Murph – “What makes you want to go looking for stuff like that?” Didn’t exactly search it out – but if you’re aware of history (and history in the making) sometimes you can’t avoid ugly facts of un-feeling. I’m reminded – given the date – of that line from the Jihadists’ manual for the 9/11 hijackers:

“If God grants [manna] any of you a slaughter [dhabaha], you should perform it as an offering on behalf of your father and mother, for they are owed by you. Do not disagree amongst yourselves, but listen and obey. If you slaughter, you should plunder those you slaughter, for that is one of the sanctioned customs of the Prophet…”

You’re not all wrong – by the way – re that father and son living in a “mental projection.” As it happens, I’ve tried to fast-forward the pop into a brighter American day. OBama, of course, packs a lot more push that I ever will on that front. One of the reasons why I’m so juiced about him is that his presence promises to make it easier for Afro-Am elders (and young’uns) to sublate the past. Don’t much care what you think of me, but, for the record, I don’t lay the weight of the past on my kid. Doubt he’ll be able to avoid it entirely though. Just hope I’m there to help when the time comes for him to fully comprehend the painful truths of how race survived American history. I’m going to prepare him early by talking up this country’s heroes all through his childhood…

PS One reason why I respect the writer quotd above is that he directed me (and others) to Ousmane Sembene’s “Tribal Scars” – a great 60s’ short story that zeroed in on black Africans’ complicity in the slave trade…