Kurdstantinople

and for the next I think about three days, the president will lie in -- the former president will lie in state.-- Charlayne Hunter-Gault

I do not mean to suggest, in my Ifill post, that prominent African Americans are responsible for the fact that I get it from all sides. Henry Louis Gates did not create North Philadelphia's destitution any more than I manufactured Glenn Beck, but there is an essential disconnect between Dr. Gates, his historical admonishments, his genetic challenges to the very identity he embraces, and the reality of life on the ground in urban corridors, whether those corridors are west coast, the LA-Compton track, or east coast, which extends from the DC metro grid and hits a speed bump roughly at Hartford's city line in CT (when she wishes spastic is an amateur demographics expert).

Bill Cosby shares my traditionalism in this regard, and I respect the comedian for his early first decade efforts to speak the truth to northeast urban black communities (and Cosby's middle aged bigot he created for K-12 sociology instruction is also a mimetic simulation of the angry retractive jackass into which my civic duty has contorted). But, and this is what I keep driving at-- Cosby's honesty lacks the spearheaded pretensions of Gates and his indignation with white privilege. The only effect my father's denigrating attitude about blacks had on blacks themselves was his exodus from the city and the tax revenue that went with it. At the end of the day, I detached myself from every minority paraprofessional: partly discomfort, partly contempt, but in a number of instances, also an instinctual need for self-preservation.

The time to shine technician did not hurt me; maybe she did not take my dates, knowingly throw out my wheelchair tools, or pay attention to my dress skirt on the bar I purchased to interview locally on my grid, but she is the last blue collar minority I will allow within five feet of my personal space, excepting police or EMS. Yes, I am a quadriplegic, but I'm done, however I have to square that reality.