I’m tired out from this week’s flurry of activism. It may have looked like just a few blog entries, but it was hundreds of conversations between lots of folks and lots of strategizing long into the night. I’m getting away for the weekend and I need a break.
But I wanted to change the tenor of the blog by playing one of my favorite games, called “What If…?” It’s a philosophical and theoretical discussion game where we pose questions and then think through the logical progressions to come up with an answer. It’s a fun game to play with a group of friends on a lazy Sunday afternoon but we can do it here online.
Below is a list of scenarios. Pick any one or several and give us your best answers.
1. What if the Jacksons had never been discovered by Motown and spent the rest of their lives in Gary, Indiana? What would they be doing now?
2. What if Ralph Nader had not run as a third party candidate for president in 2000? What would the outcome of the election have been and how would the country be different today?
3. What if you had been born 100 years earlier than you were, to the same family, in the same community, just under clearly different social circumstances? How would your upbringing be different and what would your life be like now?
4. What if on The Cosby Show, upon graduating from NYU, Theo Huxtable sat down his parents Claire and Cliff Huxtable and said, “Mom, dad. I’m gay.” How would they have reacted and what direction would his life have taken?
5. What if America, and particularly places like Southern California, had not developed such a dependence on the automobile and personal transportation? How might that have changed the growth of certain cities and the ways in which people interact day to day?
Ok, give them some thought and let’s have your best answers.
5 comments ↓
in response to “what if” #3.. well u know the slaves were free once i was born! i probably would have been inspired by frederick douglas and would have joined some radical movement…my dad would still have been a strong influence in my life, my mommy would support and protect me as she still does and well for husband patrick, uhm i dont know if he would have made it past 21! yea…i would have definitely been apart of what jacob lawrence documented in his art, “the new negro” and the “great migration!”
#3. I would have been born in 1860, still during slavery. But because I was born in upstate New York, I would have been free. I’m not sure how I would have gotten that way however since my father and mother would have been born in 1821 Texas and 1825 Louisiana. No telling how they would have met or made their way north. Nevertheless, I might have wound up a servant on the estate of one of those wealthy landowners in the Hudson Valley or a factory worker in any number of towns from NYC to Albany. College would have been out of the question if I had any opportunity for education at all. The working class went straight to work not to school. If I’d have been able to make it to NYC by 1906, I might be a worker in any number of the city’s textile factories. I would have married because it would have been expected of me. I’d probably be an early union organizer if I didn’t succomb to tuberculosis from living in the crowded tenements of those days.
See, I was all excited about playing the game and then you go ask these questions that require some thought. hmmph!
#2 - I guess you assume Nader stole/diverted votes from Gore. That would be wrong, probably (no one will ever know since so many votes were never recounted). The Bushies stole the election in Florida several months before the actual vote. All those Black and Brown voters were knocked off the ballot. The confusing ballot form was approved by the Dumbocrats, they should have seen the trouble with its format.
And of course, the Rethugicans would have just used even more tricks to ensure a Bush presidency.
If we’re not alert, we’ll be witnessing a third consecutive GOP administration.
Question #1: Joe wuld be just finishing up 25 years in the pen for beating Katherine and the kids; Katherine would have moved on and married a man name Willie “Big Dick” Pearson from Kansas City; Tito would never have married Delores (who would be alive and well, managing a Target in Evansville), but would be a line cook at Gladys Knight’s Chicken & Waffles; Jermaine would be selling S-Curl packages at Black Family Renuion and Expo’s; Marlon AND his twin brother Brandon would be alive and well and have done gay porn for Titan video before converting to Christianity and becoming twin ministers with a megachurch in Houston; Rebbie would be known by her real name and, most important of all, would never have recorded “Centipede”; Randy would own a Ford dealership in Detroit; Jackie would be known by his real name Sigmund and would be quite famous as one of the principle investors in the George Foreman Titan Grill (actually a full sized range with a big ass lid); LaToya would have her own talk show with decent ratings and a measure of respectability; Janet would still have wound up married to Jermaine Dupree…but instead of superstars, she would be a pole dancer at Magic Ciy and he would be in the management trainee program at Meineke Mufflers & Shocks; and Michael would have risen to superstardom as a solo artist…with no vitaligo, no plastic surgery, no Neverlands, no Elehpant Man bone attempted purchases, and no pedophile charges…he would be smart enough to keep ALL of that on “the low.”
#2. If Nader had not run as a 3rd party candidate in 2000, Gore would have still lost the election, as Ronn said. BUT there would have been a real and legitimate investigation into the results as opposed to the whitewash provided by the confusion resulting from hanging chads, the then new implementation of electronic voting machines, and…oh who the hell am I kidding?
#3: Strangely enough in many respects, I might be very much the same person I am now. Unlike the vast majority of people I know, my great-great grandmother (through my own adoption), who was born a slave, was still alive when I was born through my 5th birthday. She often told us what it was like growing up in the immediate post-Emancipation era, which under this “What If…” I would have been born into. I likely would have lived my early life as a sharecropper (large vestiges of such culture I actually grew up with) with the rest of my family and later gone off with one of my great uncles to explore the West, since my presence likely would have been tolerablymissed among my then-large family (I believe Grandma Gertha had 13 brothers and sisters). I would likely have fallen into gambling, but not drinking (family has historically been non-alcohol). If I had been integral or important to the family life, I also would like have still been “gay” but would have married with a number of children, an elder or possibly a preacher. Either way, I would have also likely been an entrepeneur of some sort and it is also very likely I would be involved in Freedmen’s (later civil) rights movements, given my family’s active participation in such movements for many, many decades. I would likely have died of heart disease, or stroke or plain old age.
#4: Hard one to gauge given how long the show lasted after he graduated. Cliff would have actually been pretty cool with it, but Claire would have had the most trouble…eventually both settling into acceptable. As for Theo, would have wound up with a cute Asian man.
#5: This scenario has been the source of much, much debate and speculation but it is far too wide reaching in scope to contemplate in this forum. Our entire economy would be different in many fundamental ways, cities would likely be much larger but rural areas would more likely thrive; agriculture would still be a major economic sector but lots and lots of techonology would probably take a huge hit in terms of innovation and adoption, politically conservatism would be much MORE widespread than it already is, and countless other differences big and small, not all for the bad but not all for the good, either.