IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. These words comprise one of the statements observed by Winston on the pyramid of the Ministry of Truth and are the national slogan of Oceania in George Orwell’s “1984”. They are what writers call a paradox. From a utilitarian purview, a paradox is a vehicle by which a writer can communicate self-contradictory truisms that on the surface appear absurd yet effectively demonstrate combinatorial disjunction. In other words, like math, a paradox explains a least common denominator albeit at times contradictory, deduced from apparently acceptable and valid thesis.
The title of this collection of essays, “Brilliant Dumb: Politics, Culture and Jactitation in the Age of Obama” is a similar play on words, apparently contradictory yet true. Just as true as Orwell’s statement “ignorance is strength”. These are a collection of essays, most of which have been taken from my blog and other outlets that I have published which speak directly into the mirror of the world, and especially America, holds up to my face. What I wish to convey is Dickensonian in a sense given that I often feel as though I write about what others do not see or select not to see. Like Thucydides, I have experienced firsthand the metamorphosis of the behaviors and ideological shifts in the world and America, and it is important, particularly for Africa Americans, to present the aforementioned observations with the analytical distance of a historian and scientist. As a result, it as if I have vouchsafed through these essays, merely a lateral instance of personal preferment.
I have been trained by the writings of Voltaire in particular, and learned the craft of the essay from William Buckley, Carl Rowen, William Raspberry, Thomas Friedman, James Baldwin, Lewis Grizzard and William Safire and I hope my writings will do them justice, as they informed my penchant for writing in the formative years of my life just by reading their words in print.
In an age in which men are killed over condom prices, or stabbed because a person doesn’t know Beyoncé is married to Jay-Z, or wherein a single weekend in Chicago 55 shootings are reported with 10 dead, all involving African Americans, one must address and question these occurrences. Mainly a collection of essays assembled and written between 2009 and 2013, Brilliant Dumb is not an attempt to present a Kantian or common-law philosophical interpretation of modern America from an ethno cultural point of view, nor is it an intellectual or political portrait of the changing technological magisterial of the outcomes of our practices in such an environment.
It is for a world in which music played on radio is itself reflective of psychopathy and at the same time applauds it; or where Twitter is employed for revolution in Egypt and Tunisia but for Flash Mobs here at home. These are tractates devoted to criminals who publish their conquest with photographs on Facebook yet query as to how and why they were captured. A world where radio and African American news outlets will have more copy on Whitney Houston, Lil Wayne or a basketball wife (who has no husband) than on the global sovereign debt crisis, prospects for new wars in Central Asia, or the incessant educational and academic denouement of African American youth right in their backyard.
This book is a portrait of an epoch in which we likely will never be as vehement as we should about the fact that just 41% of Black men graduate from high school in the United States or that 69% of Black children in America cannot read at grade level by the 4th grade, or that only 11 percent of African American students are identified as proficient in math by high school compared to other groups, or that the net worth of Black families is $5677 compared to $113,149 for White families – all things which we can control. It is somehow viewed as wrong to talk about our president but please let us see Michael Jackson's and Whitney Houston’s funeral and a picture of Blue Ivy.
In essence I have been forced to articulate such observations in ways that are distinctly unique in an age where all that is considered critical is merely regurgitated thought obtained from television and radio waves. This is particularly consistent with contemporary American behavior, where sociopathy and immediate gratitude replaces congeries of reason, pragmatism and compassion.
A few discrete causes may be delineated as to why the increase in non-concern and self-destructive behaviors give the appearance to be on the rise including but not limited to the enthrallment with celebrity, the non-concern for the promotion of intellectual attainment and development and the rapid pace of a technological milieu in the age of the internet and social media. None the less, the hyper individualistic nature that such objectives breed is destructive to custom, variety and community. In particular in contemporary American culture where acceptance without question and critical thinking has crystallized into standard orthodoxy.
These essays paint a picture of all stated thus far the way I internalize them in words; but will they be able to answer other seminal questions that promote self-determination and collective responsibility? Such as, have the new world view of African Americans abrogated all power necessary to surmount the various crisis and conundrums faced, even if it requires conflict within our community, to progress to being more than free in name only?
I hope my writings can do something to energize change through the ignition of thought. I agree with Isaac Asimov, who may have said it best: “The stain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge”.