The show–called “Welcome to the Family”–stars young up-and-comer Joseph Haro (who’s had roles on “Glee” and “Awkward”) and Ricardo Chavira (of “Desperate Housewives”). Normally, I would be praising this as a step forward, especially for a network that hasn’t done much to represent non-white characters since Bill Cosby. But then I saw this preview for the show:

This show is a prolonged and recycled version of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” with one huge twist–it confirms rather than seeks to dispel some of the prominent and racist stereotypes Latinos face in the US.

Latinos are the second largest ethnic/racial group in the US, second only to what the Census labels “non-Hispanic whites.” Television does not reflect this basic reality. I don’t think anybody would disagree that this is a major problem–not only for entertainment but for our collective need to forge a healthy, multiracial society. The images we encounter in the media are part of that evolving recipe.

NBC has had a hard time presenting a more diversified face reflective of the present and future. When they have it’s usually been in small ways that also come with fulfilling a larger stereotype. For example, I would cringe every time I saw a Latino gangbanger on “Law and Order,” a show that also featured (for a time) a very human Latino character (Reynaldo “Rey” Curtis) played by Benjamin Bratt.

Show’s like “Friends” or “ER”–both which took place in cities with large Latino populations–only rarely ever featured brown faces as part of their worlds. When they did, it was cause for celebration. I can remember how excited I was when ER nurse Chuny Marquez (played by Laura Cerón) had her own story arc in the top-rated NBC drama.

NBC should be the best poised for a real integration of Latinos. They are the worst network by ratings, putting them in a position of very little to lose by taking a chance. They also own Univision, the major Spanish-language network of the US. With projects like NBC Latino they have shown a desire to not only tap into the Latino consumer market, but to do so by providing them products that meet our particular needs and experiences.

“Welcome to the Family” is not that show. It is a show that portrays the integration values of the 1960s with the un-interrogated race awareness of the 21st century. In our present day context–when racialized fears helped frame massive deportations, structural poverty and under-education, and social marginalization–it feels like a bigger set-back than any advance.

Directed by Laura Scrivano, “The Langauge of Love” is about a teenage boy discovering his sexuality and, ultimately, his love for his best friend.

If you’d like to learn more about the making of the film you can visit here.

And so I offer to you his spring 1966 evaluation of the Civil Rights Movement, printed in The Nation. Titled “The Last Steep Ascent,” it is a King we are rarely connected to, one who problematizes the future of which we are a part.

The period which has been completed, though attended by turmoil and spectacular events, was relatively easy to accomplish. Negroes not only furnished the drive but by disciplined adherence to nonviolence swiftly educated and won millions to the righteousness of their demands. For the white majority there were few hardships, and the lifting of some burden of guilt adequately compensated for any limited inconvenience.

The future is more complex. Slums with hundreds of thousands of living units are not eradicated as easily as lunch counters or buses are integrated. Jobs are harder to create than voting rolls. Harmonizing of peoples of vastly different cultural levels is complicated and frequently abrasive.

It is easy to conceive of a plan to raise the minimum wage and thus in a single stroke extract millions of people from poverty. But between the conception and the realization there lies a formidable wall. Someone has been profiting from the low wages of Negroes. Depressed living standards for Negroes are a structural part of the economy. Certain industries are based upon the supply of low-wage, underskilled and immobile nonwhite labor. Hand assembly factories, hospitals, service industries, housework, agriculture operations using itinerant labor, would all suffer shock, if not disaster, if the minimum wage were significantly raised. A hardening of opposition to the satisfaction of Negro needs must be anticipated as the movement presses against financial privilege.

The full piece is accessible here.

Sixty years ago today, on March 19, 1953, the 25th annual Academy Awards was held. It was the first Oscars even to be televised to a national audience. To best communicate the impact of the technology of television, that year’s Oscars was also the first to be held in New York City and Los Angeles (Hollywood) at the same time. The Greatest Show on Earth, directed by film-making legend Cecil B. DeMille, won best picture, beating out Hollywood classics like High Noon.

The winner of the Best Supporting Actor Oscar was also noteworthy. Anthony Quinn won for his role in the movie ¡Viva Zapata!, also starring Marlon Brando (in the title role). When Quinn won he became the first Chicano in history to win an Oscar.

Born in Chihuahua, México in 1915, Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca immigrated to the US as a young child. They crossed the border like most mexicanos of that period–into El Paso. And like millions who would make the journey then and after, his family migrated to Los Angeles from Texas. And, again like so many, his family moved to Arizona in his teen years, migrating within the US to find work and continue their search for stability.

Quinn broke into acting in the late 30s, usually cast in “ethnic” roles of some sort. His big break came in his Oscar-winning role alongside Brando. After 1953, he would become a Hollywood legend in his own right. He went on to win another Oscar–for Best Supporting Actor in 1956, for the film Lust for Life–and he would go on to be nominated for Best Actor twice, in 1957 for Wild is the Wind and again in 1964 his role in Zorba the Greek.

Quinn was the first Mexican American to win an Oscar in an acting category. He was also the last, if you don’t count his later win in 1957.

He was not, however, the first (or last) Latino to win for acting. Puerto Ricans have won a major acting Oscar on several occasions. José Ferrer has the distinction of being “the first.” He won Best Actor for his 1950 performance as Cyrano de Bergerac. After Quinn, Rita Moreno became the first (and only) Latina to win Best Actress for her multifaceted effort in West Side Story. After her, it would be another four decades before another Latino graced the Oscar stage for acting. In 2001, Benicio del Toro won Best Supporting Actor for his role in Traffic (2000).

There is a story of politicization and organization behind these walkouts. However spontaneous they may have seemed to city officials, they were anything but that. On Friday, March 1, 1968, when the first students walked out from Wilson High School in East L.A.–the largest Chicano barrio in the United States, at the time–plans were already in the works for a multi-school protest the next week.

As important as it is for us to understand that the student walkouts were the result of a specific political and social history, so, too, is it important for us to understand their powerful impact. The act of walking out of class and surrounding your school en masse was the first political act for many of the involved students. Even for those already connects to the analysis of racism facing their communities and the organizational planning to address it, the walkouts further inspired collective action as well as the development of a critical analysis of power and race in society. It also fundamentally helped shaped what it meant to be “Chicana” or “Chicano” for the generation of brown baby boomers coming of age.

One of the most dynamic historical sources to offer us a window into these multiple processes and evolutions is the list of demands presented by students to the Los Angeles Unified Board of Education.

What do you see in their list of demands? What surprises you? How does it reflect an emerging sense of political and cultural change?

1. No student or teacher to be reprimanded or suspended for participating in the recent demonstrations.
2. Compulsory bilingual and bicultural education in all East Los Angeles schools, with teachers and administrators to receive training in speaking Spanish and Mexican cultural heritage.
3. Teachers and administrators who show any form of prejudice toward students, including failure to recognize cultural traditions, will be transferred.
4. Textbooks and curriculum should be revised to show Mexican contributions to society, to show injustices they have suffered and to concentrate on Mexican folklore.
5. Class size must be reduced so teachers can devote more time to individual students. Team teaching should be used.
6. Counselor-student ratios must be reduced and counselors must speak Spanish and have a knowledge of Mexican cultural heritage.
7. The schools’ guidance program for counseling students on post-high school endeavors must be improved.
8. Students must not be grouped into slow, average and rapid ability groups and classes based on the poor tests currently in use which often mistake a language problem with lack of intelligence. A more effective testing system for determining IQ must be developed.
9. Only “pass or fail” grades shall be used, and students shall be advised of their grade progress monthly.
10. Any teacher with a high percentage of dropouts from his or her classes will be identified to students and the community.
11. Schools should have managers to supervise maintenance to allow administrators to concentrate on educational matters.
12. New teachers should be required to live in the community where they teach during their probationary period.
13. School facilities should be made available for community activities and recreation programs developed for children.
14. No teacher will be dismissed or transferred because of his or her political or philosophical views.
15. Community parents will be engaged as teacher’s aides.
16. The industrial arts program must be revitalized to provide training for entry into industry; modern equipment and techniques must be provided.
17. New high schools in the area must be built with renaming of existing schools after Mexican heroes to establish community identity.
18. All condemned buildings will be razed and new structures erected.
19. Library facilities must be expanded at all East Los Angeles high schools, and more library materials will be provided in Spanish.
20. Open-air student eating areas should be roofed.
21. Student lounges with jukeboxes should be provided and operated by paid students.
22. All campuses will be open and fences removed.
23. School janitorial services should be restricted to employees and not assigned to students as punishment.
24. Corporal punishment, which is carried out only in East Los Angeles schools, should be abolished throughout the district.
25. Teacher proficiency will be rated by students.
26. Students should have access to any type of literature on campus.
27. Students who help teachers should be paid or given credit.
28. Students must be allowed to invite guest speakers to club meetings without approval.
29. Dress and grooming standards will be determined by students, parents and teachers. Only administration-controlled student body officers, PTA representatives and teachers now do this.
30. Student unions should be provided and run by students, and free speech areas designated on campuses.
31. Student body offices should be open to all students and a high grade average not considered a prerequisite for eligibility.
32. Restrooms should be open to students.
33. Lighted athletic fields should be provided at Lincoln, Wilson and Franklin high schools.
34. Cafeteria menus should have more Mexican dishes and mothers should be allowed to help prepare the food.
35. All East Side schools should have swimming pools.
36. All school athletic activities should be free.
37. Student suspensions will be made by area superintendents instead of principals in order to prevent indiscriminate use of this action.
38. Presentation of non-academic programs at the expanse of class time should be prohibited.

For further reading, see Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement, by Carlos M<uñoz Jr.; Racism on Trial: The Chicano Fight for Justice, by Ian F. Haney-López; Brown-Eyed Children of the Sun: Lessons from the Chicano Movement, 1965-1975, by Jorge Mariscal; and Chicana Feminist Thought: The Basic Historical Writings, by Alma M. García. The semi-fictionalized movie Walkout is also a great introduction to the event itself.

If you don’t already know, “Django Unchained” is what’s being called a “historical revenge” film. Like Tarantino’s earlier “Inglorious Bastards”–which used the historical reality of WWII to follow a fictional band of Jewish-American US soldiers who were out on a bloody search-and-destroy mission in Nazi Germany–”Django” fictionalizes US Southern slavery as a former slave and white mercenary “go guerrilla” on the plantation owners who embody anti-black racism and violent white supremacy.

Again, I haven’t seen the movie. I’m sure I will when it comes out on DVD. But when I first saw the preview, it struck me as a problematic concept. Whereas “Inglorious Bastards” could exercise a mythical revenge impulse by placing Jewish-American boys in the position of power, I don’t think the same works for slavery. First, “we” won WWII. Hitler died. Nazis were purged, hunted, and often tried. The typical non-Jewish, US American viewer is never guilty or persecuted in the “real history” they perceive. The “revenge” is voyeurism; we watch Jewish-Americans get the vengeance we imagine they desire.

“We” includes us all–white, Jewish, black, good.

“Django” is different as a concept because the history is different. As the LA Times piece does well to convey, we all continue to live with the legacy of this history. In short, it isn’t “past” (or hasn’t “passed”) yet.

But the vengeance is also different here. While the film mirrors “Bastards” by putting a liberated slave in the position of power, the vengeance he seeks is really for whites.

The typical white, US American viewer needs to seek revenge in this historical scenario because s/he does not yet (even now!) know how to seek and earn atonement. Slavery is not only a continuing historical force for the generations of African Americans who live in its wake, but it is also a continuing force structuring white lives and white possibilities. We often think that if we had lived in the past we would have been different than them, for whichever messy historical topic. Unfortunately, that is not so. One of the reasons “we” desire this is to think more of ourselves. (“I am not racist.”) One of the reasons “we” can not achieve this is that “we” are complicit in the continuing legacy of this past.

“We” is really, white US American.

I often tell students, the notion of “evil” is a complicated concept historically. For one, I’m not sure it is measurable since it’s a normative judgement. If you can’t “prove” evil with historical documents then I’m not sure it has much use.

The other reason it isn’t fruitful, critical terrain is that it removes context from human actions. If we say white slaveowners were “evil” we answer who and why they were. Our need for explanation is done. The historical question, however, is how can a person become that? What shaped their worldview so as to make them into a person I find so objectionable? The answers we find when we ask those historical questions tell us as much about the past as they do the present.

“Django Unchained” puts the white slaveowner in the position of “evil.” It allows the white, US American viewer to distance themselves from the possibility that this “evil” icon could have been them. It liberates whites from the position of guilt by allowing them, now, to side with the slave.

The tragedy of race and US history is that this “evil” of slaveowner and slavery defender was you. As much as I am sure future generations will find your moral and (in)humanistic decisions unfathomable for their times, you/we are all part of the past because we have been the engine that sustains it into this present.

An honest reckoning with the past is the pathway to dismantling its negative force in the present. We have to know the past to do that. We need to build critical empathy to do that. We need to contend with the ignorance of our past actions unwittingly sustaining the pain of the past into our present and learn how to make intentional steps forward for a different future.

I’m not sure an ahistorical revenge film on slavery could ever do that.

Up until fairly recently, dinosaur fossils had been discovered on every single continent, except Antartica. All that changed in 1986 with the discovery of what came to be known as Antarctopelta. Five years later, paleontologists discovered Cryolophosaurus.

Why do I need to share? Well, the Cryolophosaurus has a large kind of wave on its head. Scientists thought it loosely resembled the pompadour of famed singer Elvis Presley. And so, they informally called the mighty carnivorous beast the “Elvisaurus.”

I should mention that this not only makes me smile because of my love for Elvis, but also for the fact that this odd associating of this dinosaur’s “plume” with the King occurred in the 1990s. After all, they could have just as easily named it the “Dylan-McKay-asaurus,” too.

I actually started typing out my list as a comment to his post twice and then deleted it. What I discovered is that I think I needed some imaginary context to do it right. Were these the only 15 albums I could have if I were trapped on a deserted island? (With a solar-powered CD player, of course.) Were these my favorites based on my life? Were these my current favorites?

I decided to plunk down my list here (sorry Steven) so that I could share with a little more detail. This is my list of “My 15 Favorite Albums” or “The 15 Albums I Rarely Grow Tired of Listening To.”

I should add that this has been the case for each of these albums for a substantial period during my adult life and that there’s a healthy bit of nostalgia behind each choice. For example, one of the albums meant a lot to me for a period in life but today I rarely listen to it. At the same time this nostalgia is only for when I thought of myself as “grown up.” When I was 13 I could listen to Bon Jovi’s “Slippery When Wet” for days on end. It, however, never threatened to make the list.

Presented in a largely random order…

1. Elvis Presley: Elvis Presley As Recorded at Madison Square Garden. One of the things I love about Elvis is the brilliance mixed with the tragedy. His ’68 “comeback special” might be one of the best nights of recorded music I have ever enjoyed, but its him at a peak. His ’72 performances at the Garden reveal a King in full control of his performance abilities yet, at the same time, he is starting to give them to us in a poster board cut-out version of himself. I love the transition; plus, it’s the year I was born.

2. Albert King: Wednesday Night in San Francisco. This choice probably says a lot about how I approached this list. This is a posthumous album of left overs from a 1968 stint at SF’s Filmore where the best stuff was released as Live Wire/Blues Power. Even I wouldn’t say it’s his best live album. But I love it more than all the others.

3. The Who: Who’s Next. Massive love for the sound and the intensity, it contains my most favorite song by them.

4. Miles Davis: Kind of Blue. This album is like a good book to me. I discover things in it every time I listen. It places me in a time I never lived in but know from my work.

5. Sting: Soul Cages. This is a pensive and emotional work of art that hit me at a point in life where I was trying to be artistic and was successfully very pensive and emotional.

6. The Beatles: Abbey Road. You can tell my love for the tragic by my belief that this is their best album. Rationally, I think it might be really George Martin’s best.

7. Van Morrison: The Best of Van Morrison. I have a fondness for this collection that is specific to my life, which makes me pick it over the more critically established Astral Weeks. I will say I love his earlier stuff and even his adult contemporary later stuff enough that makes this a better album for me.

8. Tom Waits: Bone Machine. If this list were in order of preference, this might be at the very top. His lyrics and his music are at one of their many peaks in this recording. I came to love music the way that I do thanks, in some large part, to this man and this album.

9. Al Green: I’m Still in Love With You. Smooth and sexually potent.

10. Big Mama Thorton: Jail. I love her live stuff best, and her later voice most. This satisfies me on both counts.

11. Derek and the Dominos: Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. Only one album from this super group and it is a guitar gem. I love the hybridity of blues and rock.

12. B.B. King: Live at the Regal. It features B.B. King. Live. At the Regal.

13. Bob Marley: Legend. The greatest hits album to end all greatest hits albums, some of his best songs–better than 99% of all recorded music–still don’t make the cut for this collection.

14. Jeff Buckley: Grace. When I hear it I feel like I am breathing in the 1990s.

15. Sam Cooke: Portrait of a Legend. This album is too useful, for whatever your emotional state or condition, for me not to include. He is my favorite soul performer of the pre-1970s. One of the greatest voices who ever lived.

I do think its important for us to think about mental health. As a parent of three kids–aged 7, 5, and 2,–I know that my wife and I will be having conversations with the oldest (at least) to help him develop the kinds of skills we all need to grapple with and process these kinds of tragedies. Those conversations will be about us feeling our way through, trying to provide for his mental and emotional and intellectual health.

But we live in a nation where everyone doesn’t have a mom who is a trained social worker and a dad who is a PhD. We live in a nation where everyone doesn’t have access to equitable health care. We live in a nation that still struggles with providing for basic mental health care. In fact, we have little sense about what being “mentally healthy” even means.

The way we engage news like this–with a kind of “violence and suffering voyeurism”–is a signal of how inept we are at understanding mental heath issues. This kind of sensationalism promotes acts of violence and suffering from those who are already mental unhealthy. A focus on body count, on the killer, on the pain of others, all of it does little to promote anything mentally healthy.

What this coverage does is satisfy a media goal to make you feel the pain of experiencing these events as if you were more locally involved. That gets ratings because that hooks us a viewers. It turns a story about “them” into a story about “us.” That makes us grieve with the suffering, and grieving promotes our desire to connect more–to watch more news, to find out more, to talk about it more, to share about more on Twitter and Facebook. Our fixation on empathetic grief does damage to our own mental health.

I feel for others’ and the pain and sorrow they experience. I feel for the families that were shattered today. I feel for the kids–all of them–who have to confront this horror in so many different ways. But I don’t want to wallow in it.

I am a professional historian who studies groups of people that have lived through the physical, mental, and spiritual violence of systemic racism. On an almost daily basis, I practice my kind of empathy in the study of the human past. But I never let the empathy overwhelm me. I don’t let that human connection represent the end point to my study of history. I also know that the “feeling” of emotions is a wasted source of energy if we do nothing other than cry with it. It needs to be the first step in ACTION.

The long, national discussion over gun control will continue. I hope it also includes a new national discussion on mental health. I am in favor of tighter regulations when it comes to firearms in the US. But I also don’t think that will stop things like this from happening by themselves.

As a nation, we have spent almost my entire life slashing mental health services for the poor and most at risk. At the same time we have created a market-based form of social organization that means the numbers of at risk will grow. We have nearly perfected a system that assures many will go undiagnosed, untreated, and uncared for until it is too late.

We need to do something about promoting and sustaining mental health. We need to do something about providing more services for those who do not have full mental health. We need to do more, as a nation, to create lived realities where people can be full, healthy human beings.

I don’t have much to say about the significance of the album or the creative impact it had on the future of hip hop. That’s been done for the last twenty years by critics far more skilled than me. For me, as a Gen X Chicano living in southern California at the time, the album held some personal significance.

I’ve never been a huge rap fan. (At least I’ve never put the music first on my list of musical loves.) But it’s always been a part of my musical life. As a young person of color coming of age in the 80s, a person who felt like he came from a world that was not recognized (or even known) by the mainstream, early hip hop represented that “subjectivity” authentically. Songs by N.W.A. (and everybody from Grandmaster Flash to L.L. Cool J to Doug E. Fresh to Run DMC) and others connected my Chicano-dominated, multiracial cultural world to the Black American cultural world. As it did, it also kind of legitimated it.  The music became the soundtrack of  large part of my social life.

But for me, “The Chronic” wasn’t just another album that provided background to life, it also exists in my mind as something more. The album felt like it ended the specific comfort that genre of music gave me. I remember it as an album that moved the entire world of hip hop firmly into the mainstream. I’m sure this is an overstatement that has a lot to do where I was in my life at the time (in a “white” college struggling to find my place in the world). But I remember feeling that “The Chronic” made rap part of “American music.”

Maybe it was me that was changing more than hip hop. “The Chronic” was the soundtrack to a particular time in my life, a time of transition, a time of crossing into a mainstream and hybrid world.

Twenty years ago I was 20 years old. I send and received my first emails. I had long hair, and wore a leather jacket. I spent countless precious evenings with dear friends, all of us growing up in a cloud of Camel cigarettes and a mix of Bud Light and Henry Weinhard’s. And I remember this like it was yesterday:

It’s a refrain I have been hearing for most of my conscious life: Mexican Americans are a “sleeping giant” in US politics. Just wait until we start showing up at the polls.

Today will mark the unequivocal emergence of Latinos on the national political stage. The “giant” or the “dragon” will awaken. Of course, to those of us who have been studying and watching this process closely for year, it woke up long ago. It is only now beginning to roar so loudly that you can’t ignore it.

The pathway to this kind of political clout has been in the works for more than a century. It began in 1903 when beet pickers from Mexico joined with beet pickers from Japan to struggle for better pay. It began in 1929, in Corpus Christi, Texas, when Mexican American professionals came together to found LULAC. It began in 1935 when Latin American radicals founded a civil rights organization called El Congreso de Pueblos de Habla Español.

What you will witness today began in 1947, when Mexican American activists in Los Angeles worked to get thousands to register to vote and elected Ed Roybal to the LA City Council and, later, the House of Representatives. It began in the barrios of California and Texas when women and men with dedication continued that work to create groups like MAPA, the American G.I Forum, and others who would represent Mexican American issues to major political parties. It began in 1960 when the Democratic Party organized “Viva Kennedy” clubs to elect JFK as the first Catholic President.

President John F. Kennedy at a Latino-focused political event the night before he was assassinated.

Today is the culmination of years of struggle and hard work. It may look sudden to the pundits; it may seem like a simple demographic ascendancy to the pollsters. But it is anything but. Today is the end of the first phase of building political power for Latinos in the U.S., a phase that has lasted for more than a century.

It is also the beginning of our political future as major constituencies within the U.S. electorate, and another step toward a nation where “whiteness” no longer holds the uncontested seat of power. This is, I hope, a step toward the multiracial democracy we must become.

“Three billion human lives ended on August 29th, 1997. The survivors of the nuclear fire called the war Judgment Day. They lived only to face a new nightmare, the war against the Machines…”

“Judgement Day” is the day in the Terminator films when Skynet (the computer system controlling all our nuclear weapons) launched an attack on the Soviet Union. Of course, in the universe of the movies, this is a future that only extends off a series of events that was interrupted by the events of the first and second films.  The “alternate ending” of “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” helps put it in perspective.

So Happy Judgment Day! “Everyday from this day on is a gift! Use it well!”

p.s. Michael Jackson turned 39, not 40, on August 29, 1997.

Perhaps the least surprising revelation is that Facebook is “old” (at least in the media sense).  Two-thirds of its users are over the age of 35.  It’s a little better for Twitter, but not by much.  Just over half of its users are over 35 years.

Compared to sites like deviantART and Hacker News, the scope of Facebook’s age is even more startling.  Both are dominated by the under 35 crowd.  About 70% of the users of each are from this key demographic.  When calculated by average age, the figures are a little less startling, but not much different overall.

The report came to me via the Twitter feed of Bryan Alexander, who is (for me) an almost magical provider of thought-provoking resources for the higher education professional interested in technology.  (His “professional” blog is a good place to check him out, too.)  Like Bryan, I am profoundly interested in how young people use technology.  They are, after all, the people I try to reach in my classes and (often) in my writing.  How they use social media and interact with one another are important for me to know as I evolve in the ways I integrate social media and other technological tools into my teaching.

But what do we make of this kind of data?

Undoubtedly, we are coming to a time when the average college student is going to see a college or university Facebook page or Twitter feed as about as cutting edge as the use of computers on campus. In fact, we may already be there. This makes it hard to be current, or “hip” in the parlance of yesteryear, but that is not the primary concern for me now.

As teachers and as researchers the challenges are huge and also largely unacknowledged.  We are moving to a time when physical colleges and universities and face-to-face teaching are becoming a niche.  This is sad, and bad, and a sign of our jacked up priorities, but it is so.  Our effectiveness as teachers (whether online or in person) already relies on our ability to speak in the forum of our times.  But that forum has been changing. And it still is.

Where will it all be in another 5 years?

Check out the entire study here.

Those of you who know me via this blog know that I have a little fascination with celebrity deaths.  As a kid, celebrity deaths were among my most favorite kind of news story.  I love obituaries for the famous.  I even think about the public recognition of their death before the celebrity has actually died.

Yesterday’s passing of Phyllis Diller, at age 95, is the fruition of one of those exercises.  Truth be told, with the exception of George Burns, I’ve probably thought about the impending death of Phyllis Diller more than any other celebrity.  Ever.

Most of this comes from an immense amount of respect.  I love stand-up comedy like I love soul music, with a passion that respects the artistry of the greats as well as the history of the institution.  Phyllis Diller was the queen of that castle, in my book.  A trailblazer if there ever was one, she not only stood as a woman in a man’s industry but also an artist who perfected a style that is imitated even today.

A lot of my death fascination with her also came from her age.  Not just her real age, but her “character” age as well.  Like Burns, Diller had built a career off of references to her age.  As a character on stage, in film, or on Johnny’s couch, she was “old” for my entire conscious life.

Anyway, her passing today got me thinking: what celebrities might people be most surprised to learn are still living? (I know it doesn’t seem like a logical leap, but trust me, it was in my mind.)

So, here’s my list of the top 10 celebrities that are still alive.  It isn’t a list of “oldest celebrities,” which would require research (and debate: what counts for celebrity?).  It isn’t a list of those likely to die (that would be macabre).  It’s just a list of folks who I know are still alive and who I think others might think are already dead.

1. Sid Ceaser (89 years old)
2. Zsa Zsa Gabor (95 years old)
3. James Garner (84 years old)
4. Mickey Rooney (91 years old)
5. Jonathan Winters (86 years old)
6. Esther Williams (91 years old)
7. Robert Guillaume (84 years old)
8. Doc Severinsen (84 years old)
9. Olivia de Havilland (96 years old)
10. Wilford Brimley (only 77 years old!)

This morning, as Rosenfeld’s own account of this story appears in the San Francisco Chronicle and, as a consequence, in multiple places all over my Facebook feed, I get to see a host of my friends go through the same shock.  Some are defensive, some in denial, and others just shocked and confused.

Rosenfeld’s book, Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power, is not about Aoki. As I understand it, the book is about the FBI’s counterinsurgency history in California and, most importantly, how Ronald Regan cooperated with and benefited from the FBI.  Aoki is featured in the book because of his long Bay Area history inside of multiple organizations which were targeted and infiltrated by the Bureau.

Some in my circles are already questioning Rosenfeld’s research without having read his book or without considering his evidence.  Others I know are questioning his motivations, made suspect by his selling of his book in the above article.  That says a lot about Aoki’s memory, and his many fans in the world of comparative race & ethnic studies.  Some small part of it also reveals some of the reflexive elitism inside of academia–doubt the journalist because he is not an academic.  (As if academics do not have biases.)  Most of it is really about coming to terms with the death of our movement heroes, especially when they represent communities not often represented in our mainstream understandings of these times.

Doubting the evidence will be, I suspect, a fruitless task.  You can never know the “real truth” when it comes to these matters.  Aoki is dead, and can not defend or clarify his own truth. At the same time, FBI records are about as good as it gets for this.  While they can be misleading, too, maybe even wrong, they were not created to be sources of misinformation. The fact is, the FBI does not reveal these truths willingly or with any kind of openness.

Richardson’s review helps shed light.  Rosenfeld is the first to use the only real evidence we have to accurately tell the story of the FBI, youth political movements, and Ronald Reagan–the FBI files themselves.  He got access to these over many years and fleshed out the story with interviews and other evidence.  His approach as a journalist (standards of evidence and raw tenacity in securing sources) seems more useful here than if he had been an academic.

But, of course, we should read it and then evaluate these questions.

What I really wanted to say has little to do with this burden of proof.  It’s really about heroes.  Last week, after my initial reaction of shock, I came to terms with the Aoki news for the benefit of my teaching. After all, it is a profoundly important “teachable moment.”  The lesson, I think, is one I emphasize time and time again in my class–these times were complex and always defy easy categorization. On top of that, it is a powerful reminder of the human imperfection marking all of our pasts. We are messy, contradictory, imperfect beings. Our history is this, too.  That isn’t bad, it just is.

Heroes can be useful to history because they inspire us to be better than we are.  Figures like Aoki help us question our own times, our own lives, and (maybe) realign them for the better.  Revelations of their contradictions and frailties don’t end this potential.  For those ready to make a real change in their lives, reminders of the humanness of our heroes is necessary.  Martin Luther King Jr.’s infidelity and sexism, Cesar Chavez’ dictatorial style and poor decision making, or whatever we discover about whoever, are necessary understandings for us to possess to put our hero worship in a real-world context.

What I mean to say is–perfection and purity are not prerequisites for change. If we make the standard of progress dependent on our romanticized memories of these real figures rather than on the historical realities they contained then we are doing “the movement” an injustice.  We make it far less likely that we will ever make a better world through our own efforts because we will take ourselves out of the fight before we even begin.

Richard Aoki may have been an FBI informant. Richard Aoki may have also been a man who made meaningful change throughout his life and served as an inspiration to thousands. Deal with it.

EDIT: Below is a short video made on the story by the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), for whom Rosenfeld works.

And so I hope I can come out of the academic cave in the weeks ahead as I try to create some new habits for myself, including sharing more here and less in other venues.

In the meantime, I guess I should update you on some of the more significant events of my work life.

I am now, officially, a tenured professor. The tenure process was one of the least pleasurable events I have encountered in my life. It’s important to keep it in perspective—after all, nobody died–but being judged for your livelihood in this market is never a comforting thing. But it’s done! And so now I am discovering what it is like to start envisioning the next phase of my career, as an Associate Professor of Chicana/o~Latina/o Studies and History at Pomona College.

The academic year ahead looks to be an exciting one. I have my first book coming out in fall of 2013! Latinos at The Golden Gate is a history of Latino community formation in San Francisco. It will be published by The University of North Carolina Press. In the months ahead it will go into the “production process” which is a very exciting and largely unknown thing for me. I’ll share what I can as that process unfolds.

Until then, thank you to any regular readers I still have out there and welcome to any new visitors. See you soon…

“Hulk say use SPELL CHECK!!”

“Hulk looking for your thesis statement…”

“Hulk say you no properly credit source!!”

“Hulk smash late assignment!!”

His stance was measured and deliberate. “[A]t a certain point I’ve just concluded that, for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.”

The response from detractors has been immediate. Even the pro-same-sex-marriage Log Cabin Republicans found room to disagree with the President for his timing and motivation.

Obama isn’t going out on a limb when it comes to same-sex marriage. The polls often show most Americans are in favor of it. All studies suggest the issue is certainly trending in that direction at an amazing speed, even when the poll results show the population more evenly divided. When you take out older voters the issue is a no-brainer. As Obama himself said today, while trying hard to portray himself as a man with evolving opinions, this is largely a generational shift:

You know when I go to college campuses, sometimes I talk to college Republicans who think that I have terrible policies on the economy, on foreign policy, but are very clear that when it comes to same-sex equality or, you know, sexual orientation, that they believe in equality. They are much more comfortable with it. You know, Malia and Sasha, they have friends whose parents are same-sex couples. There have been times where Michelle and I have been sitting around the dinner table and we’re talking about their friends and their parents and Malia and Sasha, it wouldn’t dawn on them that somehow their friends’ parents would be treated differently. It doesn’t make sense to them and, frankly, that’s the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective.

When it comes down to it, Obama isn’t pandering to the LGBT vote or even to the Left. A majority of voters approve of same-sex marriage. He’s pandering to the white, straight, moderates who make that statistic true.

Of course, in the realm of electoral politics the issue seems to be much more hotly contested than it is with average voters. By announcing his “change in perspective” in the late spring before the November election, Obama disarms his political shift in the political arena by letting it settle into voters minds and benefit from their general attitude of acceptance.

It also reanimates and reinvigorates support for him among moderate whites. The anti-same sex marriage backlash Obama has inspired–a stance that average voters see as steeped in old ways of thinking and hate–makes your moderate pro-same-sex marriage stance feel like a political movement. It makes you into a person with a cause. And that moves you to the ballot box in November.

Look at this screen capture of the top ranking comments from younger voters on Reddit responding to the President:

[If you click on the image it should open larger.]

The lesson here is simple: the Democrats are playing it safe but doing so in a way that makes it seem like they are taking risks based on principle and movement passions.

If only those white, straight, moderate voters thought of Mexicans as more than their unfortunate wage slaves. Maybe then Obama would also stop deporting us.

Rojas died only days after being beaten and tased by Border Patrol agents, which initially caused his heart to stop. Official reports attributed the use of a taser to his being combative. In video evidence received by PBS, Rojas appears to be completely subdued, handcuffed, and on the floor when an agent uses the taser against him. At the same time, he is surrounded by about a dozen other agents, who stand there watching what turned out to be the event leading to his death.

You can see a preview of the report below.

This is nothing short of the highest quality of political satire that can be produced in our culture. It’s performance art with a distinct political purpose. What makes it even better, is that it is also very funny.

You can access the video here.

Part two follows…

Striking students presented this list of demands to the LA Board of Education.

1. No student or teacher to be reprimanded or suspended for participating in the recent demonstrations.
2. Compulsory bilingual and bicultural education in all East Los Angeles schools, with teachers and administrators to receive training in speaking Spanish and Mexican cultural heritage.
3. Teachers and administrators who show any form of prejudice toward students, including failure to recognize cultural traditions, will be transferred.
4. Textbooks and curriculum should be revised to show Mexican contributions to society, to show injustices they have suffered and to concentrate on Mexican folklore.
5. Class size must be reduced so teachers can devote more time to individual students. Team teaching should be used.
6. Counselor-student ratios must be reduced and counselors must speak Spanish and have a knowledge of Mexican cultural heritage.
7. The schools’ guidance program for counseling students on post-high school endeavors must be improved.
8. Students must not be grouped into slow, average and rapid ability groups and classes based on the poor tests currently in use which often mistake a language problem with lack of intelligence. A more effective testing system for determining IQ must be developed.
9. Only “pass or fail” grades shall be used, and students shall be advised of their grade progress monthly.
10. Any teacher with a high percentage of dropouts from his or her classes will be identified to students and the community.
11. Schools should have managers to supervise maintenance to allow administrators to concentrate on educational matters.
12. New teachers should be required to live in the community where they teach during their probationary period.
13. School facilities should be made available for community activities and recreation programs developed for children.
14. No teacher will be dismissed or transferred because of his or her political or philosophical views.
15. Community parents will be engaged as teacher’s aides.
16. The industrial arts program must be revitalized to provide training for entry into industry; modern equipment and techniques must be provided.
17. New high schools in the area must be built with renaming of existing schools after Mexican heroes to establish community identity.
18. All condemned buildings will be razed and new structures erected.
19. Library facilities must be expanded at all East Los Angeles high schools, and more library materials will be provided in Spanish.
20. Open-air student eating areas should be roofed.
21. Student lounges with jukeboxes should be provided and operated by paid students.
22. All campuses will be open and fences removed.
23. School janitorial services should be restricted to employees and not assigned to students as punishment.
24. Corporal punishment, which is carried out only in East Los Angeles schools, should be abolished throughout the district.
25. Teacher proficiency will be rated by students.
26. Students should have access to any type of literature on campus.
27. Students who help teachers should be paid or given credit.
28. Students must be allowed to invite guest speakers to club meetings without approval.
29. Dress and grooming standards will be determined by students, parents and teachers. Only administration-controlled student body officers, PTA representatives and teachers now do this.
30. Student unions should be provided and run by students, and free speech areas designated on campuses.
31. Student body offices should be open to all students and a high grade average not considered a prerequisite for eligibility.
32. Restrooms should be open to students.
33. Lighted athletic fields should be provided at Lincoln, Wilson and Franklin high schools.
34. Cafeteria menus should have more Mexican dishes and mothers should be allowed to help prepare the food.
35. All East Side schools should have swimming pools.
36. All school athletic activities should be free.
37. Student suspensions will be made by area superintendents instead of principals in order to prevent indiscriminate use of this action.
38. Presentation of non-academic programs at the expanse of class time should be prohibited.

Here’s a CNN blog post describing the general story.

The part of the speech that caught my attention was Santorum’s characterization of U.S. academia. Here he describes how Satan has already taken over some parts of the country:

Satan has done so by attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity, and sensuality as the root to attack all of these strong plants that have so deeply rooted in American tradition. He was successful. The place where he was, in my mind, the most successful and first successful was in academia. He understood pride of “smart” people. He attacked them at their weakest, that they were in fact smarter than everybody else and could come up with something new and different, pursue new truths, deny the existence of truth, play with it, “because we’re smart;” and so academia a long time ago fell.

I’ve often shared this analysis when trapped in one or another bureaucratic function of the university system but Santorum is (obviously) coming at it from a different angle. Tomorrow when I go to my weekly “Satanists in Higher Ed” meeting I’ll bring that up.

1992: Bush (68) versus Clinton (46)
DEM -22; DEM WIN

1996: Clinton (50) versus Dole (73)
DEM -23; DEM WIN

2000: Bush (54) versus Gore (52)
DEM -2; DEM WIN*

2004: Bush (58) versus Kerry (60)
REP -2; REP WIN

2008: McCain (72) versus Obama (47)
DEM -25; DEM WIN

This November, Obama will be 51 years old as he seeks reelection for a second term.  His opponent will be older than him.  On election day, Rick Santorum will be 54; Mitt Romney will be 65;  Newt Gingrich will be 69; and Ron Paul will be 77.

This trend says something about how each party vets candidates and values certain qualities in leaders.  For example, you could argue that youth has a powerful association with change and the future, and age with the status quo and the past.  In each of the contests above the prevailing mood of the nation was either inclined toward those associative qualities or actively seeking them.  That’s a far cry from Reagan’s two victories, when the national mood sought a return to an imagined past and other qualities best found in an elder leader.

Right now, I see nothing to suggest we are less inclined as a national body to favor the qualities most associated with youth.  This–and the circus that is the slate of Republican candidates–bodes well for the Prez.

You can read and comment on the post here.

The new law will allow undocumented youth to receive state-based financial aid in California. The bill also further protects their right to attend public universities. Coupled with previous legislation allowing undocumented youth the possibility of qualifying as in-state residents, the governor’s move this weekend made the playing field between undocumented youth who grew up in CA and youth born and raised in the state just a little more equal.

Unlike the federal “DREAM Act” this bill does nothing to provide a pathway toward legalization for the millions of undocumented youth who grew up in the United States. However, like it’s federal counterpart, the bill is focused on educational access, equity, and decency.

The basic decency of the law lies in the fact that these youth–whether or not they are citizen residents or “legal permanent residents” of CA–are Californians. Most spent nearly their entire lives here. Almost all are products of our schools and participants in our larger society.

They are also taxpayers and the children of taxpayers. The vast majority of undocumented residents pay taxes (local, state, and federal) though they do not have the ability to benefit from those taxes the ways that you or I do. Gov. Brown and the Dream supporters recognized the fundamental unfairness of a higher system that forces undocumented workers and their families to support it in numerous ways (like sharing the tax burden) but then treats them as foreigners in how they are admitted, charged, and supported.

I’ve spent too much of my weekend reading the misinformed and racially-based critics of the governor’s decision. They are hypocrites, at best, and racists at worst.

If they are anything they are ignorant. They don’t understand basic realities guiding the policy, or the basic realities of life for the undocumented. They have a narrow view of the migration process as a “choice” made by an individual, and usually view that individual as a criminal.

They live in a world shaped by the suffering and abuse of the undocumented, they economically benefit from that suffering, and they even promote and defend it in both intentional and unintentional ways. And, yet, when their cherished political ideals are actually embodied in our government in a more perfect and genuine way, they back away and hide in the safety of their ancient rhetoric of fear.

There can be no democracy without educational equity and equality of access. There can be no democracy in CA without some meaningful way for the masses of undocumented to become as integrated in our social and political worlds as they are in our economic.

This weekend CA opened up the possibility of becoming a more democratic state. We all will benefit from that.

“Death Letter,” by the immortal Son House (Mississippi, 1902-1988).

In a casual conversation today with a friend, he wondered out loud how many times had the Dodgers had both the MVP and Cy Young award winner in the same year.  The Kirk Gibson/Orel Hershiser combo of 1988 he knew, but beyond that we only guessed.  I couldn’t get the thought out of my head so when I had a free moment, I looked it up.

It turns out, EVERY single time the LA Dodgers have had the National League MVP they have also had that year’s NL Cy Young Award winner.  This also happened once for Brooklyn.  Rather impressively, twice, the Dodger who won the MVP also won the Cy Young.  This was even more noteworthy at the time since when it happened (‘56 and ‘63) there was only one Cy Young winner for the whole of baseball.

Down below are the years the Dodgers won either award.  In red are the years they won both.

DODGER MVP WINNERS
1988: Kirk Gibson, Los Angeles Dodgers
1974: Steve Garvey, Los Angeles Dodgers
1963: Sandy Koufax, Los Angeles Dodgers
1962: Maury Wills, Los Angeles Dodgers
1956: Don Newcombe, Brooklyn Dodgers
1955: Roy Campanella, Brooklyn Dodgers
1953: Roy Campanella, Brooklyn Dodgers
1951: Roy Campanella, Brooklyn Dodgers
1949: Jackie Robinson, Brooklyn Dodgers
1941: Dolph Camilli, Brooklyn Dodgers

DODGER CY YOUNG WINNERS
2003: Eric Gagne, Los Angeles Dodgers
1988: Orel Hershiser, Los Angeles Dodgers
1981: Fernando Valenzuela, Los Angeles Dodgers
1974: Mike Marshall, Los Angeles Dodgers
1966: Sandy Koufax, Los Angeles Dodgers
1965: Sandy Koufax, Los Angeles Dodgers
1963: Sandy Koufax, Los Angeles Dodgers
1962: Don Drysdale, Los Angeles Dodgers
1956: Don Newcombe, Brooklyn Dodgers

A new school year always brings with it a mix of emotions and stresses.  One consistent for me for the better part of the last decade is the very specific excitement that comes with the fall semester’s beginning and the fresh crop of students enrolled in my intro-level Chicano/Latino history course.

As a class, it is the very reason I chose my vocation.  The power and meaning that comes with being able to create an academic space that is collaborative, critical, and focused on narrating the diverse experiences of people of Latin American descent in the US is an overtly political act, and a very necessary one.  So much so is this the case in our present moment that it is a point I need only casually make for my students this morning.  As Chicanas/os and Latinas/os living in the US at this time, they are brutally aware of the consequences of “not knowing” and the stark lack of human compassion that is nurtured by this.

When we put it in those terms, however, that politics is inherently about people.  And that is perhaps what sustains me most throughout the year.  What we are going to do today and throughout the semester is not just learn, but build the greater likelihood of a more just, more humane, and more decent future for us all…

one mind at a time.

The largely peaceful protest culminated in a violent altercation between the LAPD and the gathered families, resulting in the death of three people, one of who was the famed Mexican American journalist Ruben Salazar.  (Here is what the LA Times printed just days after Salazar’s death.  Here is an article detailing the more recent inquiry into his murder.)

In honor of the occasion, today’s Monday Blue’s is the 1970 track “Samba Pa’ Ti,” from the album Abraxas, by the legendary Carlos Santana.

Founded in 1972, in the era of the Chicano Youth Movement, Asco were pioneers in the Chicano arts movement, founders (with others) of an evolving collective aesthetic and sensibility which is still young in its lifespan.  As this article explains, and their upcoming show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art demonstrates, they were also important players in the late-20th century urban arts movement in the US.

You can read the NY Times article here.  Their retrospective show–“Asco: Elite of the Obscure, a Retrospective, 1972-1987″–opens at LACMA on September 4th.

Along with his wife, Valerie Simpson, Nick Ashford wrote and produced for Motown beginning in the 1960s.  Their legendary career began when producer Harvey Fuqua gave the two a chance to write some songs for his protégé Marvin Gaye.  Fuqua had decided to pair Gaye with Tammi Terrell, who had sang backup unsuccessfully for the Godfather of Soul.  Ashford and Simpson (he the lyricist and she the composer) came back with “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing.”  They followed that with a string of chart toppers for the soon-to-be legendary duo of Gaye and Terrell, hits such as “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and “You’re All I need to Get By.”

Ashford and Simpson would write R&B and pop hits for the next 25 years, from “Reach Out and Touch Somebody’s Hand” to “I’m Every Woman” to their own “Solid as a Rock,” a chart topper for them in the 80s.

They were part of a particular moment in popular music, when the dynamics undergirding Motown’s commodification of Black musical culture was just beginning to undergo something of a change.  The label, which had made a factory of success out of its deliberate strategy to make “Black music” appealing and marketable to “White America” began to shift to a more “authentic” representation of Black culture without such a concern for palatability.  Ashford and Simpson didn’t lead that charge, but when Motown finally let up a bit, they were part of it.

Jerry Lieber was a Baltimore-born, LA-raised, white Jewish kid who–along with his writing partner Mike Stoller–became known in the 1950s as the writers of a cache of hits representing the birth of popular rock ‘n roll music.  ”Hound Dog” (first performed by Big Mama Thorton and later Elvis), kicked off their professional career, which included some of Elvis’ most enduring songs: “Jailhouse Rock,” “Trouble,” “Loving You,” and “Treat Me Nice.”

But they didn’t stop there.  Lieber and Stoller wrote hits for the Coasters like “Charlie Brown,” “Poison Ivy,” and “Yakety Yak.”  They wrote for the Drifters, songs like ”On Broadway” and “Stand By Me.”  Jerry Lieber also wrote “Spanish Harlem” with Phil Spector, and “Youngblood” with Doc Pomus.

Here’s Leon Russell doing “Youngblood” as part of a medley he performed at the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh.

Lieber and Stoller took a lot of heat in later decades for being two white guys writing some of the most indelible “Black” rhythm and blues standards.  As the mainstream public waned in their willingness to ignore their own unchecked white supremacy–a condition which fomented years of white musicians, writers, and producers stealing the creative work of Black artists and never paying them royalties–artists like them became associated with the unsavory past of our popular culture.

The negative attention was not deserved for these two men, however.  As the most successful non-Black writers in popular blues and soul it was not surprising they had to bear that burden, as did Elvis (though he only had to suffer to a small extent in his lifetime).  It was, and remains, a distraction from the real and insidious practices which robbed Black musicians and writers of what was really theirs.

Lieber and Stoller often joked how they were “honorary Black men” for their creative legacy. While the notion is certainly complicated beyond its casual use, their self-assessment (however light-hearted) reflects the sense of love which guided their combined careers–the love Black performers had for their talents, as well as the love these two white kids had for blues music.

Both Jerry Lieber and Nick Simpson were part of the birth of popular rhythm and blues music, a period in US history when non-white cultural production became so ubiquitous as to become known as just “American” culture.  As they witnessed and participated in this special time in our culture’s history, they gave us some of the sounds that will forever make up the soundtrack of daily life.

“Have you read all of these books?,” they’ll ask.

“Yes,” I’ll say.  “It’s what they pay me to do.”

In actuality, I really haven’t.  As a historian, many of the books I have are for reference while working on a  lecture for a class, or a book or an article.  I have “covered” almost every book I have on my shelves, that is, I have read substantial parts of it to identify the argument, sources, perspective, and various elements of the proof.

It might seem odd, but I’m actually not a voracious reader.  I don’t love books they way other academics do.  I love History.  I LOVE Chicano/Latino histories.  I am obsessed with the evolving, scholarly understanding of us and our collective past.  I am also obsessed with California history, the history of social movements for change, and the history of racial inequality in the US.

When you put it all together, I’m not much for a novel, but I intellectually salivate over a new book on the the history of the Chicano Movement, or the UFW, or some other kindred topic.

In any event, every once in awhile I think it is important for those of us who read and write in these fields to remind others that we exist.  What’s better, we know and have books.  Whoever you are, if you’re ever interested in learning more about the varied pasts of the Chicano/a and Latina/o people, I’d be more than willing to point you in the direction of a great book.

Pictured above are some of my shelves of books in the office related to: California history (closest section, all shelves), Chicana Feminism (farthest section, top two shelves), and Chicano/Latino History (the whole middle section, and bottom shelves of farthest section).

Elvis turned 34 in January of 1969. The once reigning King of popular music had become something of a pop cliche by the 60s, known best for his string of simple but pleasing feature films. In 1968, his now legendary “comeback special” (which aired in December on NBC) reminded the world that not only was the man an amazing talent, but that he still “had it.”

On the heels of his resurgence in popularity, Elvis took to the stage again for his first live performances in almost 8 years. In July, he opened at the International Hotel in Las Vegas for an extended stay, playing his first show to 2000 adoring fans who couldn’t have imagined the historic scope of the event they attended.

In that audience was a young baby named Tomás.

No! Just kidding. I wasn’t born yet. But when I entered this world three years later, the Elvis stage performances which began in those weeks of the summer 1969 had been honed and perfected. In terms of his stage presence, he was never better in his post-50s period than he was from 1969 to 1972. By that time, however, the excesses (food, drugs, and production design) regularly overcame the talent, as the King became little more than a cardboard cut-out of his once great image.

But we’ll always have 1969! Here’s the King in sound and (often) un-synched video from some of those 1969 shows.

However, the people who plead for patience until “all the facts have been observed,” or who castigate others for “rushing to judgment” before such a process is concluded, and do so while demanding others share their level of faith in the investigatory process must also acknowledge that there are other ways of seeing the situation, other ways of feeling about it.

I don’t pretend to be an expert about what it happening in Britain right now, but I feel my understanding of the same sorts of dynamics in the US does offer me a particular perspective on the ways inequality creates undercurrents of tension and hopelessness which can explode in any “democracy” at particular moments.

While this moment is surely more complicated than few paragraphs of thought can capture, one of the fundamental forces at work is a subjective reality that is not part of the mainstream. This is a reality framed by experience after experience that says when a cop shoots a black man it means race is involved, it means power is using unregulated violence to keep others in check, it means injustice. In this reality whether or not the person of color did something wrong, came from a bad background, or has known connections to gangs is not as relevant as other factors.

Which side it right? The question is as meaningless as any answer you can devise. The significant thing for any society to grasp at a moment like this is that there are competing ways of knowing and understanding what is happening. One might consider for a moment which is worse: riots causing damage to person and property, all with no end in sight; or a reality framed by so much violence, anger, and abuse that mass violence to property feels like a solution.

In any real democracy, the answer to that question should be as obvious as any ever asked.

It seems like decades ago that my son was born. While I can remember life without children–vividly–that time feels long past. He feels like he’s been with us forever. I’ve watched him grow from this little baby into this amazing young kid, filled with energy, creativity, wondering, humor, and love. His entire life, a story contained within my memory.

Yet how much of our first five or six years of life do we count among the significant moments of our present selves? It’s so strange to me that all this time that we have spent as his parents is but a prologue to the story of his own life, as he writes it and reads it from a not too distant future.

Whatever he does, however he lives, it all takes on a new direction now. School will be the setting of the majority of his waking life for the next 13 years. It will seem like an eternity to him.

It will seem like a moment to me.

I love you mijo…

You can read about his life and career here. I hope you do.

I came to know the work of McDaniels in the early 90s when he started to become a favorite source of sampling in the hip hop world. It wasn’t until almost a decade later, however, that I started to appreciate the full range of his talent. The deep soul of his music, complimented by the thoughtful and intelligent lyrics he penned, made him a rare gem in a world of superstars.

My favorite song of his has always been “Compared to What.” An investigation of racism and US hypocrisy, it was both an angry song rooted in the moment of the late 60s as well as a prescient warning. In the last year, McDaniels took to YouTube to speak to his fans through a series of videos featured on his own channel. Here’s Gene discussing “Compared to What”:

And here is Les McCann and Eddie Harris’ wonderful live performance of the song (as featured on the former’s albume Swiss Movement):

McDaniels had a deep conscience and used his art to speak out on our collective inhumanity to one another. His ability to critically address issues of race, gender, power, and class while still being meaningfully artistic in a golden age of soul music says a lot about the man and his scope.

Beginning in 1970, armed with the freedom that came with his success after a decade of busting his artistic hump, he created two of the most overtly political and smart albums of all time. The first, Outlaw was something new for the once-pop/soul singer some had once compared to Jackie Wilson. A fusion of urban sounds ranging from jazz to funk and rock, the album (his first on the Atlantic label) was a radical coming out party. It’s a hard album to summarize, but this track “Love Letter to America” is suggestive of the unique blend of styles it contained:

“Welfare City”, also from Outlaw, sounds almost like 1967 but contains more than a few of his purposeful hybridity.

His 1971 follow-up, Headless Heroes Of The Apocalypse is even bolder than Outlaws. The story of the aftermath of the album is now legend in music. Due to his overt radicalism, someone in the Nixon administration called to complain to Ahmet Ertegun and encourage him to fire McDaniels. Whether that was the cause or not I do not know, but it was McDaniels’ final release for the label.

Here’s “Jager the Dagger” from the 1971 album:

And here is one of my favorites of his from Headless, “Supermarket Blues”:

For all the controversy of his career, McDaniels possessed a beautiful voice, a gift which rivaled his artistry with lyrics and sound. Here he is in a performance from earlier this year, the one of the last videos uploaded to his YouTube channel.

Rest in peace brother…

This video is of a 1970 performance at the same music hall Fillmore East.

We have been less than effective on the teething front, though. Our trusted standby of the past–Hyland’s Homeopathic Teething Tablets–have been off the market for all of BooBoo’s 9 months and their other product (a teething gel) works about as well as rubbing your finger on her gums. Ice has proven useful, as well as some teething toys, but both have their limits with little BooBoo, whether due to boredom with the cure or generally frostiness.

This morning my wife decided to pursue one of the folk remedies she had heard some talk about–a green onion. You don’t chop it up for eating but just wash it off and give it to them as a chew toy. Maybe it’s something in the juices that she extracts from pulverizing it with her bottom teeth and gums, or maybe its just the new flavor and texture in her mouth, but it seems to be working wonderfully right now.

So in honor of a non-fussy baby…

Delivered in 1852 in the midst of an escalating effort to free more than 3 million people from bondage, and rid the United States of the “peculiar institution” of slavery, Douglass’ words illuminated a critical moment. The revolution which had founded this nation, as well as the people who had fought and died in it, were fresh memories for many in the audience. Coming only 76 years after the Declaration of Independence, most in the crowd likely had one or more relatives whose sacrifice made them directly part of this past. Their patriotic exceptionalism, growing ever more palpable with each succeeding generation, further made the occasion of this nation’s birth a personal affair.

Douglass walked the fine line between celebrating the heroism and exceptional character of the Founding Fathers, and with them the fundamental premise of the nation, while chastising the crowd for their own hypocrisy, assuming a man who spoke for slaves could celebrate such an occasion.

I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.

It is that tension that frames Douglass’ address that I think is lost on some of us today. He can simultaneously use his admiration for the founding principles of this nation (and even their inciting events) to celebrate the occasion in one manner while also framing a critique of present-day inequalities.

I’m not as generous or high-minded as Douglass. I balk at patriotism, often unable to view it for any positive attributes it may possess beyond the horrific acts against humanity it serves to excuse and obfuscate. But I think Douglass is all the more significant for me for this reason.

Douglass is a reminder to us all to seize as our own the aspirational principles embodied in this imperfect nation. He shows us how preserving that optimism is at the heart of meaningful critique. He also provides perspective.

It strikes me as hyperbolic to compare our present with his past while ignoring the differences. He spoke at a time when more than 3 million African-descent people lived in chattel slavery. Draw all the similes you like, our present inequality is but a whiff of this past, even on it’s worst days. It also seems to me careless to take away from his speech only the polemical tone without also confronting his humanistic love for freedom and democracy.

This isn’t a call to celebrate today as all others do; but neither is this a charge to dissent. It is a recognition of our responsibility to continue the work Douglass and others performed in their time–the work of building justice. It is also a bold reminder that our most powerful weapon is the humanism of the principles many uncritically celebrate today.

The semi-completion of the book process (I will have to make future revisions in line with whatever feedback comes my way after the review process), has been a load off, I won’t lie. Since my first academic appointment in 2002, it was a goal–almost an obligation–I felt I needed to complete. When I arrived at my current position, at a place that not only expected me to complete it but also had the resources and support to help me do just that, it was the start of both an exciting and stressful time. Almost all the stressful part is now behind me.

One of the casualties in this final year of working on the manuscript has been my blog. Out of necessity, I had to become less regular and, at times, downright invisible. I had started LatinoLikeMe with the intent of making a lot of the academic work I do more accessible to a wider audience, an attempt to provide some small educational resource for people outside of the highly insulated and privileged world of academia. And that took a lot of time. More time than I could spare most weeks.

My absence has really helped to put blogging into perspective for me, though. As work increased, I was often only able to write shorter but more personal pieces. The early years of this blog had very little of that, since I had never intended to make this a journal comprised of my personal life. The more I did it (and I only did it in the most minor of ways, I think) the more I grew comfortable with it as part of my public life. In short, I started to become increasingly comfortable with this blog not being just an outlet for long, research-based mini-articles, but also random posts on things I like, things I had to say from the heart, or even things that had little connection to Latino issues other than for the fact that I am Chicano.

I’ve also grown to appreciate the ability to have a space to record some version of my life outside of the intimately personal stuff we record as a family (through pictures, videos, stories, etc.). The more I thought about it, the blogs I most enjoyed following we’re ones written by people (both friends and not) who had evolved to have a personal and consistent voice allowing me a sustained interaction with their lives.

And so, I think that is where I am going with this space. I suspect, like everything related to blogging, it will be a slow and gradual process. I doubt it will mean more readers, but I am sure it will mean more of me more often.

So thanks for reading, or subscribing, or randomly visiting. I hope to see you around more often.