While we will be hanging out at Syndicate this week singing “Kum Bah Ya” about new “standards” for micro content and structured blogging and the announcement about i-tags. There is an impending “identity powder keg” that could go off this week in Califorina (and across the country) with the pending execution of Tookie Williams on Tuesday December 13th.
I googled – “Identity” and “Tookie” some interesting articles came up. They get to the heart of one element of ‘identity’ to have a meaningful place in a socio-cultural context. To be seen by others (afterall identity is what others say about us).
From Black News.com:
In a candid, and revealing moment, Stanley “Tookie” Williams told a visitor at San Quentin prison that he helped found the notorious Crips street gang because he wanted to smash everyone, make a rep, get respect and dignity, and that he wanted his name to be known everywhere. He got his wish in more ways than he ever dreamed of. The demons that drove Williams in his reckless push for identity and prominence also drove him to become the nation’s best known condemned prisoner. He faces execution December 13 for multiple murders.
William’s revelatory glimpse into his thug past tells much about the anger, alienation, and desperation that have turned legions of young black men into social pariahs, and that propel them to wreak murder and mayhem in mostly poor, black communities. But today’s Tookies didn’t crop up from nowhere. The transformation in the early 1970s of the old-line civil rights groups into business, and professional friendly organizations, and black middle-class flight from the inner city neighborhoods, left the black poor, especially young black males, socially fragmented, politically rudderless, and economically destitute. Lacking visible role models of success and achievement, and competitive technical skills and professional training to compete in a rapidly shifting economy, they were shoved even further to the outer margins of American society.