Linguistic Ineptitude

Some Background on my Youth
I was writing an essay on Barack Obama’s campaign and his recent speech on race but my good will has been tested and those observations will have to wait. However, his name did come up and I have to get things off my chest. I am annoyed and frankly a bit worried about our Puerto Rican community and the society in general.
I have a friend whose health has taken a turn for the worst. His son and daughter and other friends decided to have an evening in his honor raise money for his care. I was asked to read from his work and something of mine. All the people on the program were poets. I believe there were fourteen poets in all. I was the only prose writer, not an unusual ratio in our community. I read about our youth in Spanish Harlem as we saw things then. If you want to read about the event you can go to this NY Times link.
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/author/dgonzalez/?scp=1-b&sq=David+Gonzalez&st=nyt
My friend and I go back to the early 1950s when my parents moved from the Bronx, where we lived in a predominantly Irish neighborhood around St. Mary’s Park, to El Barrio or Spanish Harlem. I had only been in New York City three years but all I knew of the United States was the Shamrocks, later to become the Rebels, because of my presence on this Irish football team. All those Os and Mc created a problem so I become Eddie McVeigh rather than Vega. Yes, it was Irish wit. They didn’t really change my name but they referred to me jokingly by that name.
At that time the fashion in my Irish neighborhood were pegged pants and square-toed Thom McCann shoes. As such I conformed and that was my attire. Of course at fifteen, once I moved to Spanish Harlem, I quickly found out that the fashion there was bell bottoms and pointy shoes. I was an average athlete but I could play well enough to be of value. I had size and a certain abstractedness that a lot of people read as cool. Everything was clubs in those days. AC and SC. Everyone had jackets and if you belonged to an Athletic Club all you did was play sports and have dances. If you were a Social Club it was likely that you were a fighting gang. I lived on 104th Street between Lexington and Park Avenue. This was Dragons territory. The Dragons were a definite Social Club. Beyond 110th Street there were the Viceroys, another Social Club and enemies to the Dragons.
There was a girl I liked who lived on 112th Street. If I went to see her I was invariably stopped by the Viceroys and questioned about my allegiance to the Dragons. I would explain that I had no such fealty. I must have been so spaced out that I showed no fear and they wouldn’t bother me. However, upon my return to the block I was always asked why I was in Viceroy Territory. Between my block and Aurea’s block were the Senecas, an Athletic Club that had a collection of great, fun loving kids who went on to do pretty amazing things.

Dinner Conversation and Latino Agita
So after the event, a group of us went across the street to a Dominican restaurant to eat. We ordered and we were talking about one thing and another and I mention that I’d seen Senator Obama’s speech on race. We’re all extolling the virtues of the senator until I said what I have always thought to be a rather bland remark. I said: “He’s an amazing person, a genetic anomaly.” A young woman sitting across from me got a very strange look on her face and questioned my use of the phrase. “A genetic anomaly?” she said, visibly shocked. I insisted that Barack Obama is a genetic anomaly. From that moment on things became totally batty since political correctness is the order of the day. Evidently, this phrase has implications of which I was not aware in the somehow misguided planet of pop culture and the great sport not speaking openly in the hope of seeming to be a good person.
I should describe the seven people at the table. I’m not going to name names since this is about an overall malaise. Across from me on the extreme left was the person I consider the best US born Puerto Rican poet. He is also a lawyer and teaches English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has a number of poetry books to his credit and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize last year. Across from him was another poet, short story writer and authority on the poetry of William Carlos Williams, who, by the way, had a Puerto Rican mother. He is a professor at Nassau Community College. Next to him is someone who teaches poetry at Fordham University and for more than three decades has been involved in avant garde theater. He is also a translator into English for alternative news outlets on Latin American issues. I was sitting next to him.
Across from me was a young woman, whom I thought to be Puerto Rican, but who I was informed later was of mixed ancestry with one white and one black parent. A lot of us are like that. Next to her was a very shy black woman whom I didn’t know and who did not participate in this linguistic mélange of misunderstanding. At the head of the table was the master of ceremonies for the event, a young man who is studying for his MFA at Rutgers University, a likable, jolly person whom I thought had managed the evening’s event rather well until we ran into the problem of parsing politically correct language.

Background to the Controversy
I will go into the misunderstanding in a minute, but I believe it is important to include certain elements that added to the problem. Two main factors clouded and created this unfortunate and sad breach in the tranquility of intellectual and artistic interchange. One was the issue of why in our Puerto Rican community and at an event like this there were fourteen or fifteen poets and sadly only one prose writer, yours truly. I asked the MFA candidate why he thought this was. He didn’t know. I put forth the idea that our community did not write prose because perhaps it didn’t read as much as it should.
Later the William Carlos William authority pointed out that the problem of non-reading was endemic to the United States. I had to agree. He added that our community, meaning the Puerto Rican community, is not yet a reading community. He added that in contrast to the Black community who for quite a while has had a tradition of letters and reading we’re in our infancy. I also agreed. The point on which I sort half-heartedly disagreed is that he believes that the black reading experience has been ruined by the hip-hop and rap phenomenon. I don’t know if that can be entirely substantiated.
However, let me return to the issue at hand. The fact remains that we produce more poets than prose writers. Other than some journalists who write for major newspapers and appear in National News Programs like The Jim Lehrer Hour, and who have books to their credit, we have few novelists in the subsequent to the generation that produced such works as Carlito’s Way, After Hours, Down These Mean Streets, Family Installments, Mendoza’s Dreams and Blood Fugues, and from our women someone who should have more recognition but does not: the author of the collection of short stories: The Eighth Continent, and her new novel, The Passion of Maria Magdalena Stein. Perhaps, not as many people know about her because she teaches in London, England and publishes there. Getting out of the ghetto is good once in a while.
The next generation has produced works of fiction such as The Boy Without a Flag, Spidertown, and When I was Puerto Rican. Please forgive me but nothing else comes to mind as a significant effort in fiction that remedies this imbalance in our literature between poets and prose writers. It should be pointed out that the latter of the above works is a memoir. The issue of whether the memoir is fiction has been addressed in a previous essay. It should also not be assumed that Puerto Ricans are not novelists since we have an extensive island tradition of novel writing. I think the problem has more to do with who we are in the diaspora and the stresses under which we live and what we consider important. And of course the need for attention and the expediency of a lines thrown together at the kitchen table rather than spending three or four years writing a novel, trying to get it sold and published, a process that could take years.
The next thing that took place is that in speaking about all this the phrase “people of color” surfaced. If there is an empty-headed agenda that has come down the pike in the last fifty years, is this phrase. I hear it and I might as well be plunged into a hell of incessant suffering. Heck no! It has very little to do with avoiding an African heritage. That fact is something to celebrate no matter who you are. Genetically, according to the British geneticist, Brian Sykes, we’re all descended from one ancestral mother in the plains of Africa. The whole kit and caboodle of the human race. Six billion of us loonies are descended from this one mama. Whoa! Heavy. Yes, you and Charlize Theron, Yao Ming, Oprah Winfrey, Caroline Kennedy, Denzel Washinton, and Sitting Bull are all related. That’s a heavy concept.

Homogenizing Culture
About twenty or twenty-five years ago, some empty-headed person decided that all of us who are fuzzy-wuzzies should be called is “people of color.” When I began hearing this, I was in PEN’s “Open Book” committee. I’ll go into this episode another time because it delayed the publication of one of my novels. However, I do go into it a bit in my new novel about which you will soon find out. I thought the term was absolute stupidity. What’s the difference between “colored people” and “people of color?” I asked. I was looked at as if I had suddenly taken leave of my senses. When I inquired further as to the purpose of this phrase I was told that it would unify all of the non-Europeans. To what end? I asked with my natural curiosity which people mistake for unbridled aggressiveness and ill humor. “For unity against oppression,” came the response. “All non-white people have the same grievances.”
Really? I thought. Okay, so Puerto Rico was invaded and colonized by the United States. But it’s also true that these same folks appropriated huge stretches of land from the Indians, did number on African slaves, created abject conditions for Chinese railroad workers during the 1800s and have treated their own white people with pretty much elitist disdain. I had to laugh. Ever since that moment I’ve rejected the term as the biggest chump agenda that has been perpetrated on the innocent of this country since snake oil. Today, the ill-constructed phrase has crept into all sorts of discourses. Even white people now use the term with great elegance and righteousness. And I keep thinking: this society is getting dumber and dumber every day.

Top 10 Reasons Why the POC Agenda is Bankrupt
When I heard the phrase at this table, I launched into one of my favorite diatribes of what I consider a truly misguided intellectual construct. On this occasion I did not utter one of my favorite bon mots which is: The problem with brotherhood is sibling rivalry. When I said that it was a chump agenda the younger people, all politically correct and aligned with this type of thinking were appalled. I explained the following points:
1. Skin color is not a determinant of worth and it is only a superficial element in the description of human beings.
2. There exists within the Hispanic community a wide range of skin colors and we have many European-descended people who are, for want of a better designation, white. We also have large numbers of Amerindians, African and people who are admixtures of two, or in cases, three of these branches of continental humanity. What unites us as a people is the Spanish language and not our skin color, so many of us don’t care for the designation and view it as political accommodation, even we think it’s nonsense.
3. There are more white people under the poverty line in the US than all the other groups put together. Of course the people with short brains say: “Of course. There are more white people.” This proves the point that it’s not color but class that determines poverty. Think of it. Does white skin make it easier for a child in a white ghetto to get a better education, or a child in white Appalachia to be well cared for on little money? Is the hunger of a white child less than that of an Indian, Latino or black child? Does their white skin translate into good nutrition? Obviously not.
4. Even under the most basic economic analysis, it is a fact that 92% of the wealth of the United States is controlled by at best 6% of the people. The 8% of the wealth that the government doles out in different supposed benefits for the 94% of us, we compete for in good American giddyap and go tradition. If someone can deny that this is true, please present an argument that is cogent and not full of nicefeel and goodthought but addresses the issue.
5. Senator Obama, to his credit, is not using the silly phrase since it’s going to piss Latinos off. In spite of arguments to the contrary, they already have serious sibling rivalry problems with blacks. If people want to blind themselves to this, well, in the words of that great late 20th Century philosopher, Annie Hall, la-di-dah.
6. Since the rich are exploiting the planet into extinction, we, the majority of us on the planet, are in this together. Why not quit fussing about white people and recognize that the rich are screwing us with as much impunity as they are other folks. Skin color is immaterial to the Gates and Buffets and Wall Street types of the country.
7. Culture, and here is where most people are blinded by lack of knowledge, is more important than color. The aim of the United States is to homogenize its entire people into a rather innocuous amalgam in which everyone speaks a brand of English that is infantile in its awareness of meaning. The main concern is training people to consume manufactured goods so presented by cunning advertising people. Result? I’m sorry for the cliché but it is true: The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. They have convinced us that technology, overeating, burning large amounts of gasoline, and taking the right medications will help us to live better. Buy cute gadgets and you’ll be happier.
8. At one point there were red horses, brown horses, yellow horses, black horses, and white horses. They were frisky and wild and you had to keep them in their own corral. You can call some horses Black Panther, some Young Lords, another Weather Underground, Wounded Knee, and Manzanar. Whatever! The fact remains that the country had to deal with all these wild horses in their own corrals and on their own terms. And along comes someone, whom I have yet to identify, but I suspect that it had to be one of o black brothers of letters and dreams up this odious term: people of color with the notion of creating unity amongst us.
9. Karl Marx be damned! He’s just as goofy as Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo. What was done to African people during slavery will now be perpetrated on people with distinct and beautiful cultures whose identity depends on maintaining that culture and language.
10. Remember, slavery not only destroyed families, but language, traditions, cultural pride and dignity. No more drumming, no more broom jumping. No more Mandinke, Ibo, Ashanti, Yoruba, Fante. Ya’ll are now niggers, nigras, spooks, spades, coons, tar babies, colored folks and now you have the privilege of being PEOPLE OF COLOR. But, hey, why pass up an opportunity to be part of this great destruction of culture. We don’t just want Africans to be so lucky and become Americans for the glory of one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Forget being Ogalala Sioux, Mescalero Apache, Cherokee, Iroquois. Forget speaking Mandarin, Cantonese and Tagalog. Forget your tea ceremony. Forget Three Kings Day and the Day of the Dead. You, newly arrived from India, Bangladesh, Senegal, forget all of what your ancestors gave to you as your culture, just drive the cab and if anyone asks where you’re from just say: “Africa” because dumb Americans wouldn’t know Mozambique from Motorola or Mali from Mr. Magoo. All of you who are not WHITE are now people of color. Isn’t that lovely? All of us united in misery, scraping by on the crumbs of society, but at least we have our skin color. Hey, and we have an excuse. We can blame white people even though they’re just as clueless as to why they’re losing their savings, their homes, have no health insurance, their kids can’t do long division, and don’t know the capital of the state.

The Phrase that Produced the Acrimony
Anyway, I became professorial and didactic and what I thought was helpful and socially responsible. My mother called it insoportable. There is a similar word in English, but basically it’s synonymous with pedantic and annoying. To top this off, I said that the beauty of Obama is that he is a genetic anomaly. I might as well have spit on all that is holy about political correctness. I was shocked when this young woman reacted as she did. I asked her to please say back to me what she understood me to mean by genetic anomaly.
“It sounds so rejecting,” she said.
I replied that it simply means that he is a unique individual. I was then hit by the most ridiculous argument I’ve ever heard.
“Where were you during the 60s and 70s and all the craziness with eugenics and miscegenation?” asked the young woman who couldn’t have been born back then.
I wanted to say that in the 1960s and 1970s I was involved in radical politics and anti-war activities like helping nice kids who didn’t want to kill Vietnamese children to escape to Canada and Sweden; that I was attempting to write the great American novel while supporting a family. That my brother was a conscientious objector and was driving a Civil Rights van and knew Goodman, Cheney and Schwerner, assassinated by the Ku Klux Klan; that my brother was one of the last people to see and talk to Viola Liuzzo before she was also assassinated by the Klan. I wanted to say that along with their Swedish-German mother I was busy raising our cute not POCs but COMs (Children of Miscegenation).
I simply said that eugenics was associated with the Nazis and could not be placed in the same category as miscegenation since the latter simply means the mixing of race. It is simply a word of description and if people gave it moral connotations I never saw it that way. The young woman responded by using another one of the strategies for suspending discussion. She termed our differences as semantic arguments. How did semantics all of a sudden come to mean a difference of opinion when semantics as field is employed for the clarification of meaning?

Using English versus English Usage
Many people because they speak English believe that they understand all the nuances and levels of the language. English is a tricky tongue and if you don’t examine it fully you can encounter many traps. Just because a group of people has agreed on a meaning of a word, it doesn’t mean that they can bully others into believing that they’re right. A pack of people insisting that “people of color” is a good thing doesn’t mean that it is.
I offer the meaning of the word miscegenation for the edification of those interested.
1. sexual relations between races: sexual relations between people of different races, especially of different skin colors, leading to the birth of children. 2. intermarriage between races: marriage or cohabitation between people of different races. [Mid-19th century. Coined from Latin miscere “to mix” + genus “race” + -ation .] Encarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1998-2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
There is no question that certain people were against miscegenation, but the word itself is simply a neutral one and to attach racist meanings to is the same as thinking that the word niggardly is somehow related to racism.
However, the word anomaly must have created in this young person’s mind the horror of horrors. I asked her what it meant to her. She said it had negative connotations as if I was saying that Barack Obama was abnormal because he came from the love between a black Kenyan father and a Euro-American Kansas mother.
I said that to me it simply meant that he is a unique individual, just like every human being born is unique. Mr. Obama seems to be more unique than most. I added that I thought Michael Jordan, who seems to be the offspring of the same people as those in Senegal and Mali today, and not at all mixed of race, is also a genetic anomaly since his skills with a basketball are so unusual and that genetic anomaly has nothing to do with the mixing of races. I also consider Derek Jeter, who is the product of an Irish mother and an African-American father, a genetic anomaly since his skills at the game of baseball are so outstanding. By the same token, Ted Williams, who was whiter than God, and the greatest hitter of baseballs ever, was also a genetic anomaly. He had 20-15 eyesight and could see the ball a microsecond ahead of most humans.
Here’s the definition of anomaly:
1.irregularity: something that deviates from the norm or from expectations. Looking for anomalies in the patient’s blood tests. 2. peculiarity: something strange and difficult to identify or classify. The space probe has encountered an anomaly. 3. astronomy angle in planet’s orbit: the angle between a planet’s position, the Sun, and the point in the planet’s orbit when it is closest to the Sun Encarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1998-2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
I see no negative connotations in the definition. Is Obama a deviation from expectations? I would say that even if he were totally white instead of half white he’d be a deviation from expectations since he’s served in the US Senate for just three years and he’s a serious candidate for the presidency of the country, a truly gifted orator, a brilliant and passionate man and a formidable statesman and a breath of fresh air in US politics.
But the die had been cast and we were now embroiled in dealing with the powers of misguided notions, a limited linguistic education, and a need to find blame in the society for personal and group shortcomings. The young man studying for his MFA became irate and said he disagreed and further that I was insulting the young woman. I said he needed to show how I had done this. He replied by saying that he didn’t have to show me anything. I said that it seemed to me intellectually weak to not explain what he thought. And here is where I was shocked to hear his response. I’ve heard it before from people without a forma academic education but never from someone who was receiving an advanced education.
“All I have to do is disagree,” he said. “No matter what you say all I have to do is disagree.”
I could say no more since this is what it has come to in our society. This is the product of what most of us have been sold as our democratic right. Since we’re all equal, all of our opinions are equal. You no longer need to back up your opinions with facts, examples, support, and references. Simply because you’re American your opinion has the same intrinsic value and cannot be challenged. Surgeon or butcher since both deal with cutting flesh, have the same right to opine on blood issues, no matter how misguided. How had we come to this that you can say anything and by dint of popular acceptance of nonsense someone can me deemed wrong?
My only recourse was to tell the young man that he ought to study genetics and above all, if he was serious about being a poet and not a mouthpiece for empty-headed rhetoric and accommodating a system whose only interest is the elimination of culture in exchange for a passport to consumerism and radical stupidity was to study the meaning of words.
I left shortly after, having once again annoyed a few people.
Assignment: Look up the word curmudgeon.