Yeah, the problem doesn’t exist.  Just by virtue of the fact that black people are inherently cool.  If there are nerds among us, they are anomalies, probably infected at birth by the same gene that makes white people smart, yet incredibly uncool.

Tongue in cheek, people.  Stay with me.

I’ve been listening to the unelected Black Nerd spokesman, McWhorter (and sometimes, Stanley Crouch), bitch about this “black nerds slammed for actin white” problem for what seems like a decade.  I didn’t even know that group needed representation.  I picture a whiny coven of old men plotting revenge over the ass whoopin’s and ego bruising they received as children.  Yeah.  Children are cruel (ever read Lord of the Flies?).  Get over it.  Stop turning your humiliation into a book, just because you have the nerd cred, i.e. degrees and media access, with which to do so.

Now that Barack Obama’s on the scene, McWhorter says black nerdiness is “in”–as if it were ever “out.”  If you grew up in a black neighborhood, “black” and “nerd” go together like no-name kicks, high water pants and coke bottle glasses. Like the cute girl with the pigtails who stayed behind after class to talk to the teacher.  Like the kid who the principal always singled out for good behavior.  Like every freshman class at Morehouse.  Like the kids who lived in fear of the 3pm bell.  And yes, like the kid who got jawned on for “actin’ white.”

Point is: this was a problem for a very specific group of black nerds.  So it is intriguing that McWhorter can push the angle that because black nerds were smart, they got jawned on for actin’ white and then get media play like it somehow indicates a problem for black America.  I mean, really?

I have another angle on McWhorter’s thesis. I came up in the prep school system and I distinctly remember thinking, about some of my peers, “I know we attend white schools but do you have to sound white, too?”

I never thought this about the few black kids who grew up on the UES or in the Village; I thought this about the kids who, like me, took trains, planes and automobiles home to working or middle class black neighborhoods but still managed to sound like the subculture who summered in East Hampton. I mean, really?

And sometimes, they pulled rank.  I remember one private school senior speaking down about her Bronx family members in front of a small assembly of tony Manhattanites and me. Her facial expression, tone of voice–both implied, with some show of shocked disgust, that her cousins treated her different because she valued education and they did not, she valued “proper English”, but they did not. I cringed in my seat.  “Ever think,” I wanted to say, “that you stand out among your family because y’all live in the South Bronx but you sound and act like a stereotypical Upper East Side JAP?”

I remember this incident though, because of the girl’s mother.  She’d sought me out after the panel, perhaps because I was the only other black person there and was a few years older than her daughter.  She was West Indian, like me, and spoke with a 24/7 Caribbean accent like my mum.  So I code-switched and inflected my speech with a little Caribbean dialect, too.  The woman’s eyes lit up and she said,  “Come meet my daughter!”

Her daughter was less than thrilled.  She didn’t need a mentor, which is what her mother was trying to force upon both of us in the parking lot of the school’s campus.  The meeting ended awkwardly.  I tried to get the mother to smile.  Her daughter’s first-class education–the thing for which she had undoubtedly sacrificed–formed the chasm that now separated them.  I understood that from my own life.  But how difficult it must have been for the mother to at once, feel pride to watch her daughter speaking on a panel but then, listen to her child denigrate their family in front of strangers.  Talk about an Imitation of Life moment.

McWhorter’s bully and my private school example represent two sides of the same coin.  They speak from the same bleak landscape of low self worth in that they both equate “being educated” with the race to which they do not belong*.  Now, why doesn’t McWhorter make that point?

* I write this, recognizing that race is socially, not biologically, real.

The tub was slippery.  The scene was romantic…so romantic that I almost — almost, lost my heterosexuality.  And to tell you the truth, I think Jim felt the same way.  The lighting was perfect.  The Champagne wasn’t bad either.  The bubbles were very…bubbly.  All it lacked was music.  Sinatra would have been nice.

Don’t know that I believe that Carrey was as tempted – if he has any yearnings for same sex-sex those yearnings were certainly quashed, at least temporarily, by this creepy encounter.

I am not sure if this episode is evidence that gay-teasing is still acceptable in mainstream humor or that people have progressed enough that King can joke around about a bit of a man crush on the svelte Carrey.

Before the second group really announced themselves a woman from the Bronx group explained.

“They are AIDS housing activists. I don’t understand what they are protesting about. People with AIDS get plenty of housing,” she said.

The coalition, as it turned out, was protesting Bloomberg’s proposed cuts to the Scatter Site II program which provides people living with AIDS housing and therapy. The contract for Scatter Site II is expiring this coming June and the Mayor has signaled that he might not renew it.

Many of those in the program would be moved into unsupervised housing that would not include any kind of counseling and supervision, according to Kenneth Whitmore a housing developer specialist with Floating Hospital.

“Remember the housing crisis in the eighties?” Whitmore said, if the city makes cuts to the Scatter Site II program “it would be the same all over again.”

But some policy experts say that the programs are poorly run. Housing Works Director of New York Policy Kristin Goodwin said in a recent article in AIDS Issues updates that Scatter Site II’s initial assessments of the clients are poorly done and people are placed in housing who may really need more serious treatment.

“The problems with Scatter Site II are structural,” Goodwin said.

For Alberto Cardona the protests are to maintain a program that he says saved his life. He was homeless with HIV when he enrolled in the program.

“Once I became homeless none of my friends were there for me” Cardona said.

“[Scatter Site II] allowed me to come in. I was without clothes on my back, they provided me with shelter…they immediately transformed me into a working individual.”

Your grandma’s eggnog, it ain’t.

Coquito, the Puerto Rican version whose ‘kick’ depends on the cojones of its maker, drew hundreds of party-goers this Saturday to el Museo del Barrio in East Harlem.  The seventh annual coquito-tasting contest featured more than 30 entries from as nearby as 110th and Third Avenue, to as far away as the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania.  What everyone shared though was a love of Boricua heritage and an undeniable desire to keep a family Christmas tradition alive.

“Coquito is about a cultural connection,” said Debbie Quiñones, who flitted here and there all evening, trying to make sure her ‘extended family’ was all right.  She hosted the first tasting party in her apartment.  When the gatherings became too large, three years ago, she chatted up a welcoming neighbor: el Museo.

But, “It’s growing bigger than what we can handle!” el Museo’s director of public programs, Gonzalo Casals said onstage, sharing a laugh with the overflow crowd.

Well before the pouring, yelling, jostling and tasting began, it was clear that coquito (literally, small coconut, in Spanish) was so much more than the yummiest drink, ever.

“I’m the only one in my family who makes coquito,” said Enid Rodriquez, who was participating in the contest for the first time.  “Throughout the years, the tradition has gotten lost in the family and I was the one who picked it up.”

Iris Mendez, bottle #10 and also a first-timer, debuted her mother’s recipe.  “I hope I get lucky tonight,” she said, “because there’s lots of competition here.”

Martha Laureano-Perez, bottle #21, entered the recipe of her late husband, Richie Perez, a well-known human rights activist who died in 2004. “We were married for 23 years and every Christmas we made coquito together.”

This year’s winner, a husband and wife team who concocted bottle #15, accepted with a nod to their New York roots: Hunts Point, the Lower East Side and of course, Harlem.

After the tasting, everyone rocked their hips to the transplanted African rhythms of Segunda Quimbamba and head-nodded as poet, Emanuel Xavier, essentialized what it was and is, to be Nuyorican. (In his “Nueva York” poem, below, listen carefully for, “papitos vendiendo coquitos mientras brown-skinned project mothers crossed themselves every morning before heading off to the factories or going off to do the compras…”)

The museum event ended around 8:30pm with little to no coquito left.  No doubt, the after-party duró toda la noche.

Cast in all black and white the piece attempts to show Obama’s connection to the governor because Obama helped with Blagojevich’s campaign in 2006. I wonder if the guilt-by-association trick will work better this time around than during the election. But this case is certainly an even more bizarre attempt at a connection – what kind of headline do the Republicans hope to make:
OBAMA HELPED FELLOW STATE DEMOCRAT TO CAMPAIGN FOR REELECTION

Pretty unimpressive stuff.

Mccain is distancing himself from the attack ad (aren’t those over?!) – perhaps uncoincidentally during an interview when he said he might not support a Palin presidential bid. The whole venomous attack thing is something that has hurt Mccain several times. Bush used it on him in 2000 and his own attempts to play those hands might have cost him this past election.

Which makes me rather wonder what the RNC is up to on this. What will de-legitimizing and incoming president during a time of grave crisis do for them? Is it just a reflexive blow from punchers that have trained to hard to miss a small opening?

I would like to see some good analysis on this folks.

In both cities the reason might have to do with migration patterns. American women who are better educated these day then their male counterparts, flock to cities for jobs and husbands. They want guys of comparable education and earning potential, say Richard Florida, author of the Creative Class. According to Florida’s singles map there are 210,000 thousand more single girls than guys in the New York-Northern Jersey area.

When their are fewer options those options start looking a lot better. Some people will even eat at Mcdonald’s when that’s the only thing open.

In Bangkok this situation is even more wonderful (from a guy’s perspective). There are 547,000 more women than men in the marriage year between 20 and 44 – that’s a huge number when the group we are talking about has less than 3 million.

This enormous gap (500,000!) is due to a massive in-migration of women into the city and a flight out of BKK by the men according to a report from the Economic Institute at Kobe University. Bangkok is a service economy of finance, hotels, and restaurants – all areas where women are thought to better employees in Thai eyes.

Bangkok’s men (who like American men are less educated than their female peers) often leave the city to work in heavy industry and manufacturing.

This leaves the city incredibly gender lopsided – walking around Bangkok ourists often wonder – where did all the men go? The images of the protests were so female dominated that it felt like you were looking at a women’s liberation movement instead of an anti-goverment rally.

But that’s just Bangkok.

Did I come to the wrong rally?

And its for that reason that you hear the same complaint from women there that you do here in big NYC – all the good ones are taken and the rest aren’t too good.

I am sure people have always feared the “fourth estate,” but the past decade has seen an increase in the barriers companies, government departments and even nonprofits put up between themselves and journalists. Gone are the days when a reporter can just saunter into the police department and shoot the shit with the workers. Now there are “public information officers” whose job is to dole out sanitized versions of the facts to reporters. Very often, these PIOs don’t even do that, as I’ve experienced time and time again with the New York Police Department. But when I’ve pointed out that if they don’t speak to me, it will make them look bad, they just take down my number and promise to pass it along. The message they are sending–loud and clear–is I JUST DON’T CARE.

As the next generation of journalists, it’s up to us to educate government officials, corporate hacks and everyone else that it’s actually in their interest to talk to us and explain their side of things. Most journalists aren’t out to get their sources, but simply want to report what’s happening. Unfortunately, that’s a point that seems to lost on most people.

What do you think? Can journalists do anything to counter the trend of companies and government creating strict procedures about speaking with the press? Is it a matter of making friends with the people you want to become your sources? Is it a matter of bidding your time, until hesitant sources begin to trust you?

“I’ve found out the following from twitter: that my neighborhood in West Hollywood was in lockdown, being searched for an armed gunman; that the earthquake I felt was powerful but doing little damage, and that the NoOnProp8 protests in my neighborhood were peaceful but growing exponentially. I got this info minutes – and in some other cases, hours – before it was available from other news sources online.”

“What does get lost with this tool is it is missing a specific socioeconomic class of people that journalists should not ignore. It just requires them to go out and talk to them face to face – and that isn’t as instant as the group of people on Twitter.”

I’d go further than UMiz new media prof, Jen Reeves, above, and say that Twitter excludes most of the world’s people and what’s happening to them in their neighborhoods.  I care less about the platform, more about whom I’m talking to.  So far, Twitter is breaking news/running commentary from the college-educated, technofiles and the upper middle class.  Our media is already an echo chamber for the privileged so I’m cautious of any technology making it easier to remain that way.  It’d be very cool though, if people in Brownsville, Bed-Stuy, Upper Harlem, the South Bronx and Jamaica, Queens could Twitter with each other and the privileged.  Who wants to help me invent that platform?

“I don’t know, John. Should journalists use the telephone? The fact that you cannot see the other person is only the most obvious of that platform’s limitations. What do others think? Join the conversation: is “telephone” just a stupid audio trick?”

“Twitter takes nothing, it’s only a fragment of the whole that makes a news story.
In a 24/7 news cycle it is probably one of the greatest (and cheapest) ways to gather and distribute information. That is, if journalists are open to learn how to use Twitter, and listen. Without ever forgetting the basics of the trade.”

“Maybe one of the Tweet Revolutionaries can explain how Twitter helps with the much more crucial tasks of connecting dots, situating events in their proper context, explaining and analyzing complex issues, etc. If our information culture did a better job at the latter, I suppose I would be a lot less concerned about all the hype devoted to the former.”

“And these “Tweet Revolutionaries” you refer to, who are supposed to unfold the awesomeness of Twitter for explanation, background, context, as well as breaking news, of course… who are they? Or are these simply the people you really, really, really want to argue with, whether or not they exist?”

“I think journalists should follow people relevant to their beat in order to get some sense of the what people are talking about and to cultivate sources. Twitter may not connect the dots, but it does an awesome job of letting you subscribe to lots and lots of important ones.”

Read more (and comment!) on CJR’s page.

I didn’t say anything. I was too busy looking at the burn mark that landed an inch below my boyfriend zone. High school dances popped into my head, where the guy wants to cop a feel but doesn’t want trouble so he rests his hand just above your rump but below the small of your back. High thigh was this guy’s compromise.

“Oh, that don’t mean nothing,” Unknown Tab Payer said. I was still looking at my thigh as though it belonged to another chick–specifically, the pole-humping one in the music videos. Did this dude just smack me on my thigh? Really, really close to my a$$?

I mumbled something about him having overpaid (he put $40 on a $13 tab) and while he was telling me to get another drink, I walked back to my table with my head still in 40 seconds ago, replaying the smack. It was a rare moment where I was too shocked to catch an attitude. And, here’s the other unexpected part: I’m actually grateful.

Twenty years of riding New York City subways and stomping these concrete streets as a young, black female is enough to dry husk the Pollyanna out of any woman-child. It feels good to be surprised by boorish behavior. Like, maybe, even after all of this:

I was 12 when I started riding the train to school alone and when random men began to press against me on the overcrowded 6 train in the mornings. Strangers have shown me their free willy’s on subway platforms. Grown men have hissed at me while, as a young girl, I walked with my mother. One young man wished AIDS upon me after I rebuffed him for pulling at me. Others have cussed me out. “I hate black women!” a few have yelled. Cars have trailed me at a snail’s pace both in broad daylight and at night. And of course, there are the near misses and “what if” situations that I owe to luck and the guardian angels…

the city still can’t beat me down. So long as I can still be shocked–a sign that my standards are intact–I’m happy.

This post is more personal than any I’ve written in this space. Sexual harassment feels normal because it’s what I grew up around, but–and I have to remind myself of this–it isn’t. Speaking up counters the most dominant message that this city taught me about what it means to be a young, black girl/woman: “You are prey.”

I took a picture of this sign on the C train earlier in the semester. I’d planned to do a story but class deadlines took priority.

They didn’t have these signs when I was a kid. Got me wondering, What if the city undertook a massive (and clever) public service campaign to deter street harassment? What would be its impact on men and women in this city? What kind of conversation would such a campaign provoke?