Shell or Spine?

Anyone out there have experience with Google Documents? Looks like when it grows up it might be a perfectly fine way to collaborate (sharing documents is easy) and even write a book solo. I hear that web-based Word Processing, etc. is the wave of the future. But right now, the documents seem too small (500k) and the formatting doesn't quite work. Still, I'm experimenting.
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That's Fred Armisen on SNL doing an Obama impression. Not bad, but it seriously annoys me that SNL seems to have seriously short-changed minority comedians over the thirty years of its existence. This would have been a perfect time to rectify that, and they chose not to. MadTV seems to have no problem finding talented black performers. Hard to believe Loren Michaels couldn't, if he really wanted to. Then again, SNL's roots are the National Lampoon, which in its entire history never treated black people as human beings--only as "black people." In other words, never had them in the magazine without making a specific, and generally derogatory, reference to their race. The apple don't fall all that far from the tree.
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It's kind of fun to see the number of people who now say the "why is Obama black? His mother is white..." routine. Are they really that ignorant? All right, it works like this: those with African blood were defined that way for purposes of social control and economics. Down to 1/8th African blood we could still be sold. Clearly, this is not a genetic or anthropological designation. It is purely social, and we had to live with it for almost 400 years. Now, I grant it's ridiculous. But anyone who asks that question is so oblivious to the history of race relations that it calls into question anything else they have to say on the subject. Now that Obama is functioning in what I would call a Post or Trans-Racial fashion, everybody wants to claim him. Great. Fine. Let the entire system of designations break down.

Now, we light-skinned black folks have ALWAYS been encouraged to consider ourselves "different" from our darker-skinned brothers and sisters. Better. Not as good as white folks, you understand, but different. This is how you create a "colored" class in places like South Africa. The Colored act as a buffer, a system of social control, spies, and reinforcement of basic racial attitudes. They have better jobs and lives because they are more capable, of course. And they are more capable because they have more White blood, of course. Shockley would be proud.
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We'll get beyond this. We already are. But let's not pretend not to understand why black people designate light-skinned folks "black." We didn't start it. It was obscene to begin with. But 400 years of programming can't be overcome in two generations--and that's all it's been since we've been fully fledged American citizens. I've often asked: what is the wound that heals in less time that it took to inflict? Considering all factors, I think that black America has made an absolutely astonishing recovery.
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In fact, I'll go further. I've said to Tananarive on a number of occassions that there is nothing to worry about, ultimately, about black America. Yes, we will lose many of our children to drugs, jail, despair, violence. But that was the inevitable consequence of the artificial barriers dropping, exposing us to raw competition in arenas where we are dreadfully "always outnumbered, always outgunned" and the other team has a "who, me?" attitude about fouls--and all the referees are paid for by the other "team" as well. Fine.

But my point was that, so long as you really, honestly believe that blacks are not really different, and not really inferior, the pressure and heat creates an evolutionary pressure that will inevitably create not just competence, but excellence and new ways of operating. The sports metaphor works well here: blacks actually changed the games of boxing and basketball with rhythmic and positional play that the white teams and competitors could barely understand. And those "diamonds" remember the game very very well. How they were treated, and how people conveniently forgot what their parents and grandparents did ("gee, why do we call him black?")

Part of that, I think, is fear. People don't want to consider the results if black folks ever got power and decided to "get even"--as illogical and un-spiritual as such an intent would be, it goes right along with human behavior throughout history. And I think that a LOT of white racism throughout American history has been about postponing this day of reckoning long enough that no one remembers the cause of the grievance any more, and the price never has to be paid.

In the war between white and black, (using an admittedly violent metaphor for the purposes of clarity) I have a perspective that you can't get in, say, the "war" between men and women unless you are an hermaphrodite or transexual. I really don't have a dog in this fight, and can sit back and watch the fur fly. It's sad. And entertaining as hell, in a sick way.

Obama, I think, is genuinely beyond this. His autobiographies suggest a level of personal reflection far beyond what most people ever really attempt. He has actually processed a huge amount of his personal pain, and emerged on the other side (his wife Michelle, however, has not). It is the avoidance of processing this stuff that poisons relationships, cripples careers, and, I believe, dooms "diet" programs.
I think he is what he seems to be. That DOESN'T mean he'd make a good president. I personally consider him the best of the field, but that's just an opinion.

I do think he is one of the healthiest, best-integrated human beings I've seen on the national scene, and that that is part of what people sense about him. He likes himself, and he loves others. He sees his own flaws, and carries his own cross. He doesn't want to "get back" at you, and is responsible for his own life. He seems more honest, more congruent than most people. Where I look at Hillary and KNOW she is blocking huge amounts of emotional pain, hiding behind a mask...I would bet that Obama's public and private personas are closer together than 99.9% of people in the public arena. It costs a gigantic amount of energy to wear a mask all the time (part of the price black men pay in society--for too many generations they dared not reveal their true feelings, for fear of LITERALLY being killed. No shit.)
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So much of this stuff is breaking down now. But just like a woman who was sexually abused in childhood keeps a cocoon of fat on her body despite the fact that her abuser is long gone, a culture retains the armor that protected it in generations past, shedding that armor slowly. Obama isn't carrying a lot of armor. He has something far more interesting, I think. Like a master Aikidoist, he has a CENTER. He knows who he is.

We all need more of that. In life, you can either have a shell, or a spine. With a spine, you get cut and scarred more, but you can bob and weave, and you get to feel the wind, and the rain on your face. You are more alive.

I choose a spine.