Soul on Rice...

Quite often people leave a legacy that reads like a byline; “Chad Bilyeu was a cosmopolitan epicure best known for his revolutionary contributions to education and his well-documented affairs with Scarlett Johannson and America Ferrera.” Such is life. I’m gearing up for Los Angeles, so I have to be in the byline frame of thought. In this age of extreme information dissemination often people don’t want to read a book or a magazine article or a Wikipedia entry; a sentence will do. Usually this sentence never does justice though. We are all complex characters; I like to think of individuals as their own entity. Everyone is amazing. Trust me. You can always learn something from any person; it’s just that most people don’t care to sit through the whole biopic. Some people get shafted and history ends up fucking them over. Booker T. Washington is viewed by many to have been an Uncle Tom. I think this to be an uneducated, unfair assessment of the man and his lifework. But, alas, Booker ain’t the man of the day. I prefer to revisit the life of a very extraordinary individual. He is well-known, but has left a very ambiguous legacy. His Wikipedia byline reads: “Eldridge Cleaver (August 31, 1935 – May 1, 1998) was an author and a prominent American civil rights leader who began as a dominant member of the Black Panther Party.” Yeah, I guess that’s true, but people are missing out on a lot if that’s all they know about the man. Maybe I can help to clarify his legacy…

Born in Arkansas and ending up in Los Angeles as a teenager, Cleaver was well acquainted with the law. He got caught, like most teenagers do, with some weed, and spent years of his youth in juvenile hall. By the time he got incarcerated as an adult, first for possession of weed and then for assault with intent to murder, he was no stranger to imprisonment. While in prison Cleaver became involved with the Nation of Islam and found that writing served as his method of maintaining dignity and sanity. He is best known for his first book, Soul on Ice, which served as a compilation of his prison writings. The book was critically acclaimed across racial divisions and Cleaver soon found himself quite the celebrity. He was paroled in 1966 and became editor of Ramparts Magazine, the same institution that noticed his writing while he was in jail and got him his book deal. A self-admitted rapist, Cleaver admits at a certain point of his life he felt that the rape of white women was “an insurrectionary act” He also admits that he practiced rape by raping Black women in the Black community. Cleaver puts all of his shortcomings, faults and societal disadvantages on paper for the world to see. “I’m perfectly aware that I’m in prison, that I’m a Negro, that I’ve been a rapist, and that I have a Higher Uneducation. I never know what significance I’m supposed to attach to these factors.” By the book’s end stands a man that has transcended his past crimes and prejudice; a paradigm of self-medication without any self-prescribed reefer or doctor-prescribed Ritalin. So it seems… After his release, he joined the Ramparts staff and shortly thereafter met Huey P. Newton and the Black Panthers. Cleaver was attracted to the militant nature of the group. He met the Black Panthers in 1966 when they were commissioned to provide protection for Betty Shabazz at a second anniversary memorial for the assassination of Malcolm X. Cleaver described the event as such in an essay entitled “The Courage to Kill: Meeting the Panthers."

Suddenly the room fell silent. The crackling undercurrent that for weeks had made it impossible to get one’s point across when one had the floor was gone; there was only the sound of the lock clicking as the front door opened, and then the soft shuffle of feet moving quietly toward the circle… I spun round in my seat and saw the most beautiful sight I had ever seen: four black men wearing black berets, powder blue shirts, black leather jackets, black trousers, shiny black shoes-and each with a gun! In front was Huey P. Newton with a riot pump shot gun in his right hand, barrel pointed down to the floor. Beside him was Bobby Seale, the handle of a .45 caliber automatic showing from its holster on his right hip, just below the hem of his jacket. A few steps behind Seale was Bobby Hutton, the barrel of his shotgun at his feet. Next to him was Sherwin Forte, an M1 carbine with a banana clip cradles in his arms.

After their public split, Huey P. Newton said that Cleaver was “obsessed with the gun” and “looking for a father figure.” Possibly. The Black Panther Party made the gun look sexy. For a convict looking for a father-figure, a model to base his Black manhood upon, the Panthers were like some kick-ass angels of death. America had never been presented with a revolutionary force before or since as galvanizing. Mao said that power comes from the barrel of a gun, but Newton and the Panthers took this to mean that the gun was the equalizer against the oppressor. It granted them tantamount footing with which they could begin their revolutionary agenda. Like all Blacks before him, Cleaver was only privy to the non-violent methods that characterized most civil rights protests before 1966. Cleaver can be blamed as the impetus for the fixation concerning violence that many Black Panthers developed.

Shortly thereafter, Huey gets charged with a bullshit murder rap by the fascist pigs of Oakland. During his time in prison awaiting trial, Cleaver becomes the figurehead of the Black Panther Party. Cleaver was a master wordsmith and firebrand. He shocked his audience with fiery, precise rhetoric that galvanized the American masses. His words moved people young and old, black and white alike that had grew tired of America and their racist, sexist bullshit. He was the creator of the phrase, “You’re either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem.” The iconic picture of Newton in the bamboo wicker chair holding the spear in one hand and the rifle in the other was Cleaver’s idea. That image is indelibly imprinted in the minds of the people as THE picture of Huey P. Newton, and arguably it was this picture that created a legend larger than Huey himself. He spoke of the Minister of Defense in language of apotheosis. “Yes, Huey is our Jesus, but want him down from the cross.” He considered him to be “the dynamo, the source, the prime mover.” His respect for Huey was genuine and honest. These two had a public disagreement that resulted in the fragmentation of an organization that America desperately needed. As is often the case between Black American intellectuals, there exists a irreconcilable rift between conflicting philosophies that is never mollified through compromise, but rather aggravated by hubris and the unwillingness of leaders to communicate. Basically, the same situation that exists in the dichotomous American government.

These insidious crackers that ran the FBI came up with this group in 1956 called the Counter Intelligence Program, or Cointelpro for short. Their mission was to disrupt and destroy any groups that threatened the white-anglo power structure of America. Any groups with ideologies dissident to that of those sexist, racist cocksuckers became a target. Groups they profiled and infiltarted included the Communist Party of the United States of America, the Socialist Workers Party, the Nation of Islam, Students for a Democratic Society, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the American Indian Movement, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Weather Underground, and for reasons of affirmative action, the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan. One of Cointelpro’s prime objectives was to stop the rise of a “Black messiah” who could unify Black Americans under one common cause. J. Edgar Hoover had a hard-on when it came to the destruction of Newton and the Panthers. In September of 1968, when Black Power became known to the general public after Tommie Smith and John Carlos threw up the fist after respectively winning first and third places in the 200 meter race in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, Hoover called the Black Panther Party "The greatest threat to the internal security of the country." After 1969, the Party became the primary focus of Cointelpro’s operations. Cointelpro used various methods of subterfuge to disrupt the Black Panther Party from within. Spies were embedded into the group, they did their best to keep prominent members tied up in legal battles, so that they became trapped within in legal limbo; misinformation in the form of cartoons that promoted the fallacious belief that the Black Panther Party was racist and planned to kill whites were circulated in white and Black communities as if they were official Party information. Cointelpro would even duplicate the handwriting of certain members and send letters to other branches which created internal turmoil within the Party. In certain cases they committed straight-up murder, as was the case with the assassination of the 21-year old civil rights dynamo, Fred Hampton, Sr., who they killed in his own home after he and others in the house, including his pregnant wife, who took one in the leg, were drugged by a muthafucking race traitor of a snitch, William O’Neal. Their methods proved to be quite successful.

After Huey P. Newton was released from jail pending a retrial, Cleaver had already left the country. Two days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 6, 1968, the Oakland Police engaged in a melee with some Black Panthers. The end result was that Li’l Bobby Hutton was unjustifiably assassinated and Eldridge Cleaver was shot through the leg and apprehended even though he exited a house butt-naked so that the police would know he was unarmed. Cleaver was later charged with three accounts of attempted murder of a police officer and three counts of assault on a police officer. Strange, as the only folks murdered and wounded were Black Panthers. After he got out about two months later on bail, he was ordered to return to prison for violating his parole. Cleaver said “the hell with that shit” and fled the country. This event happened right after Cleaver’s unsuccessful 1968 Presidential campaign in which he ran as a candidate for the Peace and Freedom Party.

His exile sent him first to Cuba. Unlike Newton who later fled to Cuba in 1977, Cleaver did not enjoy his time there. Cleaver claims he experienced the same institutional racism that was present in America in Cuba, and that the country did everything possible to hide the history of Antonio Maceo Grajales, a Black Cuban who was the true father of the Cuban Revolution. From there he went to Algeria where he met up with his fine-ass wife, Kathleen Cleaver, who was pregnant at the time with their first child. It was while in Algeria that Huey and Eldridge had their feud. Cleaver organized a faction of the Black Panther Party in Algeria but maintained communications with the Party leadership based in America. Cleaver actually hosted Dr. Timothy Leary and his wife in Algeria after he had been sprung out of jail in America by the Weathermen. Cleaver admitted to doing LSD with the good doctor, but later thought Dr. Leary to be a nut for promoting this drug to the youth and the revolutionary masses as “conscious expanding.” Cleaver’s stance was that to run a successful revolution, it is somewhat important that the revolutionaries not be tripping balls off LSD. “[Y]our god is dead because his mind has been blown by acid,” is what Cleaver told Leary. Leary told Cleaver he was “a paranoid nigger.” Cleaver then placed Leary under “revolutionary arrest” and all of the white liberals got mad because Cleaver wanted them to stay off of acid. When Cleaver’s troop in Algeria got busted up, Dr. Leary was transported back to America and he and Cleaver eventually ended up in the same federal prison in San Diego. Most of Cleaver’s former revolutionary comrades and friends wrote him off in the late 1970s. He and Dr. Leary remained friends.

In 1971 the FBI got really busy with their misinformation campaign against the Panthers. Cleaver was getting phony letters from his “comrades” claiming Newton was disgusted with him. Newton was getting phony letters from anonymous folks that claimed Cleaver was planning on assassinating him. Their alliance fell apart live on television. February 28, 1971, AM San Francisco had Newton on. Cleaver phoned in from Algeria and began firing off about inside Party business on air. Cleaver dismissed Newton from the Panthers, and then Newton dismissed Cleaver from the Panthers. The Black Panthers split into two factions, a left and right wing. The right wing, which consisted of Newton’s supporters, were focused upon the survival programs and empowering impoverished communities. The left wing, Cleaver’s faction, included the notoriously violent New York 21 faction of the Black Panthers and others like them that believed that the emphasis upon the survival programs was just mere pussy footing around the true issue which was the inevitable armed revolution that was about to pop off. The two factions never reconciled. David Hilliard, in a letter to the Black Panther’s European office, called Cleaver a “murderer” and “a punk without genitals.” Elaine Brown, the last leader of the Black Panther Party, said Cleaver was a “power crazy nigger.” Many Panthers also questioned Cleaver’s sexuality. Newton made the point that Cleaver was looking for a father figure (which he had seemed to have in Newton) and erroneously thought the Black Panthers to be “the Revolution and the Party” as opposed to being “a political vehicle through which the people could express their revolutionary desires.” Some thought Cleaver mistook fame as support from the people. The feud drew parallels to other great Black leaders that could not amicably work out their differences. Folks like Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, the Black Panthers themselves and Ron Karenga’s militant group US, and 50 Cent and the Game.

The fragmentation of the American Black Panther Party marked the end of the international branches of the Party. Cleaver resigned from the Algerian branch and after his Black Liberation Party and Right On! Magazine ventures both failed, he illegally moved to France alone where he later met up with his wife Kathleen and their two children in January of 1972. France proved to be the location of Cleaver’s incredible transformation. He was fairly broke during his time there as most of the proceeds he had gained from Soul on Ice and from a proposed book were mostly depleted and the stipends he received from China ceased. As aforementioned, Cleaver saw racism in the Communist Cuba, and this began his reevaluation of his opinions concerning political philosophy. In Algeria, he was called a “kulasha” (slave) by the Arabs and also was told that Black Americans were considered arrogant due to “the way [they] move and carry their bodies.” He recounted an event in a French television station in which he was watching the defeated American troops pull out of Vietnam. He was sitting in between the editor of Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine and a reporter from France’s Le Monde Diplomatique newspaper. The two were laughing at the scene on the television and described the “U.S. Marines as nothing more than Boy Scouts who couldn’t win a fight against an old ladies club.” Cleaver quickly retorted to the French pussy-ass muthafucker, “You know what man, there was a day when you were mighty glad to see the U.S. military liberate you from him.” Cleaver then nodded towards the Mein Kampf fucking German bastard and got up and went home. He was becoming increasingly homesick and felt like a fugitive. He wanted to return to America, but his return meant facing numerous charges. The ultimate injury came when his children begged him not to speak English because it “hurt their ears.” Then his son began to play soccer. Cleaver started to think suicidal thoughts and decided to act on them.

At his residence in Paris, Cleaver eats dinner with his family for what he thinks will be the last time. He didn’t reveal his intended suicide to them. He then left for his private apartment in Cannes. There he sat on the balcony, pistol in hand, contemplating his death. For whatever reason, his attention was drawn to the nearly full moon. As he continued to stare at the moon, it began to flicker and transmogrify. He saw the image of his own face in the moon. This image changed into Fidel Castro. That image transformed into Mao Tse-tung. Mao became Marx. Then the image disappeared. After that he saw the face of Jesus Christ in the moon. It was the one face that did not disappear. Cleaver began to shake uncontrollably. He put the pistol down, fell to his knees and began to cry. The Lord’s Prayer, the 23^rd Psalm, which he hadn’t thought of in decades, came into his mind. He remembered that Kathleen had brought a Bible that his mother had given them before they went into exile. From his bookshelf he located the Bible, but rummaging frantically through the pages, he couldn’t locate the 23^rd Psalm. He describes himself as “overwhelmed with a spirit of peace and total exhaustion.” He then put the Bible on a table and the gun next to it and went to sleep. When he woke the next day, he felt recharged and brand new. He claimed, “I had received a spiritual message that I must surrender to the authorities, go into that prison cell, and I would come out the other side. There was no fear. I just knew I would come out the other side.” He headed back to Paris to tell Kathleen the whole incident and began to make plans about how to return to America.

Nikki Giovanni wrote in a magazine called Encore, “The news from Paris, France, that Black fire-eating, anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-middle-class militant Eldridge Cleaver is considering a return to the United States is not surprising. That he left in the first place and the circumstances of his leaving are perhaps the real news story.” Many others insinuated that Cleaver had somehow been shitting through the same straw as the capitalist powers he once vowed to destroy. In May of 1973 Huey P. Newton was interviewed by Playboy Magazine. Much of the interview dealt with the recent split with Cleaver and Newton’s feelings regarding his former comrade. He described Cleaver as “a very disturbed and unhappy person” and blamed him for ‘the filthy-speech movement” which resulted in most of the Black Panther Party, during Huey’s imprisonment, “[going] into [places such as the Black church] to give political-education classes for the general community and [using] “motherfucker” every other word.” He also challenged Cleaver’s sexuality, commenting on the fact that rapists that he was privy to in prisons usually became homosexuals within the penitentiary. He believed that Cleaver had issues with his masculinity and that thought of the gun as a metaphorical cock. “When he came out of prison he became so attached to the Panthers and the idea of the gun. I think the gun was a substitute for his penis; he called it his "rod." Or his johnson. Newton also went on to describe an alleged encounter between Cleaver and James Baldwin, whose writings Cleaver had lambasted in his essay “Notes on a Native Son”…

Well, there was something that happened on the occasion when he and I met Baldwin. We met Baldwin shortly after he returned from Turkey, I guess in 1966 or the early part of '67. Eldridge had been invited to a party to meet him, and he asked me to go along. So we went over to San Francisco in his Volkswagen van and we got there first. Soon after, Baldwin arrived. Baldwin is a very small man in stature; I guess about five-one. Eldridge is about six-four, you know; at the time, he weighed about 250 pounds. Anyway, Baldwin just walked over to him and embraced him around the waist. And Eldridge leaned down from his full height and engaged Baldwin in a long, passionate French kiss. They kissed each other on the mouth for a long time. When we left, Eldridge kept saying, "Don't tell anyone." I said all right. And I kept my word -- until now.

Because Eldridge Cleaver never disputed these claims, they did much to effeminate his image. Most Americans who had been privy to his exploits in America considered him to be a pale comparison of his former self as well as a possible traitor and government informant. Cleaver held firmly to his original position that the political climate of America had changed with the resignation of Nixon and the end of the Vietnam War and he now felt that he could finally get a fair trial. His critics contended there was little change in America concerning police brutality or racism and that this was a mask for more clandestine affiliations with American authorities. In a 1975 interview with Henry Louis Gates, Cleaver, still in exile in Paris, stated that he considered the Third World revolutions as “a skin game.” He also acknowledged his concern with class struggle. “Ultimately,” Cleaver claims, “all struggle is Class struggle; but you cannot overlook national questions.” He thought that Black Americans needed to eliminate all classes within the race and this would create unity amongst Black Americans. He also acknowledged that Marx was a racist, therefore Black Americans should not blindly except his philosophies as intrinsic to their struggle. As noted by Kathleen Rout in her biopic of Cleaver, “what was gone was the rhetoric, the anger, and the sense that he part of a worldwide, historic uprising of the “colored” masses.”

In September 1975, about a month before his return to the United States, Cleaver tells a reporter about how he had been studying Eastern erotic literature as of late. He stated in the interview, “My whole motivation is because… I’ve always been keen about sex. I like it. So you know the whole thing about the Kama Sutra. There’s something to learn there, right?” He now considered himself a student of these fucking philosophies and with this studying came his soi-disant title of “tantric guru.” Cleaver said the title was “a label I bestowed upon myself, because I know who I am. I’ve mastered it. That’s why I made these pants.” The Black Panther Party was always fashionable in the mostly black uniform highlighted by the powder blue shirt, but never would the average American had predicted that a former revolutionary would enter the world of fashion. Like everything else he seemed to do in his life, Cleaver’s pants had a philosophy. Cleaver sought to liberate men from the oppressiveness of the white man’s pants. He became “interested in the crime of rape and why people rape.” He claimed that his pants would abolish the crime of indecent exposure. Cleaver planned to create “decent exposure” with his new pants. One interviewer noted that the pants “flaunt[ed] the male sex organ so brazenly that no photo can be printed in a family magazine.” He stated that his inspiration for the pants “goes back to the problems of human sexuality and of… what I call the right to fuck[.]”

Armed with his pants, new philosophies and Jesus, Cleaver contacted the U.S. embassy in Paris. Within three weeks he had the necessary papers to enter the United States, where he was to be arrested immediately upon arrival. November 15, 1975, the two Cleaver children were flown to Pasadena to stay with Granny. Kathleen stayed behind to finish packing up the stuff in Paris. Eldridge himself arrived in New York at 5pm to no supporters, detractors, friends or family, just one Black and one white FBI agent who placed him under arrest. On November 19, 1975, the same day Cleaver was transported to San Diego, Chino State Penitentiary to be exact, the New York Times ran an article written by Cleaver entitled, “Why I Left the U.S. and Why I Am Returning.” In it, Cleaver states…

With all of its faults, the American political system is the freest and most democratic in the world. The system needs to be improved, with democracy spread to all areas of life, particularly the economic. All of these changes must be conducted through our established institutions, and people with grievances must find political methods for obtaining redress.

New Year’s Eve of 1975 Cleaver attempted to contact the Black Panther Party via collect call from Chino State. A Black Panther answers the phone. When asked if they would except a collect call from Eldridge Cleaver, the guy first laughed, said “Wait a minute,” and took about ten minutes to take the call off hold and say, “We will not accept the call.” The Black Panther Party’s lawyer Gerry would not represent him due to “other commitments.” The Black Panther newspaper called for justice for Cleaver and a fair trial in which they predicted the people he once attempted to represent would turn on him. The Black Panthers also blamed Cleaver for the deaths of Li’l Bobby Hutton and Sam Napier, the former of which had been murdered by men loyal to Cleaver under pretenses of snitching, but it was believed that his execution had not been mandated by Cleaver. Cleaver had no friends from the movement left just as he had no friends from his years before the movement began. He had become forgotten during his years in exile, and upon his return he was considered non-threatening.

In Chino State existed a prison ministry group called "The God Squad." During their prayer meetings other prisoners would throw bars of soap and flick water from brushes dipped in commodes at the Christians. Because he didn’t want to appear soft amongst the other prisoners, Cleaver initially refused to join the prayer services even though he desired to. After a few months he eventually joined them in fellowship. The word spread rapidly that Eldridge Cleaver had found Christ. An article was written in the Los Angeles Times that mocked Cleaver’s conversion. Cleaver contacted the press shortly thereafter and gave interviews concerning the validity of his Christianity. While he got streams of hate mail from former comrades and supporters, he began to get an abundance of letters from Christians, mostly white Americans, who empathized with his plight and truly believed that he had accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. Cleaver still had a one million dollar bail to deal with, and until he could ascertain such an amount, it seemed likely that he would remain in prison until his retrial. A wealthy and extremely pious Philadelphian named Arthur DeMoss, president of National Liberty Corporation, read the article concerning Cleaver in the Los Angeles Times and decided to offer his assistance. DeMoss considered himself a former sinner, a number runner-turned-insurance mogul, who was able to give his life to Christ, so he sought out individuals such as Cleaver to help them during their transition to Christianity. In June 1976, DeMoss was able to visit Cleaver in Chino. Reportedly, the two talked for a couple of hours discussing things Christians talk about; mainly their former, more secular lives and Jesus. DeMoss went to his fellow white Christians with praise for Cleaver, and the white Christians showed their support in the form of contributions for Cleaver’s bail. On Friday the 13^th, August 1976, Eldridge Cleaver was released in time for the weekend. He got a telly and spent the weekend with Kathleen booed up in San Francisco. That following Monday, he and Kathleen flew to Los Angeles so that Cleaver could see his mother for the first time in eight years.

That Wednesday, Kathleen and Eldridge Cleaver were in San Diego where the Reverend Billy Graham was preaching at one of his crusades. Cleaver was able to meet with Graham personally. Cleaver had admitted to hating Graham at a point of his life, but now was actually anticipating the meeting. Without Kathleen present the two men prayed and talked for over an hour discussing things Christians talk about; mainly their former, more secular lives and Jesus. The one statement made by Graham that resonated the most with Cleaver was “Eldridge… one thing you must never forget-never embarrass the Lord.” Cleaver ended up on Meet the Press Sunday, August the 29^th. The questions included whether Cleaver had made a deal with authorities or not, to which he maintained that he had not. Cleaver noted “deep transformations in [his] own personal life” and that his opine had changed concerning how change should be administered within the country. Cleaver also assured the public that his conversion to Christianity was not a hoax nor a ruse to influence his trial. In reference to the Black Panther Party, Cleaver stated, “I think that we were a little naïve in our approach… that we were excessive in our language… that we scared a lot of people, not so much by our practices, our activities, but by the way that we described certain situations, and if I had to do it all over, with hindsight, I would do it differently.” This appearance was followed by a week of rest and relaxation at DeMoss’ Philadelphia home.

Cleaver announces to the public on September 14, 1976 that he is going on the lecture circuit as an evangelist. He had just signed with a national speakers’ bureau as well as ascertaining another book deal, this time the book dealing with spiritual and philosophical transformation. He was paired on a tour with Charles Colson, former special council to President Nixon. Colson was well-known as "Richard Nixon's hard man, the 'evil genius' of an evil administration.” He was responsible for leaking information from Daniel Elsberg’s psychiatric files to the press and was subsequently indicted in March of 1974 for conspiring to cover up the Watergate robbery. He pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and was given a one to three year sentence, a $5000 fine and was disbarred. He did seven months at the Maxwell Correctional Facility, and was released early because of pertinent issues within his family. Upon his release he began Prison Fellowship, a penitentiary-based Christian organization that has of recent years worked closely with the George W. Bush presidential administration. Because of his celebrity status, Cleaver could consistently get booked on television or for whatever crusade was in session. However, many thought that his proselytizing did not have the emotional passion that Cleaver was characteristically known for. White Christians were frequently disappointed with Cleaver’s sermons. At the time, the Cleavers’ had more than $200,000 in outstanding bills. At all of his speaking engagements, Cleaver passed around the collection plate. During a sermon/barbecue in Orange County, it is rumored that Cleaver received $16,500 in donations. Cleaver had a set speech as an evangelist. He would speak of his disillusionment with communism and then his conversion to American patriotism and Christianity. His support of the right-wing became more vocalized as well as he would tout the politics of Henry Kissinger, criticize the NAACP, stir Soviet paranoia, and belittle the women’s liberation movement. He and Kathleen were officially baptized Sunday, the 10^th of October, 1976 in a hotel swimming pool in Burbank, California. Art DeMoss was present and smiling. Cleaver preached with white evangelicals until the spring of 1977 when he, Kathleen and DeMoss decided to start the Eldridge Cleaver Crusades, which was to be based out of Stanford, California. Cleaver’s plan was to become the Black version of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s PTL (Praise the Lord) Club. In May of 1979, Cleaver, with DeMoss’ funds, purchased 80 acres in Nevada which he planned to construct a “multimillion dollar facility” that would be the headquarters of his crusade. Shortly before this in 1978, Cleaver released Soul on Fire, an obvious attempt to capitalize on his former success. Because of certain omissions and inconsistencies within the book, it got panned and sold very poorly.

While attempting to solidify his new position as an evangelist, Cleaver simultaneously continued to expand upon his “sexual guru” role. The September 21, 1978 issue of Jet Magazine featured a second article on Cleaver and a picture of him modeling the infamous pants outside of his Los Angeles boutique that manufactured them. Jet succinctly described the “Cleavers” as having “two types of eye-catching pouches: one is oval shaped like a football player’s jockey cup and the other features a tubular shaped extension for the man’s penis and an adjoining smaller pouch for his testicles.” Their first article ran two years earlier had Cleaver describing what he thought to be the “fig leaf mentality.” The attempt to cover the penis was an attempt to destroy the “content of erotic art forms” because the sexual urges that looking at the penis produced actually resulted in a decrease in efficiency when dealing with capitalism. “Cock out” creates too much of a distraction for the average peasant to handle. For the perpetuation of the market system it was necessary to cover up the cock. In the second interview of 1978 Cleaver expands his philosophy concerning the “Cleavers.” Cleaver claimed that he was “very sexually warped” earlier in his life, but admitted that he had “studied as much about human sexuality as professional sexual therapists,” so he was able to overcome his deviant, sexual nature. He intended on forming a “finishing school for boys” so that they could learn proper manners and “how to go about getting themselves girls without having to resort to rape.” Also in his master plan was “a 24-hour rape hotline for men who have either committed rape or are on the verge of rape.” Even from a sciential standpoint the Cleavers were revolutionary. Cleaver claimed that “heat had a decomposing effect on the sperm and traditional pants press the penis under the belly. My pants take it back out.” Whereas western pants “castrated” the man, “Cleavers” “honored” the penis; this being contrary to traditional fashion honoring only “the intellect-the head and face.” Cleaver invested $42,000 of his own money to form Eldridge Cleaver Ltd. In addition to the boutique, he also owned a retail location in West Hollywood where the pants were sold for $20 to $30 a piece. Eldridge Cleaver humbly admitted that the “Cleavers” were “one of the best ideas I’ve ever had.”

In November of 1979 Cleaver pleaded guilty to three assault charges. The remaining attempted-murder charges were dropped. He was ultimately ordered to do 1200 hours of community service and probation. In 1980 Cleaver became affiliated with Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, and began to speak at functions supporting their ministry. While working with Unification Church, Cleaver began to organize former Muslims and transmogrified his Christianity into what he referred to as “Christlam.” He effectively ceased the operations of the Eldridge Cleaver Crusades, thus ending his relationship with DeMoss. In September 1980 he was quoted saying that the “dwelling place of God” was not in Mecca, but rather “in the male sperm.” He then created “the Guardians of the Sperm,” which served as a “social auxiliary” to his newly formed church in Oakland. He believed that the enemies of the sperm, “ignorant scientists and lesbian propagandists,” were constantly at work. To thwart these powers, Cleaver began to teach “Urban Geography” to the young men of his church. “Urban Geography” meant the following to Cleaver: “You see a good-looking woman on the street corner. Immediately you want to screw her. But you let her get away because you don’t know how to follow her. We teach pursuit.” In response to charges that he physically abused Kathleen, Cleaver retorts, “I don’t mind being known as a wife-beater. There are all kinds of institutions to serve these so-called battered wives. What nobody’s saying is that most of the time the bitch needed her ass kicked.”

In the summer of 1980, Cleaver wrote Dr. Huey P. Newton a letter in an attempt to fire up the revolution once again. He told Newton that “one of the best things that could happen in America is if you and I would bury our old hatchets, which in fact have been buried by time and events, and help constitute a force in America dedicated to serving our needs at this juncture.” He rallied against his former enemy, Ronald Reagan, and his run for the presidency. “Ronald Reagan is running for President… Gas, Food, Water and Time are running out.” He also stated that Blacks in the 80s were lacking any appropriate leadership. He thought that “everyone imprisoned under Richard Nixon” should be exonerated of their crimes. He appealed to Huey by admitting that “There is yet one more skeleton in the American closet: THE BLACK MAN. It’s time for us to come out. We need dramatic examples of conciliation and reconciliation amongst Black men. Out common denominator is out ethnic gender. Our standard is one drop of Black blood and a set of balls to be eligible for membership.” Dr. Newton never issued a response. By September of the same year, Cleaver was endorsing Ronald Reagan for president; the same man who was quoted as saying in 1968, "If Eldridge Cleaver is allowed to teach our children, they may come home one night and slit our throats."

Figuring that she had been wasting her life, Kathleen and the Cleaver children moved to New Haven, Connecticut where she had just received a full scholarship to Yale University. Cleaver was left alone inside of California. He began to work as a tree manicurist for a Mormon fellow and lived in a rooming house with about nine others that did the same job. He continued writing and lecturing and began to make original flowerpots for sale. He finished his community service in June of 1982 and shortly thereafter joined the Mormon Church. Due to his dissatisfaction with President Carter, Cleaver continued along the path of his conservative politics. It was very strange that he was now supporting the same California senator that voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and refused to engage in a debate with him while the two were foes in 1968. In 1982, Cleaver gave up on his revolutionary pants and Christlam to become a staunch advocate of right-wing politics. At a speech at Yale in February of 1982 that was organized with the assistance of his separated wife, who was now an assistant professor, Cleaver tells the mostly Black audience, “Ronald Reagan has said that no longer will the Federal Government house, clothe, and feed Black people. I am glad about that because it will force Blacks to unify and lobby for their needs. Reagan had delivered to Black people a “Biblical message,” “Lazarus, go for yourself.”

Cleaver ran for House representative in February of 1984 against Representative Ron Dellums, former political ally of the Black Panther Party. He lambasted Dellums’ friend Jesse Jackson, claiming he was not the humanitarian he claimed to be, but rather a shifty politician playing the “race card” in an effort to further his own political career. Cleaver charged Dellums as “a pliable tool in the hands of the Marxist-Leninist puppet masters of Berkeley[.]” Cleaver was easily defeated by Dellums. He again tried to run for office in 1986 against Democrat Alan Cranston. Cleaver was now pro-death penalty, anti-abortion, anti-immigration and anti-welfare, stances of which did nothing towards his winning the Senate seat in Southern California. He declared Reagan as his hero. When asked if he had any other heroes, Cleaver mentions, “the Pope and John Wayne.” After he lost the election, Cleaver shifted his focus to other “really important issues, like the plight of retarded children.” After 1986 Cleaver became mostly forgotten by the general American public and when he was remembered, he was considered a charlatan. Bobby Seale says of Cleaver, “Eldridge Cleaver? I refuse even to talk to him… He’s not a true representative of the Black Panther Party. Eldridge was always trying to start a shoot-out while I was trying to organize breakfasts for children.” A greeting card was made with a picture of the Cleavers on it, Ward, Beaver and Eldridge and a note inside that read, “Happy Birthday from Ward, June and the boys.” He stayed in Berkeley, making pots and continuing to campaign for conservative issues. In the fall of 1987 he was arrested for possession of cocaine. He was again arrested in February 1988 for burglary in which he claims he was “moving furniture for homeless people.” He received three years probation for the offense. Eldridge Cleaver continued upon a vagrant life, accumulating bills and making ends barely meet from various speaking engagements. He remained vigilant towards the plight of the poor and equality for all people. He quit drugs after his last run-in for cocaine possession in 1994, in which he was almost fatally wounded. He became an advocate of a female president and environmental concerns. Eldridge Cleaver died result of a heart attack on May 1, 1998. He was 62.

Misled militant or malicious miasma? No one had been able to predict his true intentions or what he would say next, all that could be expected was that he was certain to entertain and shock the masses. Was he really serious? Did he truly become a Christian to reduce his sentence? Why in the fuck did he make those pants? We’ll never know. All we have are the facts juxtaposed next to Cleaver’s claims, and even these two factors are not enough evidence when trying to crack the case that is Eldridge Cleaver. I have heard many people my age refer to Cleaver as a sell-out. Maybe so. I'm not here to judge. I consider Eldridge to have been a human being like all of us; rife with convictions and contradictions that never seem to amalgamate perfectly. He just seemed to be more honest concerning his life-altering changes than most people. I will say that it is quite an easy feat for those of the Hip-Hop generation, a generation that has become an unmobilized mass of uneducated, hedonistic demagogues, to judge a civil rights leader that did more for the advancement of Black people in this country than an entire movement has done. Maybe Eldridge had a point. Could it be that he was correct in altering his views away from Black Nationalism towards a greater understanding and respect of all humans? American racism is a disease. We, as Black Americans, did not create this hatred, but we can fall victim to the same ignorance and pseudoscience that white Americans were infected with. I truly believe that hate breeds nothing but hate, but at the same time I know that white Americans are generally ignorant and unsympathetic towards the plights of impoverished American people. It is far easier to deal with injustices in Africa than it is to deal with the racial crisis that had never been properly addressed in this country. As we can all see from nooses popping up all over the nation, that it will be dealt with soon. We'll part our respective ways with Eldridge's thoughts on DuBois and Washington...

Eldridge, how is it different to be black today in 1997 than it was when you were in that basement in Oakland 30 years ago? We have the largest black middle class that we've ever had in history. 45% of all black children live at or beneath the poverty line. It's like we have the best of times and the worst of times. What's that all about?

CLEAVER: That's because our black middle class has followed an assimilationist ethic. They have become white and they've adopted all the worst features of America in terms of not caring about the other people. Like the white ruling class never cared about poor white people, let alone about black people and other minorities and these blacks who are following W.E.B. Du Bois' formula of educating that 10% who will then come back and lift up the rest of the people -- the argument that was had between W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington was over how we're going to manage this thing.

Booker T. said we've got to teach these people how to work, then they'll get jobs, then they'll be able to afford education and then they can do that. And Du Bois said no, we've got to concentrate on the intellectual development of the people and get 10% of our people educated and then they can help the other people, but if you just learn a trade and you don't know what's going on, that ain't going nowhere.

I say both of them were right. We need both of what they promised and we've got both of what they promised. But they didn't have a unifying vision and consequently we've got an enlarged black bourgeoisie but they have departed from the basis of the black bourgeoisie according to E. Franklin Frazer. This was the professional classes and that was their economic base but the progress that has taken place has given a new economic base to the black bourgeoisie, to the expanded black -- now their economic base is political as well as up front economic and they still have a professional class but it is been expanded because you have a lot of black people with a whole lot of money coming from these other pursuits.

Add to that, the million-dollar salaries to football players, basketball players and baseball players, not that they're doing anything constructive with all of that money, but they have it. But they didn't bring it back to pull the other people up and so it's like the devil take the hindmost. That is what we're dealing with so that the black bourgeoisie is as corrupt and immoral as the white bourgeoisie and that is the problem.

Go OJ! Go!

"Men die for freedom, but black men die for white women, who are the symbol of freedom. That was the white man's will, and as long as he has the power to enforce his will upon me, force me to submit to his will in this instance or in any other, I will not be free. I will not be free until the day I can have a white women in my bed and a white man minds his own business. Until that day comes, my entire existence is tainted, poisoned, and I will still be a slave-and so will the white woman."

...the voice of the accused
"The Allegory of the Black Eunuchs"
Soul on Ice
Eldridge Cleaver, 1968

White people and their liberal use of "the N word" have proven to be their downfall. I heard this morning on WTOP a headline that stated that “justice will finally be served.” I thought they were about to say that Black Americans were finally about to get their 40 acres and a mule with a side of reparations, but instead they tell me that the “justice” concerns OJ Simpson and his zany antics as of late. Interestingly, Orenthal has become a figurehead for Black America. Whites see OJ as the ultimate criminal; a Black man that slaughtered in cold blood a beautiful white maiden as pure as the driven snow she plowed into her nose, who then got away with the crime. With the blood that OJ supposedly spilled, came the exoneration of all past atrocities that the white race has committed against Black Americans. A reverse-Jesus if you will. OJ killed both his wife and Ron Pearlman simultaneously with his bare hands and no assistance according to the average white American. OJ was deemed guilty before he got out of that white-ass Bronco. Finally all of this Negro wailing about slavery, lynching, institutional racism, Jim Crow and unequal opportunity would come to a swift, airbag-unleashing halt because one blond woman had been killed.

All this illustrates is that racism is oh, so prevalent in our society, even today. The racist foundations that penetrated almost every facet of American life, kept our contemporary legal system and the American citizens, regardless of race, from objectively looking at the crime and assessing the situation accurately. If they wanted OJ’s head, they should have charged him appropriately. In their mission to systematically and physically destroy OJ, white America decided to try and “hang” OJ. Instead of charging him with something that more realistically applied to his offenses, like conspiracy to commit murder, they tried to convict him as the murderer of two whites. I have always thought OJ didn’t himself, directly kill his wife and Pearlman, but rather, he had the murder committed by some other party, but chose to hang around and watch being the sick fuck he is. Lest we forget that Nicole was in debt to cocaine dealers to the tune of $250,000. I think someone wanted this money and the Juice refused to deliver. Instead of monetary reimbursement, the blood shed from her and Pearlman became payment for everybody’s sins. I still see it as physically impossible for Juice to have sliced up two people on his own without either one escaping. Even for the Juice would that have been a difficult task. But he had to have been present at the scene of the crime, for the Bruno Magli footprint was present, however, from the beginning, there seemed to be no conclusive evidence that he actually killed them himself. Whites wanted OJ’s corpse swinging from a tree at picnic time. Many even began to place bets on the outcome of the trial. Well, when you put a racist-ass cop from one of the most racist jurisdictions on a case in which a big Black buck supposedly slaughtered a lily-white princess and her suitor, there’s bound to be an issue. Mark Fuhrman’s dumb-ass had to first, lie about the fact that he used to liberally flip “nigger” off his tongue while under oath, and then, the dude invokes his Fifth Amendment right to shut the fuck up, which usually just means “Yeah. I did it, but I ain’t about to narc myself out,” when asked whether he had planted or sabotaged any of the evidence in the case. Idiot. They used to love you OJ. When you where non-violent, you had friends. They even deemed it acceptable for you to be in the company of a white, Anglo-Saxon blonde. Watch how quickly the fair-weather fans leap to the other side when the forecast is black. White America… you had your Emmett Till in the form of Nicole Brown-Simpson. OJ could've been lynched way back in 1995 if Fuhrman, like most other white Americans, had had the chutzpah necessary to simply admit that he liked to refer to Black Americans as "niggers" in the privacy of his home or while reciting his favorite rap lyrics.

Quite unexpected was Black people and their blind faith in OJ’s innocence. OJ never seemed to give a fuck about being Black. He had long denounced the plight of the underprivileged Black American, opting rather to entertain white Americans on and off the football field. OJ was one of those fun-loving, non-threatening Negroes that stood as a paradigm for successful assimilation. He’d hop over anything for Hertz. He chose to endorse Pioneer Chicken and even owned a couple of extensions of the franchise. He allowed his caricature to be the face of Dingo Boots; he became a Black cowboy rounding up America with his smooth voice and school boy charm. OJ’s last communication with Black America was when his case became a mockery of justice and was transformed into a racially-influenced fiasco. A lot of Black people really thought that OJ represented them and that his conviction would be a blow against civil rights in America. I remember the day the verdict went down. We were at Viking Hall putting one up. The jury read the "innocent" bit and everyone white in our dorm was pissed and Black people rejoiced like some legislation had been signed. But OJ was no warrior for Black people. He represented what wealth can do for anyone, regardless of race or sex, in America. He was no Paul or Malcolm or Martin or Huey. He was an opportunist that played whatever position necessary to gain advantage; pretty much like his role on the Bills as running back. When the alliance of Black America became opportunistic to him, he reverted back to his All-Star ways and came running back to his Blackness. Black people, being loving and trusting individuals, gave it to him. Our fault. That motherfucker had something to do with that coke head bitch and her paramour’s death. No matter, OJ’s true colors have shined through again, and this time, white America’s got you. Such a shame, as now there exists an equalizer to white America’s heinous crimes against the people of color in this country. OJ will be lynched, one way or another, and now we’ll never get our just due because Judas somehow always makes assists for the other team.

Since I prefer to remember people at their personal best, like the Thriller-era Michael Jackson, let's go back to a time when they loved the Juice...

The DC Errea...

Quite some time ago, a young lady that works where I work interviewed me for a paper that was due the next day (you know how college students do). What follows is her interpretation of what I said. I think it's an interesting viewpoint at the very least, and it definitely sums up why I am a city mouse...
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Chad Royce [ed note. "Ha! Chad Royce... sexy] is not what you would expect from a DC resident. With a brazen and yet sophisticated take on the world, he is unafraid of speaking frankly of his experiences in the city, professing such with an ease that makes his casual use of invectives a cultural aesthetic. As a transient DC resident—that is, neither a DC native nor with intentions of staying much longer in the tri-state area—Chad is as much of an outsider as he is a resident of our nation’s capital. “I’m originally from Cleveland,” he avows with great ease, “and I lived there for 23 years.” The tone in his voice is characteristically “Chad,”—carefree, confident—and yet it is almost as though there exists a bittersweet relationship between him and the city to which he pledges loyalty to, of which he does not seem to he, himself recognize. Words resonate within the small, windowless room: “...a city is traffic jams; It’s congestion, pollution…less interpersonal relationships and more individualism.” An arguably negative description of the city is counterbalanced with more connotatively positive adjectives as he continues to identify a the urban environment as “cultural,” “forward-thinking,” and with “a thriving nightlife.” It is as though this ideologically collisioned relationship with the city is characteristically urbanite as city dwellers attempt to reconcile their love for Washington DC with its gross shortcomings. While the push and pulls of city life surely take their toll, the city remains an ever-luring commodity in American society. One must then question what exactly is it that attracts the individual to metropolitan life—particularly that of DC—and what is it that makes it so difficult to leave behind. The first-hand accounts of city dwellers, much like Chad, inherently provide insight into the social constructs that manipulate the city into a more notorious, yet sought-after habitué in contemporary society.

It is interesting to analyze the social constructs of “city.” The implications of a city, as outlined by Lewis Mumford, are endless. Mumford describes the city as a “geographical plexus, an economic organization, an institutional process, a theater of social action, and an aesthetic symbol of collective unity”. What is of interest is what makes the city so alluring and what social constructs allow the city to produce an urban identity. Chad has a personal tie the city: “I can’t have it no other way. I’ve tried country; didn’t like it. I didn’t like the suburbs either…I have to live in a city.” To him, the city spoils the individual, so much so that they become, in a way, corrupted. In this process of spoiling the individual, the rapid pace and convenience of a big city reinforce symbols of power: the automobile, the office buildings, buildings of entertainment. These factors lead to the common sociological notions of what constitutes a city: pollution due to the need of public transportation; diversity in economic and cultural backgrounds due to the rising need of blue-collared and white-collared jobs to sustain the office buildings and their commercial motives; and so on. Ultimately, this situating of power reconfigures boundaries and inevitably segregates the city.

Washington DC is the perfect example for just that. There are racial divides that make it so that the affluent white community commingles with the impoverished black community on a need-based system. When I asked a DC native what she thought of the quintessential “DC-er” she nicely quipped, “My friends and I often joke about this idea of an ‘urban snob.’” Identifying herself as one, she describes the urban snob as one who thrives in city life, visiting museums, the theater, places of fine dining, and who is a liberal Democrat. When asked whether she thought that the forms of entertainment she had mentioned were seemingly limited to upper-class tastes, she agreed. Earlier, she had mentioned that the racial demographics of DC is 80% black. I was baffled that the quintessential DC-er, to her, represented white upper-class. She and her constituency, are what Spain described as the independent woman, “women adrift who provoke envy due to their very lack of domestic responsibilities”. All the same, there is discrepancy in such testimony. While the majority of DC is African American, 60% according to general DC census, the typical Washingtonian is not part of urban culture while white Washingtonians are.

Chad is aware of this discrepancy and tackles the issue more politically. Ultimately, he concludes that there are three different types of DC-ers, none of which he identified himself as. The first is the “Go-Go” Washingtonian. This type of DC-er is predominantly black, rich in urban culture; one who listens to Go-Go music, has distinct flavor in dress, and uses DC idioms. The second type of DC resident is the “person on the Hill.” This person tends to be upper- class, white, and with little interaction with the African American community. The final DC-er is the transient DC resident: one who has moved to DC for their jobs, family, and other sociological factors. They tend to exploit the city for its rich cultural diversity and entertainment venues. They are situated with greater power than the native, impoverished DC-ers who view the city as a place of survival as opposed to a place of entertainment. The transient group is also situated just below the powerful people on Capitol Hill, generally coming for less political motives. They tend to be situated in the Northwest part of Washington DC, away from the more notorious city sector, such as the Southeast, Northeast, and Southwest, where gentrification is well underway.

Perhaps it is this sheltered perspective for transient inhabitants that lures the non-DC native to move to the city? This degree of shallowness that most people experience. Unlike most DC transients, Chad is not concerned with material wealth as much as he is concerned with cultural wealth. His vehicle serves as means of self-enrichment. To him, having a car in means that he can traverse the boundaries of the city and consequently, racial lines. He believes that an ever-increasing dependency upon public transportation such as the metro and the transit system results in less people making the attempt to truly get to know DC and DC natives. This sort of sheltered perspective allows the city to be more luring. The 60% black population is certainly not what people first think of when they get to the city and it is even more certain that it is not what people see when they visit DC. Asides from the typical bum on the corner, most transient Washingtonians have little exposure to the 60% of the DC that remains disenfranchised and disempowered.

This idea of disempowerment is surely a focal point of debate and negotiating racial lines seems to be an area of great interest to Chad. It is obvious, to him as well as to Ulf Hannerz in Soulside, that urban culture does little to aid the advancement of the disenfranchised despite the fact that city life presenting the illusion of opportunity. According to Hannerz, “Ghetto dwellers have much to resent about the way the outside world treats them: poor jobs, unfair practices on part of the employers, inadequate schools, high rents for unsatisfactory housing…” and so on. As Chad describes it, power in the city is stratified in terms of race. The empowered in DC are not the majority, the 60%, and not the poor. It is the rich, the ones on the Hill, and those who oftentimes do not even live in DC, bur rather in neighboring cities in Virginia and Maryland. In a city where the mayor was found ”smoking crack with a prostitute and yet, mayor for life,” the constructs of power are not even applicable by name…they are stratified in terms of race and race relations. As Chad decries, the chief of police in DC once stated that an African American at Georgetown is an anomaly. And such is the concept of power in day-to-day DC life.

The lure of the city is confounding to me. To many, such as Chad, it is the concept of people and the possibilities thereof—that is, networking, cultural understanding and perhaps even cultural intermingling—that allows for the individual to claim the city as his/her home. As the city spoils the individual, making it so that s/he is not cannot appreciate the tranquility of rural life nor the calmness of day to day experience in cities such as New York and Washington DC, the city person is ever nostalgic for the sirens and high-paced life of the city when s/he is not there. As Chad puts it, “I love [DC] because it’s political. Everyone has an opinion, be it uninformed, but everyone has one…and despite the dichotomy of the city, I would have it no other way.” There is a lure to the city that makes it difficult to leave behind. Perhaps the notion of individuality is what makes it easier to cope with. Aware of its shortcomings and yet capable of not facing it on a diurnal basis may be the perfect amount of shallowness that allows for the quintessential DC-er to find refuge. Whatever the case, the typical Washingtonian is in love with city, and yet does not idealize it. “One day, I’ll leave DC” he closes. “Soon, because I can only deal with the city for so long.” Are you going to another city when you move or a more rural area?” I ask. A smirk comes to Chad’s face. “Yes. As I stated before, I love the city and it’s the only place for me. It’s what happening.”

Back To Reality...

Now that Georgetown University lost in the Final Four and the team is back at the campus, it seems that all is back to normal. People can stop fronting as if they are really nice and actually like the basketball team as humans and not merely alumni dollar magnets. I've been on these sides for sometime now and most who know me know that I am not a fan of this area or university. To sum it up without being too indicting, there are far more pricks here per capita than any other place I have ever been to, even Manhattan. Plus, it really ain't the spot for a young Blackman that isn't on the assimilation track. About a year and a half ago Inspector Andy Solberg was quoted saying, "This is not a racial thing to say that black people are unusual in Georgetown." A year later, Blacks and Latinos are still being profiled. Strange considering that Georgetown was once a Black neighborhood. No matter, I feel so cultured around here. It's funny how these popped-Polo-collared pricks whose yachts' lengths are listed in the Social Registry, have no inkling about what me or people like me, or even people with less money than them, do. It's great. They don't like us around here, the only thing is, I really ain't trying to be here. And trust that this just isn't just my opine, others resonate with me on this. And if you still think I'm lying, get a whiff of some of these quotes that I have heard first-hand...

“Are you going to spend the night on their boat or your boat?" (unidentified Georgetown rich girl on the cell phone)

“Yesterday I walked so much. I walked through three malls. Back and forth.” (foreign rich girl)

Girl: “I have work tonight”
Boy: “Schoolwork or workwork?"
Girl: “Schoolwork. I did workwork last semester and it sucked.”

Two dudes on an elevator that don’t know each other…
“Hey. Are you Jewish?”
“No. Why?”
“No reason. You just look Jewish.” (and then this dude gets off the elevator as the other dude stays on with a puzzled look)

“It depends on whether you consider yourself a Jewish-American or an American Jew.”

“I need you guys to look real fucking conservative. That means button-up.” (rich Republican kid taking a picture of his Republican crew)

“You’ve been to Barcelona? Awesome! Do you summer there?” (this white girl said this to me at a really plush party. I answered yes…)

“I got to shake Bush’s hand today. He is so hot!” (Georgetown girl with a polo short-sleeved shirt, complete with popped collar, multi-pleated mini skirt and some dirty-ass flip-flops on)

“Although the media has gone wild over Foxx’s roles in Ray and Collateral, the prospect of another ground-breaking win by an African-American actor seems far-fetched.” (“Best Actor” 2005 Oscar predictions from The Hoya, Georgetown’s main campus newspaper)

“So brother… (slaps me on the right shoulder with his left hand) how about that Jamie Foxx winning that Oscar?” (white boy at a keg party, not a dance party)

"Another ground-breaking win?" Who's the editor? Welcome to my world. But... Never here to hate, so big up to the whole squad. Jeff and Roy, hopefully you guys hang around for next year, but personally... I'd go where the money lies... Enjoy the highlights from the Hoyas' amazing 2007 season...

"Reprogram", like Channel Live said...

what up folks? i was commisioned to write a real short piece on african-americans and african immigrants and my thoughts on our relations. so i did. what follows is what i wrote. hella honest, ignorant, but honest. it would have been way longer, but i had a 400 word count that i blew by 200 words anyhow. i have a better story that envolves me, alibe, chris adams, one fine-ass latina, a taxi cab, one african cab driver, and the time alloted for said taxi cab to travel between fell's point and sonar (bodymore, murdaland for those not in the know), but i won't tell that one right now...
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To observers of non-African origin, it may be difficult to comprehend the complexities involved in African and African-American relations. I have heard the biases against Africans frequently amongst fellow African-Americans and I am also quite familiar with the stereotypes that Africans have against African-Americans. The sad fact is that our differences are bred in the common ignorance that we share of each other’s culture. I can only comment on that which I have lived, and I have two anecdotes that can exemplify the ignorance better than I can explain.

March 1988. Roxbury Middle School. Cleveland Heights, Ohio. My Spanish class was an area of hullabaloo in which the students had more authority than the teacher. Our refusal to say “negro” for the color black would have indicated as much. Friday was considered casual learning day, so we rarely did anything but “crack”, or talk condescendingly, about each other and each other’s mothers. In the class was one West African boy named Rupel, who normally did not engage in our verbal spars, but for some reason on this particular Friday, he did. It didn’t take long for us to tear into him with more epithets than were necessary. If I were to write the words used, one would think that this were a Klan meeting and not a middle school classroom full of African-American students. The insults continued unrelentingly until Rupel put his head down and cried. No one had anything to say except for our usually timid teacher, who sent us all to the principal’s office as she shook her head muttering, “Sickening.”

March 2002. Club Vietti. Roppongi, Tokyo. Myself and my good friend, Chris Adams were partying like two Tokyo businessmen after a 90-hour week. We were fortunate enough to find a Hip Hop club in the foreigner-friendly Roppongi ward of Tokyo. Two lovely Japanese ladies that were appreciating our style offered to purchase us some drinks. Drinks turned to conversation, conversation turned to dancing. I noticed a large group of Nigerian men that were staring at us in not the most friendly of fashions. I was told by one of the girls that the reason for the attention that we were attracting was due to the fact the two girls had been involved with two of the Nigerian fellows previously. I wanted to return the favor of the drinks, so I go to get more libations. While returning to the table, I accidentally bump into one of the Nigerian fellows. Realizing my mistake, I promptly say, “Excuse me my brother.” The Nigerian fellow turns slowly and looks coldly at me and says very steadily and calm, “You are not my brother.”

I have been guilty of prejudice against Africans, as I have also been victim of the same prejudice. It is an inexcusable action on the part of all people of African origin. Whether we were transported to a foreign land by Europeans or had our native lands occupied by Europeans, we are all facing the trials of achieving in a world that directly benefited from the blood, sweat and tears of our ancestors. Our stories are similar, only the settings are different. Hopefully we can one day stop using the conditioning that we all received from the Occident as the basis for our relations and opinions with each other.

A Letter; Result of a True Story...

Members of the Arlington County Board,

Good day to you all. My name is Chad Bilyeu. I am a student and an employee at Georgetown University. Today at approximately 12:45pm, I was crossing the street at the intersection of Glebe road and North Randolph, right across from the Harris Tweeter supermarket. I had taken the day off from work and was enroute to the Enterprise car rental agency to rent a car so that I could run some errands. I was patiently waiting on the northeast side of the intersection, standing by the construction area that is currently there. When I first approached the corner, the light was red, but it proptly changed to green. About four cars back from the car closest to the light was what looked to be a fire chief's Ford Explorer or similar type truck. I later discovered that it was from the Cherrydale Fire Department. The cars that were in front of the fire chief's truck proceeded to move past the intersection. The person behind the wheel of the fire chief's truck was not paying attention to the light and about 5 seconds passed, so I decided to walk across the two lane traffic of North Randolph. As I began to cross, the driver of this vehicle began to accelerate extremely fast as if he was making a motion to hit me. I continued walking at the same speed that I initially had started at. The truck did not hit me, but it did pass me extremely closely, about 2-3 feet from my person, and it also was moving at a high speed. The driver of the vehicle, a blond haired but balding, middle aged (44-55 years of age), white man stopped abruptly and stuck his head out of the vehicle and said the words, "dumb-ass nigger". There were three other black males in the vicinity and they heard what man driving the fire chief's truck had said. We were all in complete disbelief and completely appalled at what had been said. The man driving the fire chief's truck quickly proceeded to turn right, northbound on Glebe road. Because of my confusion and bewilderment, I was unable to get any other details such as a license number or a truck number, but I was able to see with all certainty that it was a Cherrydale fire vehicle.

Now I understand the racism is still an issue even in this great country of America, and even in the year 2005. What I cannot understand is how an Arlington County employee, while on the job, while riding in a county vehicle can utter such a racial epithet. I cannot believe that Arlington County is represented by such employees. I merely wanted this incident to be documented and known of by the public officials. I have come too far in my life to be called a "nigger" by anyone, much less a government official. It was a very demoralizing and condescending moment. I look forward to hearing back from you.

Thank you for your time,