Abstruse

Abstruse means difficult to understand.  I was called abstruse once when attempting to explain the distinction between index coefficients in canonical correlation analysis compared to those in standard structural equation modeling. From that one day in class more than 25 years ago, I still have a fondness for the term as an apt descriptive of myself. Personally, I do not consider my plane spoken comportment to be difficult to understand, but rather that most outside of the world of science, do not abide by taking one’s words as what they mean and are stated to mean. Many cases this is because people have bias that frequently prevent them from acknowledging facts that they too may be aware of but typically avoid because they do not support or confirm to their personal, political or philosophical narrative. Consequently, many consider that my views on race in 21^st century America, as a Black man too are abstruse in the age of Black Lives Matter and continuous charges of seeing racism everywhere someone goes.

Today, race and racism are seen around every corner. Whether if it is the orcs in Lord of the Rings or asking a group of black men with a history of dining and dashing to pay before they are served. Whenever a cop, especially a white cop shoots or kills a Black man, it is an instant racist success. Are any of these truly racist acts or are they rooted in common sense? If a group of white men with a history of dining and dashing were confronted by a Black person, would it still be racist? I ask this because for many Blacks in America, it seems they consider the biggest obstacle to success and achievement in America is racism. I vehemently disagree.

First, as one born in segregation in the deep south, nothing that we as Black folk confront, even the police is as racist as it was in the late 1950s and 1960s – NOTHING. For people to form an organization as if this is a real problem is sinister, superficial and disingenuous and I can provide elucidation on this. In 2017, there were 1147 killings by police of which 149 were unarmed including 49 Blacks and 51 whites. There are approximately 900,000 law enforcementofficers in the U.S., a nation with 328.7 million citizens of which 47.4 million (14.6%) are black and of that 21.5 million (48% of Blacks) are male. Using simple math, this means there was 1 Black killed for every 6.5 million U.S. citizens, 1 for approximately every 967,000 Black citizens and 1 for every 438,000 Black male citizens. When the same analysis is conducted using drowning, of which 2,760 Blacks died because of drowning, this accounted for 1 out of 118,000 U.S. citizens, 1 out of every 17,000 Black citizens and 1 out of every 7,700 Black male citizens. Thus, the query, if Black lives mattered, wouldn’t or shouldn’t drowning be higher than Blacks killed by police?

Such analysis is factual yet remain ignored. I have done similar analysis with Black accident victims, those of cardiovascular disease deaths and Black homicide victims – all way more significant that Blacks killed by police. I am not saying that this is not a problem, but rather it is disingenuous to say this is a major problem. But when I consider Black kids shooting each other, maternal mortality, poor education outcomes in the form of dropout rates and reading and math proficiency, poverty, health and employment, police killing Blacks isn’t that important and is more so an outcome of our learned helplessness.

The modern world view that appears to be only applicable to Blacks born in America is that we are helpless and cannot do for ourselves without the pity of whites. This nature is never applied to Jews, Koreans, Jamaicans, Nigerians or Chinese, just us. It is as if we have been taught as Black people that racism is more important than it is or that we have been taught over the past few decades that Blacks in America are the ONLY and first race in history to be proud to think we cannot succeed unless we have ideal conditions. Think about it, it suggests that because we are having problems we will never achieve or have success. It seems to be forgotten that we as a people had success even with Jim Crow and segregation. It is the goal of racist to implant such ideas to make us obsess about racism, even subtle, that we cannot succeed until racism is obviated. This is neurotic and illogical.

Yes, white privilege is real, but how does Black folk always talking about it solve our problems? Unfortunately, when you address it, you are attacked. Take the example of Bill Cosby. Cosby said what our parents and grand parents said. Be responsible, take care of your kids, study and work hard. Just saying that is what mad Ta-Nehisi Coates his career. His first major piece in the Atlantic attacked Cosby for “respectability politics.” What is wrong with being respectable? I know no Black mother father, grand mother or grand father that do not desire or preach for their kids to be respectable. Eric Dyson got so mad he wrote a book attacking Cosby for what in essences, Blacks have been teaching their offspring for more than a century. From their position, it is wrong o teach people to be responsible, respectable, and to believe you can succeed on your merit alone regardless of economic circumstances and history shows that we can, have and did achieve and only stopped this approach in the mid-1980s. It is easy to make a baby, but it is hard to be a father.

We need to take responsibility for not only ourselves but equally our families and communities. But according to Coates, asking people to be responsible and to raise their children is blaming the victim although we all see and know that individual behavioral dysfunction (speaking proper English is acting white, studying hard is acting white or reading is acting white) is the groundwork of African American economic disadvantage. First generation Asians in NYC who barely speak English hold education the highest of all aspirations so much so that many go without food and basic amenities, so they can pay for tutoring for their children. This is too much for us because we are locked in on being victims and the targets of steady racism. If we do not instill a capacity to function and compete in our children, we will never have equality of outcomes and crying racism will do nothing to accomplish such. Sure, Affirmative action will improve numbers and get you in the door, but it will never address the fundamental problem behind why our children do not stay in or perform well in the top institutions of higher learning in America.  This is a problem because it means Blacks will always be a peonage class collectively. To put it simply, we cannot blame white people for the failures in our communities or us as parents not doing homework or reading with their kids.

Blacks in Barbados, a nation also impacted by slavery and with high population of single parent households see their kids on average score 1300 on the SAT. Across Africa, the average GMAT score is approximately 510 compared to 433 for U.S.Blacks.

Once jokingly, a colleague of mine (a physicist) said: “now we can describe victimization as a time dependent projection matrix with intersectionality being the op-diagonal matrix coefficient.” It made perfect sense to me, for it implied that you have a set of characteristics which are ranked, typically on race and how they rate on the victim hierarchy, and it changes over time as a function of other intersectional variables such as religion, gender, and sexuality. This is where we are as Black people – we want people to lower standards for us to succeed as if we to dumb, stupid, disadvantaged and oppressed to do well on our own effort.

Acknowledging that a white person has white privilege such that they see me as helpless and inferior and can only achieve with white assistance and handouts is not only insulting but also the axiology of racism. It is the same disposition that whites exhibited toward Blacks during slavery, Jim Crow and the Black Codes.  It is the same disposition that led to segregated schools from Boston to Little Rock, for the good of Blacks.  Still we incessantly repeat the lunacy that Blacks will never have success until white come to terms with racism. I do not even know what that means. Is it saying that once this Fourier eutopia happens, then and only then, Blacks will be able to achieve success in America? Is it saying that once progressive liberal whites admit their white privileges, and atone for this original sin by admitting their inherent racism and worship their God Ta-Nehisi Coates will make it all good for Blacks only then? I think Not.

No matter how much white people read Coates and hoist the scarlet letter of white privilege, it will do nothing to address the underlying conditions that alone are contributing to our collective behavioral dysfunction. So far it has only resulted in a defensive populous that seeks to talk about the books by Black authors they read and endless pedantic twitter rants and op-eds that serve only to feed their egos, for targeted action in their minds directed at solving problems are not as essential as constantly complaining and blaming white people.

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Progressive Double Standards Reveal Their True Color

In its insatiable desire to be the wokest in the moment, the progressive left has morphed into a combination of ‘whitey” and the brain and the PC principle of South Park. It is so common place now that they don’t realize how through their double standards that they are revealing their true colors. Imagine for example if a white person said the following:  "This is not going to be the country of [Black] people.” Would this be acceptable? Would this be considered racist or xenophobic? It sure it would be. However, this was not said by a white person, but rather an immigrant refuge named Ilhan Omar and instead of black she used the word white.  Maybe it is no big deal to many but for me, as a black man tired of bigotry and racism regardless of its source, it is a major concern. I hate stereotypes and the collective assignment of categorization over the individual. But this is typical of the virtue signaling, divide and conquer political approach of the left in the United States of America presently. It is as if this is the only thing they can think of or concern themselves with.

As a man born in the segregated South, I can honestly say racism isn’t as bad as many proclaim nor is it as institutional as many desires to believe. If such was the case, all races would be subjugated via the existence of the white Eurocentric political and power structure singularly, but they are not. Take descendants of Asia born in the U.S. including but not limited to Koreans, Indians, Chinese, Koreans and the Japanese.  They too have a history somewhat similar but not the same as slavery. The Japanese could not buy land in in many states and were even interned. The same can be said for the Chinese at the turn of the century. However, these groups do way better in economic and educational outcomes that whites or blacks. Racism would not allow such an outcome on behalf of white benefit if it was a true factor in present day outcomes related to systemic power and oppression. What can be stated is that in these groups, out of wedlock birth is lower and the value of education is higher, as it was for blacks after slavery and during segregation.

Being woke leads to such irrational and spurious conclusions when made in the absence of evidence and data. We see the same when the left harps on Islamophobia and gay rights. On the one had you say to state anything negative about radical Islamic fundamentalist is Islamophobic and xenophobic, yet you paint all white people collectively for the sins of their pigmentation and history and all blacks as being so dumb that we cannot succeed in America because we are black. At the same time with respect to Islamic fundamentalist, claim to be in support of gay rights while ignoring that in Islam being gay is punishable by death historically and presently. Just last week, the Saudi government executed 37 men including many for alleged homosexual acts. But to say this fact is wrong and is considered blatant islamophobia when facts outline this is evident.

Even noting the fact that Ilhan Omar gave a speech at a fundraising event with Hassan Shibly, who is on record for extreme anti-Semitic views against Jews and is the lawyer for Hoda Muthana, a New Jersey–born woman who married an ISIS fighter and in writing has proclaimed her adherence to the Islamic State, is an attack on all Muslims albeit specific individuals are named. This is the issue democrats will have to address - how their double standards and inconsistent logic show that they are not truly concerned about the issues of identity they proclaim to signal support for.

Do not think I am picking on Omar because I am not. Let us take Elizabeth Warren to task equally. The announced Democrat presidential candidate recently penned and op-ed in which she too proclaimed and outlined a serious issue in existence – black female mortality. However, her rationale for the outcome in her view was racism without evidence. Warren promulgated that the reason that “Black women are three to four times more likely than white women to die from pregnancy or childbirth-related causes” was mainly due to Racism. My query was why not sexism? American Medical Association data show that more than 85 percent of obstetricians and gynecologists are women. Moreover, data indicates that “ob-gyns had the highest proportion of underrepresented minorities (combined, 18.4%), especially black (11.1%) and Hispanic (6.7%) physicians” and that “underrepresented minority ob-gyns were more likely than white or Asians to practice in federally funded underserved areas or where poverty levels were high. In fact, among adult medical specialists, greater racial and ethnic diversity is found among obstetrician-gynecologists (ob-gyns).” The more astonishing fact is that black women are more than 10 times more likely to have a black female ob-gyn than a white one, 18 more times than having a white male one. Again, not supported by fact or math.

The double standards continue with regards to other issues equally. On immigration for example, progressives appear to care more about illegal migrants than homeless and poor minorities born in America. It is as if they want an immigration policy for immigrants first versus one that benefits U.S. citizens first. They do this disingenuously also by conflating legal immigration with illegal immigration. They run cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles which are reflective of their policies that result in mass homelessness, failing government public schools and streets littered with syringes and feces.

Another example is abortion. Progressives openly claim to be the party of science but consider a baby in the womb a clump of cells (which anatomy, biology and even ultra-sounds refute) when they are actual human beings. Just this week, an Alabama democrat state lawmaker defended abortion by saying "Some kids are unwanted, so you kill them now or kill them later." This is a pervasive view for these same people advocate for gun control because guns kill but since Roe V. Wade, there have been about 1.5 million deaths because of guns but 60 million due to abortion. But if you support any views in the opposite of liberals, they attempt to silence you and deplatform you.  I know, I have been permanently banned from twitter.

I would hope that facts would be more valuable than the incessant claims of racism that progressives incessantly spew. Sure, racism exist, and it will always exist, but it is not as bad as the left projects. Fact is you will never ever be able to get rid of all racism or individual racist beliefs no more than you can eliminate all murder. This quest for eutopia is delusional and sociopathic. I just want to be treated as a unique individual with my own personal agency, not as a group, for I am an individual first rather than a part of a monolith.

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The Woken Dead and Free Speech

I was told by a dear and near relative of mine that lunacy and idiocy have no bounds and are infinite in the individual mind as infinite as the number of particles, forces and mass-less particles in the universe. No I am not talking about the woman that ordered Chocolate Ice cream and when they did not have any, decided to take a baseball bat to the shop and break out all of the windows, nor am I talking about the fools at DuPont who want to start mass market selling breast milk to adult humans like bottle water or Gatorade. What I am referring to is the ultimate in hypocrisy and equally incoherent, laughable and ill-advised.

Recently, a TV opinion personality was asked by of all people, rappers to be removed and fired from the television show that they host. Fox news host Laura Ingraham has gained this attention from Snoop Dogg, T.I., and the Game, because of a comment made with regards to lyrics of a song he participated on with YG called “FDT.” FDT is short for “F— Donald Trump.” Now since I do not have TV or cable on my farm, I searched for the clip online to see what was the big fuss that had all of the tricks G-strings up their cracks.  After watching the segment, I found nothing disrespectful of or directed toward the death of the rapper. In addition, I did not see anything to suggest and validate she was making fun of his death. What I observed was a person intentionally making fun of the chorus of the song by saying “OK, that's a very creative refrain" and suggesting in jest that the person repeating the chorus was no Leonard Bernstein.

What gets me is the two-faced audacity of a group of people who continuously cite freedom of speech to record, promote and make money off of lyrics that advise to kill the police, kill other black men, sell other black people drugs and treat and call women thots, ho’s and bitches. Yet they want to prevent someone else from expressing and having the same right of free speech to make a living.  Snoop has the right to say what he says and so does Laura Ingraham. Regardless if you agree with it or not. Don’t watch, change the channel.  Just as I have the right to call out dumb-fcks proclaiming fake outrage when someone is critical of a so-called expletive-ridden protest song against President Donald Trump. If you support Trump, why not ridicule the lyrics of the song? The lyrics are not the person and since when has it been illegal to be critical of any work of art or music?

And the critics are people who sided with Pennsylvania rapper Jamal ‘Mayhem Mal’ Knox, who wrote a song about being arrested by the Pittsburgh police in which they not only rapped "Let's kill these cops cuz they don't do us no good," they also mentioned the arresting officer’s names and posted pictures of them in a music video.

I am tired of all the clout chasing, want to be famous in the vein of Martin Luther King and Malcom X, Jussie Smollett always on their period type cats. You need to fall back if you ever rapped about killing cops, pimping hoes, groupie’s, incessant misogyny and saying bitches ain’t shit but ho’s and tricks. Fall back if you so sensitive that it is okay for you rap about ‘I'll choke yo ass out like Dre did that bitch’ and ‘if a nigga pull upon me at the light and it's a choppa in site ‘but you don ran out of tampons because some rightly in their opinion, called a trash chorus trash. If you ever been ordered to pay for sexually assaulting a woman and singing about killing and calling black people n#### every other word, you need to fall back too.

This is truly the age of the BITICHIFICATION of black men in America. Stop complaining so much and direct your attention on real and serious issues.  Racism I hate to tell you isn’t that big a deal when you look at real concerns confronting the black community.  You need to cut off your TVs and stop getting histrionic when you hear something you don’t like. You do not have the right to tell or decide for others what they want to watch or see. This is the epitome of hypocrisy, rappers against free speech – this is truly the woken dead.

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Lady McBath

Lady Macbeth was a bitch. She is one of Shakespeare’s most ill-famed and downright evil. She was a crafty woman who employed craft and zealous means only available to women to obtain and achieve power - simply put, cruel manipulation at any cost. The root of all of Lady McBeth’s desire is sexism. We see this in several ways, including how she cajoles her husband to go along with her wicked tactics.

Here in the metropolitan Atlanta area, we have a reincarnation of Lady McBeth and her name is Democrat Rep. Lucy McBath. Rep. McBath (D-Ga.) came too prominence after she became a staunch ant-second amendment and gun confiscation proponent after on the day after Thanksgiving in 2012, her 17-year-old son was shot and killed by a white man while sitting in a car with a group of friends at a gas station after an argument of the vehicle occupants playing their music loud. Since that tragic event, she has been able to Georgia's 6th congressional district that was in the hands of Republicans for many, many years prior to her 2018 midterm election victory.

Since becoming a member of the congressional delegation from Georgia. McBath has started to feel herself.  In many ways, like Lady McBeth, Lady McBath has morphed into a frightening female character who is equally ambitious and ruthless. She is a bully and just like Lady McBeth (who manipulates her husband throughout the play, McBath employs a similar approach with anyone who speaks out against her, her policies or disagrees with her.  This is particularly true when it deals with issues of racial injustice and violence against minorities. When one does, she will go on the attack screaming racism or sexism, for that is the standard when someone says something another person doesn’t like or when they want to stifle views antagonistic of theirs.

This past week we saw that when McBath targeted a well-known Atlanta radio host for an innocuous comment suggesting that she go “back to the kitchen.” Upon which she immediately began to campaign fund raise from the statement saying “I've been dealing with these kinds of sexist attacks since day one. Can you help me fight back? Donate.” Seeing this was not enough, she also had radio host suspended without pay. In an interview she stated: “it is definitely indicative of a mindset that just hasn't succumbed to the fact that women are leading the charge politically, women are stepping up, taking our place, having a seat at the table." 

The caricature of McBath is simple, attack by using the language of anti-racist activists. This serves to distract from the fact that she represents the 6th district of Georgia but lives in Tennessee. She would call such a documented truism a sexist or racist attack albeit the Cobb county tax commission has confirmed that she does not meet the standards to call Cobb county her primary residence the three years leading up to her election. Her home remains in Rockford, Tennessee.

Saying “get back in the kitchen” isn’t sexist unless get back into the bedroom, get back into the den or get back in the garage or building is sexist. Neither is “go back to sewing.”  Statistics prove that in the U.S, more women practice sewing than men. This is like saying go back to cutting the grass or changing your oil is sexist.

Our current climate is flawed. Asking for someone to be fired or punished merely for differences in motive, intent and semantics is the new bullying. If lady McBath is a victim, being a member of one of the most elite institute in America, the U.S. country, then anyone on some puzzy ish, can be considered a victim over anything.

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Neoliberalism At it's Best-Majority of Sub-Saharan African Population is Mentally Retarded Say Scientists

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Neoliberalism or How to Pimp the Underclass in Six Syllables

For long as I can recall, at least after the civil rights era, the economic prosperity in the African American community has been on the decline. Ironically this started under the purview of a new approach to economics trumpeted to be the end all and be all to the problems (economic and civil) that confronted the U.S. since the end of the Vietnam war. This is what it was supposed to be but what it became was a new-fangled form of lassez-faire policy that to date, has serve to retard economic growth and increased disparities in wealth and income inequality in the U.S. and worldwide.

You got it, I am speaking about neoliberalism. I have defined neoliberalism policy as policy that transfers controls of economic factors from the public sector to the private sector. Neoliberals rather in the form of Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, Tony Blair or The Clinton’s assert that economic and foreign policy that removes trade barriers and restrictions on capital flows is the best thing you can do to create job growth, economic prosperity, wealth and more importantly, eliminate or at least, lift folk out of poverty. Although apolitical, after the 80s, democrats (social democrats in France, Labor in England & Democrats in the U.S.) used this ideology to usher in and promote their views on domestic and foreign policy. A strange occurrence, since historically, these political parties were framed as being the representative of the little man, main street, the factory worker and union member. Establishing neoliberal free market foreign and domestic would mean that the democrats would not have to work with the vulture class.  This meant forming more relationships with the elite and wealth of the big cities more so than the lowly farmers of the Midwest or miners in other states.  Even in urban areas, it meant economic ostracization for minority communities until it was time to secure their vote.

This alone demanded that Democrats listen and accept more ideas from the wealthy and affluent, and it has been the same since Tony Blair and the Clinton’s. Although democrats proclaim their policies serve progressive and liberal objectives, the harsh reality is that the do not. They have led to the destruction of unions and reduction in collective bargaining rights while they claim to be the party of the working class.  They have tightened relationships with the white-collar elite and for taking their money, have put in place policy that has help to suppress wages and wage growth.  These policies have also resulted in the ruination of the auto industry as we have witnessed in Detroit. But they did not stop there.  Starting with Bill Clinton, they even deregulated banks and had the gumption to tell the working poor that their situation was due to education, while rich liberals ignore the fact that even going to college, whether one finishes with a degree or not results in most African Americans having amassed nearly two times the amount of student loan debt than whites. Even Obama and other black establishment cats representing the democratic party got in on the act preaching the same credo asserting a culture of poverty argument that basically suggest that black are poor and need to go to college. As if all our problems are due more to having a poor education, than the neoliberal policies they unabatingly advance.

With Obama and his neoliberal economic locution, African American unemployment is still two times that of white unemployment. Economic disparity between whites and blacks has grown wider since his election and African American median income has fallen more than 10 percent with 26 percent of Black households being considered “food insecure.” Since Obama took office, the seasonally adjusted labor-force-participation rate for black Americans across the board has declined and the number of black food-stamp participants has increased more than 50 percent. Add to this that the percentage of black Americans who own homes has declined sharply and that real median income among black households based on data from your Census Bureau has also declined.  This means a higher poverty rates for blacks since 2008, a reduction in the number of young black men with full-time employment and an increase in median white wealth providing them with more income at a pace way surpassing that of blacks under your administration. Maybe this is why it has been determined that single African American women ages 36 to 49 have a median wealth of $5. This is without me even mentioning the paltry rate of GDP growth since you took office.  To put it bluntly, the economic liberalism of the Obama era was just a more murderous form of Reagan – unfettered (legal or illegal) immigration was encouraged and a blind eye was turn to both corporate tax evasion via overseas accounts and the activity of criminal banker activity on Wall Street.

All the can be connected in a causal manner to policy put in place by folk (99% democratic progressive liberals) elected to office or thought leaders, by the poor and working class black folk who have been distressed by said policies. Again, plainly put poverty and racism has only got worse during Obama’s tenure. Obama and democrats love to tout a higher minimum wage as being a solution but never answer how is this possible, when even with a higher wage, you cannot be sure that cats will give folk the hours they need just to get by let alone move out of poverty? How can this solve any economic issues sustained for blacks since democrats came to power during the post-civil-rights era and with democrats still pushing for capitalist globalization that has had a disproportionately negative influence on African Americans over the past 40 to 50 years? How can this help when 95% of the jobs created during the Obama Presidency were temporary? And don’t say because we talk about education because the reality is that African Americans with some college education have higher unemployment rates than whites who never went to college or even completed high school?

It was President Obama in 2014 that stated "if Uncle Jethro would get off the couch and stop watching Sports Center and go register some folks and go to the polls, we might have a different kind of politics." This in a nut shell is neoliberalism, who's efficacy that even the IMF is starting to question. A philosophy which states we get rich if you vote for us and us alone while you black folk will remain restricted to unstable low wage service sector jobs (which are vanishing) and represent the fastest growing population of homeless in the U.S., women and children. This is one reason why economic position of African Americans have not changed since democrats began to represent all major urban areas since the mid-1960s. If I am wrong, then why have schools failed to improve and have been on a downward trend since then?  Why have long-term job prospects in these same places decreased and even disappeared since then? Neoliberalism has never been shown to have been effective or even work in the real world, especially when it comes to improving the economic conditions of blacks regardless of location of residency. So, I ask you, why support a party that takes your vote and destroys your community and ability to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Riddle me that Batman.

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