Y’all must think you’re pretty slick. Seriously, pulling something out of Reagan’s playbook: paying faux homage to King (in Reagan’s case in the form of a national holiday) while doing everything you can “behind the scenes” to promote the disparagement harassment and discrimination against African-Americans. Oh, do I have some words for you! But first let me say this to all you minority inmates in debtors prison (which like real prison is made up of a disproportionate number of us) first we’ve got to look up from staring at our own problems long enough to notice things like this and second  we may not have gotten jobs or meaningful contacts out of our fancy degrees but at least we pissed off uneducated white trash like Beck and Palin. Sure they are millionaires and we owe six figures but their jealousy and envy can at least get you through the day.

Ok now for Beck and Palin. Look, Reagan got away with what he did because 1) he was President 2) he was a charismatic actor and 3) that was 30 years ago before the Daily Show.  Glen Beck is so stupid he thought Al Sharpton marched with Dr. King…I mean can he even count to 47? Sarah Palin is on record mocking the very IDEA of being a community organizer… What do you think Dr. King WAS?! The unofficial Prince of Negroes? And these aren’t things those idiots did or said ten years ago, this is all since 2008.

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I hate pre-season football.  It’s kind of like masterbating in my book. If you hear it from the other room it sounds like the real deal but at the end you don’t feel like a winner and you haven’t conquered anyone.  In my disgust I decided to see what Benito and company have produced recently.  Predictably it was a sea of crap, and really I could comment on anything written in the month of August but for the sake of time let’s focus on this “Tales of an Unpublished Author” series.  Typical Benito, he finds a loser similar to himself who writes about why he has accomplished nothing in life.  Soon he will have kids writing who got rejected from every school they applied to giving advice about how to get into Yale Law or Harvard Med.  So that’s why I hate this blog. 

And here’s why I love America.  May I present Ms. Kathryn Stockett whose novel “The Help” has been a best-seller for over a year now.  Ms. Stockett is a lilly-white 41 year-old who, from the looks of her, is no stranger to cosmetic surgery (the work is very tasteful).  She comes from old money and her book is a condescending tale chronicalling the generations of black servants employed by her family told form the perspective of one of the servants.  I promise this is not a joke and I can’t believe neither Alpha Man nor Simons Girlfriend has written about this.

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Uh, ok.  So I was waiting for Alpha Man to field this one. I could understand the silence on Oscar Grant (Alpha Man says thanks to the rappers that any black man talking about police brutality seems like a thug). But then I saw his love-thy-neighbor bullshit post and I knew I had to do this myself.

There is no such thing as reverse racism. Every white person that hates black people does so because of an institutionalized system of oppression and misrepresentation. Every black person that hates white people does so due to 400 years of rape, torture, murder, slavery AND most likely a lot of personal experience. That’s not racism. It’s a form of prejudice yes. Very understandable prejudice in the case of Shirley Sherrod… a prejudice she overcame by the way.

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I’m feeling good. The worst part of residency is over, the anticipation and the fear. I still haven’t reached that magical milestone where I am more competent than the good nurses but that will take time. I am also on vacation which is lovely. Sitting here on the beach in all my cocoa-bronze glory I reached for a book one of my girlfriends recommended and immediately understood why Erin hates Lisa Scottoline so much. I am talking about Black Urban Fiction.

First a little background. I am on vacation because 1) residency isn’t as bad as doctors would have you believe and 2) Simon knows a blood lab technician who owes him a BIG favor.  Like any other job if you cover for someone they cover for you later. Now if someone covers for me they have the option of getting all their lab work expedited for a week and the gunners love that.

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Here at Debtor’s Prison we would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to Laurence Fishburne for his portrayal of Thurgood Marshall in Thurgood and Michelle Alexander for her scholarship in The New Jim Crow. The latter work deals with incarceration in America.

I will be the first to admit there is alot of negativity on this blog.  Being up to your eyeballs in debt and underemployed, unemployed or employed with no job security is not a state of being that leads a normal person to be cheery or upbeat.  That is why it is extra important that we take the time to acknowledge those who are making a conscious effort to improve our world and could be pursuing other things that no doubt would lead to less work and more money.

So thank you Mr. Fishburne and Dr. Alexander.  You’ve done more than you can know.

If you’re living off the grid summer is the best time to travel – less clothes to take, easier to hitch hike since more students are on the road, and you’d be surprised how much free food you can get if you know how to find a barbecque honoring a grad, dad, country or a vet, and that’s not even counting block parties.  Recently I have been traveling and I found myself in Washington, DC where I saw Laurence Fishburne at the Kennedy Center in the one-man bio drama Thurgood.  Just in case any next of kin ever read this, yes I wore a coat and tie.  And I was blown away.

Benito says he’d give back his JD, earned in the guilded halls of the ivy-league, if they would just relinquish his debt.  He calls the piece of paper worthless.  It is of course an understatement to say that Justice Marshall’s JD, earned in extremely more modest accommodations at a time where most law schools were still segregated was priceless, not just for him personally but for our country.  The play alludes to the fact that Justice Marshall saved up enough for tuition working in the service industry and that his mother sold her engagement ring and wedding band in order to help pay his way.  I know an author at the New York Times that would have frowned upon that.

Read on to find out why I think debt might be the new Jim Crow.

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This is about the Rand Paul/Fox News Anchor Stossel call for, seriously, A REPEAL of the 1964 CIVIL RIGHTS ACT.  I know you were probably expecting Alpha Man, but the new and improved Triforce is going to tackle this issue and stay on topic without detiorating into a narcisstic rant about my beautiful car, perfect abs and sexual conquests.  I will howver have to break my rule about not using my own conduct as an example to prove a point, hence the title.

Now what does that title mean?  It means I am not an idiot who believes in eugenics or that one race is inherently better than the other.  It does mean I will use the fact that other people are racist to my advantage (most white lawyers) and more importantly I will not forfeit my advantage, colloqially known as “white privilege” to consistently fight racism (most people).  Notice I didn’t say white people.  Do we see blacks universally up in arms about the new Arizona law?  People are people and darker skin doesn’t make you a saint.

Please read on

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The day I stopped looking for a job was two weeks after accepting a job offered to me by a childhood friend.  He’s a great guy although he’s not much for the news and he’s managed to find gainful employment since he graduated from college.  It wasn’t a great job, the word “secretariat” showed up in the rather short job description more than once.  I would have the dubious distinction of being the most educated person on the team while simultaneously holding the most junior position.  But it’s cold outside and a job is a job…right?  Wrong.

I was so grateful for this job I made the mistake of opening up to this friend, as if my current position wasn’t enough to eliminate any respect for me he could possibly have, so I gave him a rare glimpse into the tarry blackness that is the constant uphill struggle that I call my life.  I told him things I still would be ashamed to put on this blog.  Anybody want to guess what he said? I ask because it’s possible I blogged about this before.

“Eh, I’d love to have six months on my parent’s couch.” 

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I don’t get any. Respect that is. I won’t lie and pretend it doesn’t bother me. It does. Alot. I am sure whether you would like to admit it or not it bothers you too. I know a secret though that perhaps will help you as it occasionally does me.

That secret is that chances are you never had respect and that parallel to the mass of men who lead lives of quiet desperation is another silent army of men who toil endlessly for the golden apple of respect…in the eyes of your fellow man.

Read on to see what I mean

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As some of you well know Elie Mystal is my favorite blogger.  He blogs over at www.abovethelaw.com.  He wrote an amazing piece that I think gets at the heart of everything I stand for on this blog.  His thanks? Scores of racist comments.  I am posting the specific link here

http://abovethelaw.com/2010/04/harvard-blsa-racism-banality-evil/#comments

I am also going to repost the entire thing word for word because I think it’s that important.  The first paragraph will appear before the break.  PLEASE read the whole thing.  AT LAST SOMEBODY GETS IT.

Thank you Elie.  Seriously, it means the world.

Elie here: just wanted to make sure you all know what’s coming.

Few things embarrass me like the Harvard Black Law Students Association. It could be the most credible foil to systemic racism against black law students. It has instead become a convenient tool to be used by those who wish to ignore the racial tensions in our system of legal education.

Don’t believe me? Earlier this week, we learned that a sole white kid called blacks genetically dumber than whites, and Harvard BLSA backed down — stepped and fetched, if you will — in the face of one solitary white person. It’s not the first time (we’ll get to the tragically impotent reaction to Kiwi Camara later). But at a point when the entire law school world would have at least considered what Harvard BLSA had to say, the organization sought to cover their own ass in the media, instead of standing up on the behalf of maligned black law students everywhere.

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