Macwriter

Mac kills PC in so many areas. I find that my workflow crashes to a halt when I have to go into the office and use their Windows systems. I hesitated in downloading any Microsoft programs onto my Mac because I don’t like anything about them, how they are organized. Even using Excel, which is still far more substantial than Apple’s Numbers program, I am quick to get in and get out. The one shining Microsoft program out there is Livewriter. It is great. I does everything that a blogger needs and wants. It has two-way communication with accounts and one can write, post, and draw from with ease.

So I am trying out MacJournal. I am hoping that the latest update will address some of the workflow problems that I had. We’ll see. A big problem for me was the lack of tag support. Not that the program doesn’t use tags, it does. But that it doesn’t draw from the list of tags one has already started on an external server. Livewriter does this well. But other programs, not so much. Instead of a seamless work environment I am forced to print out a list of tags and hang it on the wall. This. is. stupid. Either that or I am stupid and I cannot figure out a workaround.

African-American

I am watching the pregame show for Da Bears to play the Saints.  They show the two coaches and ask them questions and both show class and character.  They go back to the announcers and Joe Buck says that “should the Bears win today it will be the first time an African-American has coached in the Super Bowl”. 

Then it hit me… Lovie Smith is African-American.  I had never noticed before. 

It doesn’t matter to me… Lovie Smith is a great coach and it is by such that he is to be judged.  To say he is good as an African-American (which isn’t what the above statement asserts) is the same as saying about a woman “she looks good for having had three kids”.  No… what you are really saying is that she could get in shape.

I watched a short bit on Hillary and Obama yesterday.  Note, I plan to vote for the candidate with the best environmental leanings.  But a black governor from a former Confederate State was talking about how he broke the racial barrier.  He said that he didn’t run as an African American but as the best guy to do the job.

Yep.  As it should be.  I don’t want an idiot in the job (a certain mayor in a certain far Southern town comes to mind) but everyone makes the excuse “oh well, don’t be so hard on him, he’s an African American”.  No.  I want the best person for the job and if it is an African American or a Korean American or an Irish American or whatever, then that is what I want. 

A Republican Strategist had noted how curious it was that not all of the Black Leadership in the U.S. have come out to support Obama.  Most, he says, are waiting and seeing.  I guess what this says to me implicitly is that if you are black then you must support black candidates regardless of whether they are qualified or not.  To say that the Black Leadership is this shallow and ignorant is a slap in the face to them.  Maybe they are, I don’t know… but I am betting that, Al Sharpton, Farrakahn, and Jesse Jackson aside, they are not this dumb.  It makes sense for leaders of a community to go for the best and brightests and who has their interests in mind.

I’ll have to look into Obama’s environmental record.  But so far I am pleased with the actions of Nancy Pelossi and other Dems in Congress with some environmental bills. However, I want more.

Black Reparations

I used to be pretty liberal.  I was for the helping of minorities through the affirmative action program.  However, over time I began to understand that these programs sometimes reward mediocrity by giving the contract/job to some of lesser ability soley due to race.  A job/contract should be given to someone/company solely because of their ability.  If that means all black builders, or none, then so be it.  Imagine that I am owner of a baseball team.  I am going to have tryouts and get the best baseball players I can.  I may have an all white team, or I may have an all black team.  Either way, if I stay true to the notion of hiring the best players, then I will have a competitive team.

Now, on to reparations.  I used to think that this notion was the cutting of a check to individuals because of their skin color.  I was against this notion, and this is the paradox with my conservative notions that individuals know best how to spend their money.  It would be too costly to give every black American a check that would amount to anything.  My grandmother won part of a lottery… the check was for twenty-four cents… less than the price of mailing it.

However, reading about Liberation Ideologies lately, I come upon the notion of reparations.  The notion is that instead of individual checks, money will be spent on colleges and low interest loans for black businesses.  There is an argument within the black community in that they say that there is no such thing as collective guilt, and that present day white Americans had nothing to do with slavery and shouldn’t be owing anything of the sort.

This idea, however, has merit for me.  The part that I like is the money for schools.  The South, today, is slowly making progress, but is behind in many ways.  I left Arkansas, but I debated within my heart for some time, and the issue is not dead, that perhaps I need to return to the State, that I could be one more light, one more person that is for equality and tolerance and liberty.

Education in Arkansas is consistently at the bottom.  They compete with Mississippi for the bottom spot… and the other Southern states are in the mix as well. 

And here is where some of my socialist leanings come in, though I don’t think it is as clear-cut as this… in that a chain is as strong as its weakest link.  The poorest, most uneducated, area in the country is the South.  This isn’t to say that they are all backwards, they aren’t, but the technical skills training are lower in the South.  Clinton, heralded in Arkansas as bringing the state up from the mud, didn’t do much for the state’s education levels.

I am for spending much more money on colleges, and right now those with greatest need are those in the South, and particularly the black colleges.  More books, more aids in the classroom, wireless access across the campus, and cheap or obtainable laptops for the students.  It is nice that at PSU one can carry a laptop to different classes and while the history professor talks about the Donatists, one can look up online an internet filled with information about the Donatists.

This isn’t fair, to be sure… there are lots of other colleges that could use the money as well.  I’d like to see them get funding also, but let’s take care of the ones in worse shape first.  And I make no distinction to size either, whether it has a hundred students or ten thousand.  I want the same access to technology and libraries for the small school as the large school.  I was upset that the library at PSU is not as good as that at U of O, but when I searched for various books and found them at other universities, such as Western Wahsington, Oregon State, and Reed College, it took two days for that book to be delivered to PSU.  This inter-library network makes my library truly amazing.  I’d like to see black colleges have similar networks, or if they do  have them, have them upgraded with speed (there must be trucks and drivers to move these books).

As the posters say, Black History is Everyone’s History, and this is true… for we are all one America.  I disagree with calling people African-Americans, or the like… we are all Americans.

thoughts on racism

Racism finds a home in white towers 

While I agree with what Williams is saying in his article, I do not think he approaches the issue as well as he could have.  It appears to me that the purpose of this article was to slap the face of the holier than thou liberals who are always oh so politically correct.  Yet his inflamatory arguments do not give much for one to go on.  It would seem to me that he ignored writing to the audience that his article refers to… blacks in America.

I don’t like using the term “blacks in America” because I do not like sectioning off a population like that.  I noticed that President Bush has appointed “minority” members to key,  powerful positions within government, but I’ve not counted as it is something that I don’t really care about, the tally of jobs along racial lines.  I don’t give a hoot what a person’s color is, as long as he/she can do the job.

I think that perhaps race lines are blurring and that we confuse them with social lines.  Is every black man a hip hop, gangsta, thuggish sort of guy?  Depends on where you look, for sometimes it certainly seems that way, but I question how a person looks and in what context.  If you only look at parties and clubs, then your perception of what a black male is might be skewed.  I would ask, what are the characteristics of the white males at these functions as well. 

Perhaps we are losing our differences between racial lines, while the difference between cultural/societal lines are lengthening.  I do not like the hip hop culture.  I think it is vain and shallow and says to people the only thing in life is bling bling and ass fucking.  Therefore I do not get along with many die-hard hip hop culture people, whether they be white or black, as we have no common ground.  Just as I give a person equal opportunity regardless of race, so too do they have equal opportunity for me to consider them a dumb ass, regardless of race.

A person who cannot see past racial lines might automatically construe me as a racist.  They are the true racist, not I.  I do not get along with what is percieved to be “white culture” all that well either, such as the overt urban cowboys, the shoot anything that moves hunt club, and the “Spring-tucky” types that live throughout the Eugene/Springfield area (see meth use, 80′s hair bands, rednecks, all mixed into one).

I have my own personal set of values and I have moved away from my earlier notion that all things are relative and grey.  Perhaps it is, but humans must have some sense of right and wrong.  If we believe a thing is wrong, then it is wrong in our minds, a reality all its own.  If a person, or group of persons, do not match with my set of values, then I will approach my own set and look to see if they are wrong.  Sometimes they are, sometimes they are not.  If a group does not fit well with my own values, then I will not mingle with said group.

However, back to my original point, I do  find it dangerous that the idea of black intellectualism has been so shaped as to leave no other room for anything but reactionary, far liberal, retribution seeking, hate-filled and disempowering.  A couple of years ago while I was living in Houston I made the comment to a friend that I welcomed the discourse on gays in Christianity, as I thought that this would help the stagnant waters of Christian intellectualism (the religous right take things way too seriously).  I thought that the values that Christian preach would be better understood via this debate on gays in the church.  Well, it hasn’t happened yet.  Yet I hold the same hope for these racist type comments from the left on what a real black person is supposed to be like (and cannot be like), that it will foster discussion within the black community and that the richness of thought and traditions within the community will give rise to diversity (odd that I am asking for diversity and the liberals attacking it, eh?) of thought.  I suppose that a strong, powerful, self motivated and empowered woman like Dr. Condoleeza Rice isn’t hip hop enough to be a role model for young black girls in the minds of these ivory tower liberals who see nothing but relativism (where is the relativism as here?).  Dr Rice would be an outstanding role model for any young girl, more so than Britney Spears or Eve.