomplish what you believe in or have nothing you believe in. There is no majority if you are too weak or too afraid to govern.

“And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” - Marianne Williamson

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Corporations and the Destroying of America

There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible. – Henry Ford

We are entering a new era in the history of American life. Never in our history have we faced the possibility of millions of Americans not only being unemployed during this recession but not being able to be employed once this recession ends. Many economists predict that even after we recover that the unemployment rates will continue to be high for years. Job growth has continued to shrink in America for decades as many corporations have elected to ship American jobs overseas in a race to the bottom for the cheapest labor. They have moved manufacturing from third-world country to third-world country with no regard for its long-term consequences to the American worker. Corporations have traded the viability of the American labor force for short-term profits and Wall Street ratings.

What the heads of many of today’s corporations have forgotten is that if we lose the American middle-class which was created with manufacturing there will be no one left to purchase their products. The thing that Henry Ford understood was that if his workers or the American people could not afford the products he was manufacturing then there would be no profits and that is why he wanted to pay his workers a livable wage. Now does this take away from the fact that he was adamantly anti-union? Of course not, but it does prove that he recognized how consumerism benefited not only Ford but American corporations as a whole.

When Ford started the 40-hour work week and a minimum wage he was criticized by other industrialists and by Wall Street. He proved, however, that paying people more would enable Ford workers to afford the cars they were producing and be good for the economy. Ford explained the change in part of the "Wages" chapter of My Life and Work. He labeled the increased compensation as profit-sharing rather than wages. – Wikipedia

Imagine today if someone like Ford were to once again make such proposals how they would be criticized by other CEO’s and Wall Street. This mentality of greed and getting rich at any cost by American corporations is going to turn the American economy into the very rich and the rest of us. If we do not have a vehicle for the majority of American citizens to reach and stay in the middle-class we are setting the stage for our descent into third-world status. Are we willing as a nation to accept large numbers of our fellow citizens unemployed and living on the public welfare rolls. Those same rolls we have continued to reduce in an effort to decrease our support for our friends and neighbors. At least the Europeans have laid the foundation for a support and safety net to help them adequately address the shortfalls in the capitalist model. We on the other hand have accepted the false meme of the wealthy that “good” citizens don’t take handouts.

But here is something that the wealthy have not shared with the general public, “There have been no new manufacturing jobs created in the US since 1999” - Red Alert

In addition "Middle-income families made less in 2008, when adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1999 – and the number is sure to have declined further during a difficult 2009," the Washington Post reported. "The Aughts were the first decade of falling median incomes since figures were first compiled in the 1960s."

It is no wonder the ranks of the fringe groups are growing whenever the white middle-class feel threatened there is never a shortage of scapegoats to be sacrificed. The concern of course is that the real culprits are allowed to continue business as usual while the rest of us fight it out over the crumbs that have fallen from the table. Instead of fighting over the rich folk's crumbs we need to be demanding the pie be enlarged so that we all can get our fair share. For too long we have bought the lie that there is only limited assets and that our corporate overseers know best how to distribute those assets and anyone who complains is naïve at best and a socialist at worse.

The time has come for this dysfunctional government to begin to stand up for the people of this nation and not just the corporations. We need to enact a fee on corporations who ship our jobs overseas and invest that money to allow entrepreneurs who are willing to create green sustainable manufacturing jobs right here in America to do so. You should be allowed to create jobs wherever you choose but our tax dollars should not be used to subsidize our own demise. We should be manufacturing new battery technology, wind turbines, and solar technology right here in America. It is up to our elected officials to predict the future technologies and ensure that our workers are in a position to take advantage of those trends. We have economists, experts, and futurists who have for decades predicted where technology and manufacturing are headed and yet the American worker finds themselves in this position?

The American consumer is also the American worker, and if we don't do something to protect our manufacturing base here at home, it is going to be hard to buy any retail goods. - Lindsay Graham
The Disputed Truth

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You Call This A Recovery?

You want to know why John Edwards and millions of other Americans are angry. It’s simple really, the country has been hijacked by greedy and ruthless men who don’t give a damn about the poor people left in their wake. The funny thing about America is that there is parity, it just takes longer for it to get around. In other words, the same thing that’s happening to blacks and other minorities will eventually make its way around to whites. Whether it is the epidemic of drugs or the loss of wealth, it is all just a matter of time. It is precisely this effect that causes me to not understand why there is not more coalition building going on. NEWSFLASH – It all rolls down hill people. If you are not in the top 10% of the wealthy, you are in trouble. It won’t matter what race, creed, or color you are. Greed knows no boundaries or has no racial preferences.

The following depicts the nature of the so-called Bush recovery for millions of Americans, not the ones who have received the big tax-cuts or the golden parachutes. No these are the collateral damage stories and there are millions of them every day. As more and more jobs that once promised a decent standard of living disappear and are being replaced by the minimum wage service sector jobs there will be a political firestorm. The backbone of any democracy is the middle-class. If the middle-class loses its vibrancy and is allowed to dwindle, then the stability of our government will also diminish.

Between her husband’s factory job and her intermittent work, they made $30,000 a year in the best of times, Mrs. Joos said. Since last fall, when her husband was laid off by the Merillat cabinet factory, which downsized to one shift a day from three, keeping anywhere near that income required Mrs. Joos to take a second job. She works at a school cafeteria each weekday from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m and then drives to Wal-Mart, where she relaxes in her car before starting her 2-to-10 p.m. shift at the deli counter.[1]

The average American worker is having to work so hard just to try and keep their heads above water that they don’t have time for the intricacies of democracy and this is exactly what the top 10% want. Keep the workers so insecure and busy that they don’t have time to concern themselves with the business of democracy. Every day there are more Americans placed in these tenuous positions of having to decide how they are going to make ends meet. It is no longer the illegals or the minorities, but mainstream Americans are having to move back home at middle-age or downgrading their life-styles.

It is not a lack of hard work that has placed them in these positions, but a pattern of corporate greed and a race to the bottom of the wage ladder. In an effort to maximize profits, jobs are being moved to the lowest wage earner countries that are stable enough to sustain their slave workforces. While all this is taking place the politicians and the “experts” are saying don’t worry, be happy. We don’t need those jobs anyway, we will replace them with new better jobs. Tell that to Jeffrey Evans, who now lives with his mother at 49 because his factory job laid him off and now he is working for half as much at one of these “better jobs”, or the wife that has to take on a second job.

Mr. Evans said that moving back into the home where he grew up, after decades of independence, was a stinging reminder that “I lost everything I worked for all my life.”

His mother, Shirley Sheline, 73, had worked 28 years at the same auto parts plant, and shares his dismay. “Can you believe it, a grown man forced to move back with his mother,” she said.[2]

There is growing disappointment for millions of Americans as they watch their standard of living drop precipitously, while at the same time the corporate class standard of living continues to rise. They are no longer buying into the rising tide or trickle down economic garbage they are being fed. There is a trickle coming down all right, but it isn’t economic prosperity, it’s someone pissing on them. The bottom is about to fall out of this economy. The banks and Wall Street have built a house of cards that is about to collapse and it will take with it the dreams and futures of a great many Americans. They have layered so much false paper in their business practices that they now have to go begging from foreign investors to put value back into the economy.

Now more than ever we need someone to step up and face down the greedy. It is time for America to be told some hard truths, the jobs that we are hemorrhaging are not coming back. We need to come up with jobs that provide living wages and a decent standard of living. These jobs can and should come from our efforts to detox ourselves from the current sources of energy. This task will not be easy because the current crop of CEO’s are too greedy and short-sighted to willingly give up their cash cow which is predicated on our current sources of energy. They no longer should be given a choice, it is time for the government to lead with either the carrot or the stick.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/16/us/16ohio.html
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/16/us/16ohio.html

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Shrinking Middle-Class; Shrinking Labor

There has been much talk lately about the state of the middle-class, the insecurity of workers, and the flat-lining of wages in America. Much of the debate has revolved around the changes in the make-up of our labor force today. It has been erroneously reported that the shrinking of wages and of the middle-class is due to our no longer being a manufacturing society and due to out-sourcing. While this provides a convenient foe, it does not accurately depict the situation. There is a direct correlation between the flat-lining wages and the shrinking middle-class with the reduction of the labor movement in America. The only groups who have seen real growth in wages the past few decades are groups who are represented by unions. If this is true, then why are unions and the labor movement not more powerful and vibrant?

The reason is simple, corporate America and their Washington whores have gutted the labor movement in America. The only defense that middle-income folks had against the big money lobbyists and government thieves were the unions. The unions allowed the workers to pool their resources to be able to fight against the influence of corporate America. They provided cover for and contributions to politicians with the courage to stand up to corporate America. Unions for many years were the driving force behind the increase in the standard of living for all working Americans, not just their union members. Unions allowed the development of a strong middle-class which is essential to a thriving economy and a vibrant democracy. It was the unions that guaranteed their workers an honest wage and a secure job environment. How many of today’s workers cite job insecurity as a major concern with the economy?

While the unions provided many positives for their members, they also provided excesses for their leaders. I would be remiss and disingenuous if I only extolled the positive without the negative, there were many instances of abuse of power in many unions by leaders. However, that abuse of power is not because of unionism, isn’t it more because of a human frailty; greed? The problem is that corporate America began a campaign decades ago to destroy the labor movement in America, the labor movement through unions offered the only protection of the American workers against the type of abuse that they are suffering today. With the help of their “political allies” in Washington, corporate America has used the broad brush of union corruption and legal defeats to cripple the unions and the labor movement in America as a whole.

The great sit-down strikes and labor uprisings in the 30s and 40s brought our nation close to real democracy when the voices of the majority, American workers, was heard loud and clear. Corporate thugs, police agencies, and federal troops openly murdered workers and their families. The corporate media supported those actions, even calling for hanging of labor organizers. Unfortunately, labor leaders mistakenly accepted the passing of the National Labor Relations Act [NLRA] as remedy. Nothing more than deception, the Act reaffirmed the Corporation's superiority over the Constitution and made the criminal behavior by employers, labor violations, effectively undermining rights our founders sought to give. Each time labor stood up and mobilized, the Corporation, with the aid of congressional pimps and the corporate media, passed new labor acts to beat down the rights of workers. A prime example was the passage of Taft-Hartley.[1]

Using PR firms and restrictive organizing regulations supported and sponsored by the politicians, corporations have created an atmosphere of appeasement and apathy for today’s workers. Many of today’s “high tech” workers have been brainwashed to believe that the cause of labor no longer applies to their concerns. I have been at many tech jobs where the younger workers have blamed labor for the loss of industry and jobs. Many of today’s workers do not believe that labor is relevant anymore. There is only one small problem with this thinking, as the unions have shrunk the disparity between the salaries of the average worker and the top executives have reached all-time highs. Are we to believe that this is a coincidence? Correspondingly, the wealth of our nation is also being concentrated in to fewer and fewer hands. The American worker has been sold a bill of goods concerning the labor movement and its relevancy to their lives.

Without a strong labor movement including unions the American worker is at the mercy of greedy corporate executives and money grubbing politicians. The call of the union is just as relevant today as it ever was, there is strength in numbers and solidarity. It is foolish for today’s worker to rely on the benevolence of corporations, just as it was foolish for their grandparents to do so. Today’s worker must not buy into the hype that the dynamics of our economy and industries have outgrown the need for labor and unions. If nothing else the proof is in the fact that corporate executive compensation has increased at the same time workers compensation has decreased or flat-lined. Never in our history has there been disparity on the scales we are now witnessing.

These are outcomes of the long, unfolding crisis, not root causes. Despite the novelty, but obvious seriousness, of the current debate, U.S. Labor did not arrive at this point of historic impotence in just the past several years. This downward spiral has been in process for decades. Workers at the base became painfully aware that corporate capital was breaking the so-called "social contract" many years ago. Their initial anticipation that leaders of the nation's unions might devise appropriate strategies to resist or blunt the assault or that, in many instances, their own local determination to fight back would be welcomed and fully supported was one of the first casualties of this new chapter of class warfare being written in America.

Unabated disinvestment, corporate whipsawing of one plant's workers against another's, job blackmail, often with union leadership complicity, and a magician's trunk full of solidarity-busting workplace reorganization schemes had, by the mid-1980s, become the backdrop for the renewed concerted employer aggression. Most labor bureaucrats were either untrained and/or more often unwilling to venture out of their comfort zones to lead struggles against this eviscerating reality.[2]

[1] http://www.labornet.org/news/0106/wvwarzon.htm
[2] http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/tucker210705.html

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The Hidden Rules?

Have you ever noticed how we look at each other and based on our clothes, our language, and our body language we make decisions about people. I have people do it to me all the time and it is not based entirely on my being black. I dress a certain way, I speak a certain way and people make assumptions about me. If they take the time to know me and I give them the opportunity to know me, many times they are surprised to know who I really am. People assume that I will identify with their thoughts and ideas based solely on what they perceive about me through those outward manifestations.

Did you know that we all have hidden rules that we abide by? Oh, don’t look for them because they are never written down, but everyone in our sphere of contact knows them. Those who are not in our sphere do not know them. And this is how we tell who we can share and bond with and who we can’t and it doesn’t matter what color they are because these rules are deeper than color. Poor people bond together usually no matter what color they are because they know “the rules”, just as rich people bond together regardless of color because they know “the rules”. We base many of our assumptions about people we encounter everyday based on these unwritten rules.

So just what are these rules and who created them. The thing about these rules is that because they are unwritten none really knows where they came from, but they are taught to every generation. This is why you see young white men in ghetto situations taking on the characteristics of the dominant culture. Their speech, dress, and attitudes toward relationships change. They learn “the rules” are they are ostracized or physically harmed. In, the same way those young black men that are raised in affluent situations take on the characteristics of the dominant culture. Their speech, dress, and attitudes change. Hence, the infamous, he is so articulate. Both learn and imitate the values of the group they are exposed to. We have seen cases of both in all of our daily lives and sometimes it makes us just shake our heads in wonder.

“One of the key resources for success in school and at work is an understanding of the hidden rules. Hidden rules are the unspoken clues that individuals use to indicate membership in a group. The chart on hidden rules (see p. 5) provides details, but generally, in middle class, work and achievement tend to be the driving forces in decision-making. In wealth, the driving forces are the political, social, and financial connections. In generational poverty, the driving forces are survival, entertainment, and relationships. That is why you will have a student whose Halloween costume cost $30 but the textbook bill is not paid. Relationships and entertainment are more important than achievement.”[1]

Ruby Payne is an educator and lecturer; she has done extensive work in the field of these hidden rules and how they affect our interaction with the world, our successes, and our failures. She has made a list of some of the more common hidden rules that govern us not based on race, but based on class. I have always been a firm believer that race and class clashed and became inextricably connected in America through the slavery experience. Prior to the slave trade in America slavery was never for in perpetuity, all slavery was temporary. You were a slave for awhile and then you became free when your time was up. That all changed and with it race became more important than class. Now we cannot see one for the other and it is clouding our ability to move past the one to work on the other.

Payne’s journey into class consciousness began more than 30 years ago, when she met Frank, the man who would become her husband. Ruby was raised in a middle-class Mennonite family in Ohio, while Frank grew up in extreme poverty in Goshen, Ind. As Ruby began to spend time in Frank’s impoverished neighborhood, she realized that she didn’t understand the first thing about the lives of the people who lived there — and they didn’t get her, either. Frank’s friends were appalled that Ruby didn’t know how to defend herself in a fight; Ruby was stunned that her neighbors would regularly get paid on Friday and, after a weekend of carousing, be broke by Monday.

As Payne studied her new surroundings, she came to appreciate more subtle nuances of class division. She realized that her husband’s family’s poverty was what she would later come to call “situational”: they had been middle class until Frank’s father died when Frank was 6, and only then had they slipped down to the economy’s bottom rung. Most of their neighbors, by contrast, were in “generational poverty,” meaning their families had been poor for as long as anyone could remember. Each group, she discovered, had its own distinct set of beliefs and customs.

Payne believes that teachers can’t help their poor students unless they first understand them, and that means understanding the hidden rules of poverty. The second step, Payne says, is to teach poor students explicitly about the hidden rules of the middle class. She emphasizes that the goal should not be to change students’ behavior outside of school: you don’t teach your students never to fight if fighting is an important survival skill in the housing project where they live. But you do tell them that in order to succeed at school or later on in a white-collar job, they need to master certain skills: how to speak in “formal register,” how to restrain themselves from physical retaliation, how to keep a schedule, how to exist in what Payne calls the “abstract world of paper.”[2]

Ms. Payne teaches that it is unfair to hold others to these hidden rules that they are not familiar with. We assume because we were raised with these hidden rules that everyone else has been taught them as well and we become shocked or disappointed when others do not abide by them. And in fact we all have been raised with these hidden rules, it’s just that different groups have different rules. And rarely in the majority culture is it necessary to know the rules of the other groups. These rules she uses of course are based on lots of people and are not laws, they are just rules. They are some people whom they will not apply to. But for the most part they go a long way in explaining behavior and motivations. Many whites can never understand how seemingly successful people, both black and white can sabotage themselves for what appears to be no reason. We have a saying in the “hood”, “You can take someone out of the ghetto, but you can’t take the ghetto out of someone.”

Truth be told, these people are still being directed by their hidden rules. Unless these rules are replaced with new rules they will continue to control an individual’s life and choices. Just because I am now successful doesn’t mean I identify with other successful people. This is why whites discriminate between “old” money and “new” money. Old money has had generations to get use to having money; new money has not become comfortable with having money. Lottery winners are a prime example of those who are not accustomed to having money.

While I found a lot of her concepts valid, I don’t think Ms. Payne recognized or gave enough emphasis to the racial component of these rules. We have cultural rules as well and sometimes those can cause misunderstandings. Overall, I think that her ideas are valuable for educators and those who interact with people in another class and to help create an atmosphere of understanding and a bridge to communication.

I think that we here in “Blogoworld” suffer from these same symptoms. We come here and share ideas and think we also share “rules” and when we realize we don’t it is sometimes difficult to accept that others may still be sympathetic but in their own way, in a way that their rules allow or expresses. Many here are shocked when expressions of color or race are depicted and it makes them uncomfortable, because in their rules we just don’t talk about those things. We are color-blind, well that is not accurate and prevents meaningful dialog. I guarantee you if you are in an urban setting and 2-3 hip hop boys come your way on a dark street you will begin to notice color very quickly. If we are to come together and overcome the myriad of issues that confront us as a nation we must take the time and effort to know one another and not assume we know each other, but actually talk, discuss, argue, debate and not be fearful of the consequences. We must each one of us search our own consciences, fears, and prejudices. I can‘t get help if I can’t admit there is a problem.

There will always be those who can never overcome the stigma of racial superior thinking and that is their loss, but for those of us who are genuinely serious about addressing race in America, we must begin the dialog and not just here in Blogoworld, but in our homes, local communities and states. We should engage each other in personal ways, spending time with one another. This is no easy task, but it is one that some of us must try. It is in our “rules” to try and keep trying.

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[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/magazine/10payne-t.html?em&ex=1181793600&en=f7b3f9766a0e0792&ei=5087%0A

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/magazine/10payne-t.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5087%0A&em&en=f7b3f9766a0e0792&ex=1181793600

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