Monday, January 21, 2008

If Elected...

It feels like I've been away longer than I actually have, but it has been a while. I've been pretty busy and generally pretty proud of the stuff I've been doing. I'm itching to share some of what I've been working on with however many loyal readers I've got out there. (Feels so weird to type that...) Things will hopefully be approved and/or launching soon and folks will get to sample the various and sundry projects that have taken up my time.

On the book front, I had a meeting with my editor last week. We're just trying to build up momentum here and get the idea machine cranking so The Celebrity Collaborator can just jump in and press the gas. The FUNBE (friend/upstairs neighbor/book editor) and I got to talking and tried to deconstruct the intensity of the the two leading Democratic candidates' sparring. We got particularly stuck on this idea of Bill Clinton being the first black President.



While it's not that surprising that this meme has come up as Clinton and Obama vie for the Democratic nomination, it's pretty amazing that people treat it as if it's an actual issue. Let's be real: the whole thing started as a joke. A warm jest, an inclusive jape. Bill Clinton, savvy image-worker that he is, never seemed to protest too much under this make-believe melanin mantle. And, sure, he's got some offices in Harlem. And, yes, you can trot out all the other things people point to as signs that Bill's got that one drop floating in his veins: the single-mom Southern roots, the saxophone, the Links/Jack-and-Jill crew he hangs with, the ladies-man swagger and all the empathy and rhythm in his voice. Debate those all you want, but the reality still remains: Bill Clinton ain't no Black President.

I'm not talking about his political record here. I'm talking about the elusive hoodoo that makes up the collective subconscious and wells up in certain individuals. While the FUNBE (who I must note is a smarter man than myself) and I were parleying in that midtown Manhattan office, I decided that maybe, just maybe, Black President isn't even an electable position, at least not in the way that the U.S.A. selects its Commander-in-Chief anyway.

Because, the way I envision it, becoming Black President is a hearts-and-minds thing. It's about groundswell.



Fela Kuti was a Black President. (It's the title of one of his albums and where the germ of this idea started in my head.)

Miles Davis was a Black President. (Yeah, even with all his fucked-up shit.)

Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes and James Brown were the Black President at the same time. (No, not Co-Presidents. Separate Black Presidents with overlapping terms. Chew on that.)

Duke Ellington was a Black President. (Thus proving that you can be royalty and President at the same time.)

Jacob Lawrence was a Black President. (On the strength of the campaign posters alone...)



Zora Neale Hurston was a Black President. (First female President in 2008? Yawn. Got there like 70, 80 years ago. Thanks for playing, though.)

Ralph Ellison was a Black President. (Hell, Invisible Man's practically a manual about the electoral process.)



That nameless, faceless S1W (Remember them? Peace to the Security of the First World soldiers. ) in the crosshairs of the Public Enemy logo? He was a Black President.


Dave Chappelle was a Black President. (And he can return to active duty whenever he wants, as far as I'm concerned.)

See, Black Presidents wage sociocultural campaigns and get elected in invisible caucuses. No announcements need to happen, because the results become readily evident. Sometimes the hoodoo vote and the ballot-and-button world might collide. (I'd like to think that Shirley Chisolm was a Black President.) The status of Black President comes from the planes of persona, iconography and metaphor, from participating in those areas in both conscious and subconscious ways. It's a dangerous alchemy that a BP candidate can't always control and, moreover, shouldn't necessarily try to. Eventually, one might find that the right stew jes grew.


I'm not gonna run the metaphor into the ground and start parsing who the Black Cabinets and the Black Prime Ministers are or have been. We can debate and disagree* on who's actually on the official roster of past and present Presidents; that's just part of the dynamic. No one person decides. Most importantly, I'd even say that you kind of know who isn't a Black President. (Sorry, Tavis...) Heck, I'll even go so far as to say that, if elected, Obama may not even wind being a Black President. He could wind up being an African-American President or a multiracial President, but it may well be that he didn't do so hot on those invisible caucuses. (However, I will quote a writer I spoke to recently who said that all it took was watching Barack greet an associate while stumping to convince him. "He gave dude a pound. Side handshake, pulled in to the chest and the pat on the back. That's not scripted. That's instinct.")


Looking back, maybe Toni Morrison was putting some rootwork on Bill. ("Oh, you know, let's call him that if it'll help him–and us–out.") What Slick Willie may not know is that nowadays he's dangerously close to Anointed Ofay** territory and those guys never become President. They're frickin' harbingers of doom.

Developing...



*Lord knows there's lots of people on the bubble. Let’s talk it out, people! Jesse? Al? Dyson? And, yes, anyone who knows me knows that I'm being generous by even putting that last guy down as a maybe.

**If you don't already know, you'll just have to pick up the book to find out what this means. 'Course, that means I have to write it, too.