After the Quake

I’m still kind of numb on how to respond to the earthquake in Haiti, and am waiting to hear more details as it relates to my extended family. The images coming out of the island remind me of New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina: black people suffering through a natural disaster without the resources to deal. Of course, the lack of infrastructure in Haiti makes the crisis all the more grim. I’m a broke-ass freelancer, but I’ll try to scrape some money together to donate and will definitely give blood and clothes. Of course, that still feels like all too little.

The most meaningful thing I can think of to do is write about what Haiti means to me.

Why We Need More Super-leaders not Superheroes

As a child, I always loved superheroes. Through comic books and Saturday morning programs, I could escape into another world. DC Comics. Marvel. Superfriends. For a while, Superman was my favorite. He was a strong, All American male, handsome with super strength, X-ray vision and Lois Lane. He had it all, at least from my perspective as a chubby, nerdy, bespectacled Haitian kid from Queens. However, as I grew older, I felt that Batman was more of a figure with whom I could relate. Although a millionaire, Bruce Wayne was just a human with no superpowers but a slew of innovative weapons. I wasn’t a mutant, so I knew I could never be Wolverine or any other of the X-Men. The odds were slim that a radioactive spider would bite me, so becoming Spider-man was also out of the question. But Batman, I thought, could be within my reach. I just needed to be innovative and to work to develop tools for my success. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts to create my version of the Batbelt, I never became Batman. But something magical happened. I realized that I didn’t need to become a superhero to enjoy my world. Rather, I just had to utilize my imagination and I would be able to bring some of my fantasies into the real world. I could make an impact through my writing and my every day actions. I could be a leader.

The hysteria about Michael Jackson’s death and the recent dismay about Tiger Woods’s so-called “transgressions” has brought into sharp focus our society’s obsession with idolatry and with superheroes, usually manifested in the form of celebrities. My thesis is that we could do a lot better if we were seeking, or better yet trying to become, super-leaders not superheroes. Whenever I heard a parent talk about how disappointed his or her child was about Tiger Woods, I cringed. Tiger Woods and any athlete should be celebrated for their athletic abilities. However, that is where it should end. In my opinion, Tiger Woods or any other celebrity should never be a role model for any child. When I was younger, I had posters of my favorite basketball players on my bedroom wall. From Hakeem the Dream to Patrick Ewing to Clyde Drexler, I admired their athletic prowess. But I was clear that they were not my role models. I might try to copy their moves on the basketball court, but I never considered them persons I wanted to emulate. My parents instilled in me the desire to achieve academically and to create my own successes. I was not celebrity-struck because my parents were not celebrity-struck. This notion of celebrity obsession was foreign to me. Logically, it never made sense to me. Watching people faint at the sight of another human being, as often happened when Michael Jackson was in public, was silly and embarrassing to me. “He is just a man,” I would think.

But I recognize that something is missing in many peoples’ lives. Rather than taking control of their own lives and becoming super-leaders, they spend their time being more concerned about the lives of others, namely celebrities. What are Brad and Angelina up to today? Where did Britney go last night? Who is TMZ following now? Frankly, who cares? Psychologically, I understand the dynamic. People love escapism. Celebrity gossip allows them to leave their perceived mundane existence. It gets them excited. It allows them to dream about other realities. It makes for great water-cooler, and in this generation, wonderful Facebook chatter. I understand guilty pleasures and don’t begrudge people their desire to let their brains vegetate for a minute. I also recognize that many of us need superheroes, people who we can look up to, who we can aspire to be, who give us hope for greater things and comfort about infinite possibilities. However, I worry that too many children are growing up wanting to be Miley Cyrus rather than Cyrus the Great (minus the issues of violent conquest).

The recent and relatively unnoticed death of Mr. Percy Sutton illustrates the contrast between super-leaders and superheroes. Percy Sutton was a super-leader, a pioneer. He was a Tuskegee Airman, served as legal counsel for Malcolm X, was a New York State Assemblyman and a one time Manhattan Borough president. He went on to co-found Inner City Broadcasting, which featured WLIB and WBLS in New York City, and also invested in the New York Amsterdam News and the Apollo Theater. While not perfect (and none of us are), he inspired many to become leaders, and paved the way for the first (and only) Black mayor of New York City the Honorable David N. Dinkins. Super-leaders, like Percy Sutton, are real and they work, not only for their benefit, but for the good of others. Superheroes, like Tiger Woods and other celebrities, are socially constructed idols, admired for their individualistic accomplishments, and placed on never to be touched pedestals. But, unfortunately, they are not real.

While Michael Jackson’s passing touched me because it signaled the loss of a particular time of my youth, those carefree Off the Wall and Thriller days, the death of Percy Sutton has impacted me even more and made me recognize the urgency for me to step up and to be a super-leader. As a new father, I especially worry about how my daughter will be influenced by our celebrity-obsessed culture and how to shield her appropriately from it. So, while I don’t suggest that we need to permanently give up our superheroes, I believe that we could benefit from more super-leaders. Without getting on a soapbox (or maybe it’s too late for such a disclaimer), I resolve to use my Batmobile for good while attempting to change the world.

Favorite books of 2009

Let’s knock this out real quick. These weren’t released in 2009, but that’s when I read them.

Honorable Mention: Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, by Tim Weiner
This book gets only an honorable mention because I’m still working my way through it. It’s a startling read, though. Honest to God, this book has made me wonder how this country managed to survive with such an inept intelligence agency. I knew about the high-profile CIA failures over the years (the Bay of Pigs, not foreseeing the fall of the Soviet empire, 9/11), but I always assumed there were some successes mixed in there as well. I was wrong. They’ve been wrong about damn near everything over the years. They assured Truman that the Chinese weren’t going to intervene in the Korean War, even as hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers massed along the borders. They ruined Eisenhower’s chance at detente with the Soviet Union by insisting on a U2 spy flight that was shot down in Soviet airspace. They were infiltrated by Soviet spies at the highest levels. It’s straight up appalling. And that’s without even going into the disastrous covert operations record. So far, I’ve made it from the Truman years through the LBJ presidency, and what’s really interesting is that every president over that 20+ year period hated and distrusted the CIA, but none of them could figure out how to fix it or kill it. Doesn’t really inspire confidence.

3. Serena, by Ron Rash
I love books that feature fierce, intimidating female characters, and they don’t come tougher than Serena. She is the wife of a logging magnate in Depression-era North Carolina, and she’s so bad that not only does she quickly gain the respect of the local lumberjacks, but she becomes the person they fear the most (even moreso than her husband, who’s introduced killing a man in a knife fight). She pushes her husband beyond his already brutish methods until they seize near-tyrannical control of the area. But when a life-threatening miscarriage renders her sterile, she decides to kill her husband’s illegitimate toddler son and the boy’s mother. That decision opens up a dangerous rift in her marriage that endangers their lives and their control over the county. I’ve enjoyed very few characters more than I enjoyed Serena (which explains why I was so annoyed by her tacked-on comeuppance in the epilogue).

2. The Flashman series, by George MacDonald Fraser
My list is really short this year, mainly because I spent a good chunk of 2009 reading the 12-book Flashman series, which tells the adventures of Sir Harry Flashman, imperial war hero, ladies man, coward and all-around scoundrel. I could rank the books separately, but they all generally follow the same formula: Flashman is unwillingly pulled into the latest British imperial war, he sleeps with as many women as possible, and he shirks his duty yet somehow ends up with greater glory and acclaim each time around. (I can only remember two characters who saw him for what he truly was: his father-in-law, and Abe Lincoln.) The books are incredibly funny, and they have that real swashbuckling feel to them, but they’re also meticulously researched, and give a subtly effective history of Britain’s empire during the second half of the 19th century. Flashman has a very modern P.O.V. that I can appreciate. He clearly doesn’t believe in the British imperial mission, but he doesn’t go for any “noble savage” nonsense either. In Flashman and the Redskins (in which Flashy admits to possibly killing Custer at Little Big Horn in a friendly fire accident) Flash gives what’s probably the best summation of his attitude:

“…when selfish and frightened men–in other words, any men, red or white, civilised or savage–come face to face in the middle of a wilderness that both of ‘em want, the Lord alone knows why, then war breaks out, and the weaker goes under. Policies don’t matter a spent piss…”

Since he’s always the biggest villain on the stage, this attitude is a bit self-serving, but there is more than a bit of truth to it.

1. Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
If I were a writer, this is the kind of book I’d want to write. Adichie brings home the elation of liberation and the tragedy of defeat in a remarkably affecting way, so that I (who knew nothing about Biafra and the Nigerian Civil War) felt as elated and as mournful as the main characters while reading it. Adichie builds a deeply involving world of educated, upper-middle class intellectuals, and watching them slowly descend to the point of fighting over scraps of food in refugee camps was heartbreaking, and a needed reminder that these images of third world suffering that we see on TV don’t tell the whole story of their lives. Adiche makes that point more effectively than I ever could in this talk, “The Danger of a Single Story.” I recommend watching it, and if you enjoy it, give the book a try.