As I am nearly finished reading Lawrence Goldstone's Dark Bargain, I started to panic. I started to panic because I didn't have a new book to read.  A few nights ago, when the panic attack was eminent, I was in my bed surfing the internet. While I was on my computer and the Internet, I happen to be listening to a re-broadcast of C-SPAN's After Words wherein Columbia journalism professor John Dinges was interviewing Eduardo Galeno about his book Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone. During this interview Mr. Galeno read some of the vignettes written in Mirrors. I was very satisfied with the stories he told about his work and the stories he read. I was so satisfied that I memory-marked Mr. Galeno's book in my mind. After listening to this interview I turned the television off because it had become tedious; it was as tedious as sitting in front of the television like a zombie which is becoming less and less a bad habit of mine. So I shut down my computer, walked into the other room, shut off the television and returned to my room, jumped back in bed and I picked up Dark Bargain to finish the last few pages. The panic of not having something new to read was so strong that I only read a couple more pages.  This usually happens when I really enjoy a book that I am reading.  I remember after reading Beloved by Toni Morrison a few years ago, I had this panic problem while attempting to find a book that was as thought provoking and poetic until I came across Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. 

Another reason I memory-marked Mirrors by Mr. Galeno  book resides in the fact that Mr. Dinges compared the author to Marquez and his work to Solitude.

A day or so  passed and I made it to the bookstore to purchase Mirrors and Toni Morrison's, A Mercy. I am free of panic and free to finish Dark Bargain. I only have two pages left.  I really enjoyed Mr. Goldstone's work because it pulls back the thick layers of American history and exposes the rawest of raw nerves in United States history: slavery. He does a good job of placing all the actors in the drama on stage in Philadelphia during the re-writing of Articles of Confederation.  He plays no favorites in identifying where and how the "bargain" was struck between Northern and Southern states as they decided to form a union. The bargain is enshired in this country's most serious document. The manner in which Mr. Goldstone lays out the drama highlights the sectional rivalries that ultimately forecast the run-up to the the war between the states.

I think Dark Bargain is relavent becasue slavery still haunts this country.  The U.S. Senate just passed a "no binding" resolution apologizing for its complicity in the one of the most imfamous trades of them all. If that doesn't illustrate how slavery haunts this country, just check out this story on Rhode Island wanting to change it's name because of what it thinks it says about its (our) past.

The title of Ellis Cose's book, Envy of the World, taken from the pen of Toni Morrison and the from the mouth of her protagonist Sula resurfaced in my memory after I clicked the link--provided of course by TPM -- to Politico's story about Obama. It resurfaced because I remember reading Sula the book as the character was telling Nell, her best friend and a man name Jude, a small story about black men being the envy of the world. I remember this part of the book because it was ridiculous. Ridiculous in only the way Sula is/was telling this story to Nell and Jude. Sula is telling this tall tale because Jude is complaining about being a black man in this world. I understood his complaints. Lord, do I know his complaints. Sula was trying to illustrate to Jude that black men were the envy of the world because we are either greatly admired or feared; and sometimes admired and feared at the same time. There usually isn't a middle ground and it is maddening.

The State, a South Carolina web site posted e-mails from this event

There are several reasons (so far) I've never voted for a Republican. The first being their twisted formulation of the Southern Strategy which is a direct response to the Civil Rights laws passed under Lydon Johnson's administration. The Southern Strategy was always in the background after Johnson passed Civil Rights legislation but reactivated by Nixon and fully reignited under Regan when he held a rally and kicked off the remaining portion of his campaign (after the conventions) in Philadelphia, Mississippi; the same Philadelphia, Mississippi  where three Civil Rights workers were killed. By kicking off the final stretch of the 1980 presidential race in this Mississippi town, Regan was saying that if he was elected, he would make sure that federal government mandated Civil Rights laws would be roll back to pre-Johnson norms.

The first person I associate the Southern Strategy with is Barry Goldwater. He seized the opportunity to appeal to the most base instinct among a certain segment of Americans--he wasn't by far the first prominent American politician to use race like a wedge. Nixon picked up where Goldwater left off. I wanted to believe that this country, my country would cease to use dirty political racial tricks like the Southern Strategy but Nixon perfected it. Nixon was so bold, that he often expressed--listen to his released tapes-- his disdain for black people. The New York Times reports another piece of this twisted puzzle. Nixon was breathing new life into that all American tome wherein black and white people should not have children together. Through his actions he announced that blacks and whites procreating was the ultimate trespass. Imagine if these so-called eugenicist had their way in the United States--in some cases they did.  I can't say that it would have resulted in a genocide but look what happened to the Jews in Europe as Germans employed the nefarious theories they learned from early 20th American eugenicist like Charles Davenport. The Southern Strategy in all its forms is the notorious follow-up to the 1924 Racial Integrity Act.

It is pure racism when the politically powerful can by fiat, dictate the terms of lives of those they govern. And I am not blind to see that Democrats have taken the African American vote for granted for far too long. I just wish the Republicans would stop politics based in theories which are faulty to say the least.

There are no words but it has meaning. I think the name Baraka means blessing.