Return of the Mack
I don’t have a coherent story to tell. I do have some ideas about things going on. I wanted to share some of them.
Why I Stopped Writing. Confession time. This is so embarrassing. I used to think that I could change people’s minds with my words. I used to think, for real, that I could write down something true or share some experience I had and that others might reconsider something.
I mean, that’s how my mind works. I have an idea about something. I read. I reconsider. I might change my mind. I might have a better understanding. Either way, I got new information. Most people don’t want new information. Most people want to find some 3rd party support for the position they already hold. (Or I’m not that convincing. That’s always a good option) I wanted to use writing to be a teacher. That’s, essentially, the idea I’ve always brought to what I do. To realize that wasn’t going to work made the whole thing feel like a waste of time. But I wrote this for me. Not sure when or if I’ll do it again. Also I’m old so I’m using gifs because they make me laugh even though the young people will have jokes.
Teaching. I think about how much of my life was improved by having a great teacher. I had Mrs. Young. I had Mrs. Evans. In my home I had my grandmother. She taught me so much about life and leadership and love and all those important values that made me the man I am today. But she also taught me the gaps that the school didn’t.
That’s what’s so funny about the current Critical Race Theory fight. At my schools we only talked about black people during Black History Month. And that was just in social studies. It’s not like black people’s scientific achievements became the curriculum for Chemistry. Social studies was: Slavery — Civil War — Rosa Parks — MLK — Post Civil Rights. I’m sure they added Obama now. But that was it. I learned about post-reconstruction, THE MOST IMPORTANT ERA OF AMERICAN HISTORY, in conversations with my grandmother and books from the library. That’s not what we were taught in school. In school slavery looked like somebody just worked a shift in the field, went home to the little house right by the job, hung out with friends dancing and eating stew. We were getting a version of history so light and sanitized it barely counts as accurate, and that’s what they want to remove?
1990s all the way back. Amy and I were at a pop-up shop in Echo Park a few years ago. (I realize that sounds like the most pretentious shit ever) As far as we could tell everybody had vintage 90s clothing for sale. That meant Looney Toons shirts, Starter jackets, Cross Colours jeans.
We had a ball! How could a shirt we were clowning by 1996 suddenly be a hot item with a $100 price tag? We started laughing about all the old clothes we had that we wish we could sell today. The joke’s on us.
Here’s Nordstrom’s line of Cross Colours, including their Boyz n the Hood tee-shirt and Tupac crop top.
I don’t know why I didn’t think that the spot we were laughing about, a pop-up shop in Echo Park, was exactly the type of place where the trends are set. But it was exactly the type of place where trends are set!
Two years later I’m wishing I bought that jacket they now want $400 for on ebay.
Zoom. 92% of bosses at work want the employees to have the camera on. They think employees who frequently avoid video don’t have a future at the company. Here’s a study about how Zoom fatigue is worse for women and people of color. We had a complete reset of work and they’re recreating all the same problems in different ways. The same people who feel a burden to stifle themselves in person at work are now told to do the same thing on video all day looking at their face while they do it. (This is the WORST. Fake smiling is hard enough. I have to look at me sell-out while I do it?)
You have companies bribing people to come back to the office. Employees are looking at the cost of gas and the comfort of that home office and pushing back.
It takes about two months for a new behavior to become automatic. We’ve been in this pandemic for two years! My everyday is waking and walking those 20 or 30 feet to the next room to the office. An in-office model means an entirely new set of daily behaviors. Even for the most well-adjusted person that causes some stress and anxiety.
At every step that employers could have chosen to engage openly and honestly with their employees we’ve seen more garbage and games. It’s why Starbucks and Amazon are losing union fights even when they’re spending millions. If only there was a solution for these fed-up companies who are tired of workers demanding more!
Workers. Let’s just do an easy one here. The math is quick. Companies are saying they can’t find workers. There’s a bunch of people seeking refuge in America who also need work. I mean, does 1 + 1 equal 2 or did I forget something? Are they really choosing racism over profit? Even during slavery times, they had their goals aligned. This is really rejecting money just to avoid seeing a few more brown faces in town.
City of Ghosts. I think this is my favorite show ever made. It’s about some kids in LA. They talk about the things kids talk about. What’s happening with the new restaurant in town? Who is that guy who lives in the alley? Who used to live here before us? Where did your parents come from?
They explore Los Angeles to answer those questions. But it’s not Santa Monica or Hollywood or Rodeo Drive. They’re in Koreatown and Boyle Heights. Venice and Leimert Park. They learn about their community and their neighborhood by asking questions and talking to others. (The South LA episode spends time with Barbara Morrison at the Barbara Morrison Performing Arts Center. This is a music icon from my home city of Ypsilanti who died last month. She was talented and kind and she even put up with my dad in her band for decades!)
City of Ghosts is about when people who are open and kind explore the world around them. They don’t approach others with fear or disgust but with wonder, the way children do. A lot of us walking around seemed to have lost that. If there’s anything you take from this weird, long essay, watch City of Ghosts.
Violence Against Asian People. I fully realize that’s it trite af to just add a topic like this in a random list as though it’s just another little thing happening. I get that.
But I’m not going to write an entire piece about this because it’s obvious already that non-Asian folks don’t care. Every day you get a story about an Asian elder being attacked in LA or Chicago or NYC or SanFran or Philly on the news. Then you can jump on social media and see 100 more stories posted by Asian-Americans of their own experiences being attacked and harassed just moving from A-to-B. Riding the train or the bus or shopping at the store.
Go ahead and Google it. You’ll find a bunch of articles written by Asian-American journalists, photos like the one below, taken at marches Asian-Americans have set up, and first-person experiences that should make everybody furious. But there’s a clear pattern in the names of those reporting on these stories. And the rest of us have a lot of work to do.
I don’t see any broad movement to say how unacceptable this is. I don’t see folks talking about how they saw this happening and jumped in to stop it. I just see a quiet groundswell of danger around the most vulnerable of the community and not many people seem to give a damn. This is the time to amplify the efforts of the hard-working members of the community doing the work.
Joe Biden. He promised a big infrastructure bill. He promised an end to COVID. He promised a big voting rights bill. He can realistically deliver on some version of infrastructure or a badly compromised voting rights bill. It’s one of those two or nothing at all and buddy, that clock is ticking.
To hear him tell it somebody else messed up. You see, Infrastructure was done but then Joe Manchin was stringing him along. Then the voting rights got held up because of the infrastructure, right, and then it’s an election year. You know that’s timing. Plus the Republicans are the reason COVID isn’t gone. They didn’t want me to win.
What kind of pathetic argument is that? You got this gig and didn’t find out until then that the Coal Baron from West Virginia wasn’t an automatic Yes on voting rights and an infrastructure bill? Or did you think Republicans would meet you half way? You built your whole COVID strategy on the vaccines even though they’d already been politicized and Republicans didn’t want to take them. When your first idea didn’t work, what did you do next? How else did you proceed? What was your pivot? Nobody owes you success. Be charismatic and bold enough to take it.
Communication has been clumsy or non-existent. The expectation that Americans wanted much less from the Federal government because of the last President is true, but dog, you still gotta govern. Biden has a 33% approval rating, no path to re-election, saddled Democrats down-ballot with a shitty President that drags down the whole party, and he hasn’t met the promises he made at the most basic level, let alone the pie-in-the-sky ideas he floated around student loans or free college. He appeared to want to coast on not being the last guy. I still appreciate that! This is still better! But my expectations were a little higher.
COVID. Speakin’ of the COVID, is it still goin’ round? The tracker has the number at 988,618 people who died in America from COVID. It’ll be 1 million people before April is through. They used to say it was unfair to suggest 100k people might die. Now we’re at a million and folks are cheering about no masks on a plane. Remember when they said COVID was just the flu?
· COVID is 20–80X more deadly than the flu
· COVID killed 1.5X more Americans than the Civil War, 2.5X more Americans than World War II, and 17X more Americans than the Vietnam War.
· Black people in America are 4X more likely to die of COVID than white people
· When white people learn that statistic, they care less about COVID and COVID protections
White people, when they learn that COVID kills black people, stop caring about COVID. The risk is gone. It’s now a black disease that doesn’t need all the protections. My kids aren’t wearing masks in schools to protect people I don’t care about. I’m not wearing a mask at the store, on the plane, at the job just to protect people I don’t care about.
It explains why we saw all those mass movements to end mask mandates. Why do they care? Why is this imposition, which is almost the very least somebody could do to protect others, a cause for assassination attempts and riots? I mean, Black people riot because we get shot in the street. White people riot because their team won, or somebody asked them to do something.
In January 60k people died of COVID. A few months ago, COVID killed the population of Appleton, Wisconsin. White people cared more about whether or not they’d have to wear a mask to work than whether their co-worker lived or died.
I realize this is the stuff that gets me in trouble. I didn’t say “some white people”. I didn’t say “racist white people”. I just said white people. I’m making a statement of fact based on the data at hand. There are factual, statistical statements that are made about men. My first reaction has never been to say, “Not me. Let me explain how you’re wrong about this issue when you make it about me.” I understand that not all white people are indifferent to the lives and deaths of black people. I get that. But the fact that an overwhelming statistical majority of white folks feel that way seems like the much bigger problem.
Republicans. I don’t want this to be overtly political because, frankly, I supported Democrats and I look like a clown right now. I’m not giddy about either of these parties. But that does not mean they’re equal. I just have to end with a quick Fuck You to Republicans. (I think even my Grandma would be ok with me using this one F word for this specific group only)
Joe Biden was elected. I already listed the things he didn’t do. But Republicans did plenty! Hundreds of bills making it harder to vote. They literally called it Jim Crow in new clothes. Then the gerrymandering. Just make sure that even if somebody gets to the poll it won’t matter anyway.
Critical Race Theory just meant get rid of black people things. Now you have kids in Texas asking what a slavery is. I mean, we had all the jokes about how they banned it but didn’t know what it was. They knew what it was. Black People Shit. CRT just meant to get rid of the BPS.
Then they jumped immediately to attacking trans kids. Dude in Utah was like, “You want a whole law to attack a couple kids?” They were like, “That’s why we’re here.” So, there are laws all over the country to make a few kids feel bad. Somebody woke up one day. They decided to run for office. They built a coalition. They raised money. They campaigned. They won. They saw a bill that said a few kids would feel bad and nothing else would change. They signed that bill.
Now they’re attacking gay people with slurs I’m not writing here. It was an obvious next step with the success they had hurting the other groups they hate. We can expect a series of laws hurting LGBTQIA folks even if it’s just superficially insulting.
And we already know they’re undoing Roe v Wade this summer and abortion is banned in multiple states today even though it’s supposed to be a right under the US Constitution. That’s what Roe v Wade was about. So, women’s rights are going to be further curtailed.
We have other states saying that you don’t need a license to buy a gun or have a concealed permit at all so it can be the Wild West of their dreams at the Safeway if somebody hurts their little feelings.
Republicans next goal is to make all these shitty, abusive, illegal ideas the law at the Federal level. They’ll take back the House and Senate in January. They’ll take back the Presidency in two years no matter what the votes say. They’ll have 2024–2026 with all three branches of government to do all this and more.
And they’ll do all that because they’re more committed to destroying American than anybody is to saving it.
Thanks for reading.
