A Modest Work of Art ?

Not so sure about this -- I think he was shooting for Jonathan Swift level parody (but then, having formally studied the complexity that is Joyce, I never got the hip-hop comparisons there either)-- but what was so wrong about these original observations? Not much editorializing I can see there... nothing that compares to Swift's original social objections.

Overshadowed by Harlem's racial metamorphosis since 2000, an even more striking evolution has occurred in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Over all, the neighborhood is now barely 60 percent black -- down from 75 percent a decade ago. But in the older Bedford section west of Throop Avenue, according to the 2010 census, blacks have recently become a minority of the population for the first time in 50 years.

and,

In greater Harlem, which runs river to river, and from East 96th Street and West 106th Street to West 155th Street, blacks are no longer a majority of the population -- a shift that actually occurred a decade ago, but was largely overlooked.

By 2008, their share had declined to 4 in 10 residents. Since 2000, central Harlem's population has grown more than in any other decade since the 1940s, to 126,000 from 109,000, but its black population -- about 77,000 in central Harlem and about twice that in greater Harlem -- is smaller than at any time since the 1920s.

Instead, read this one, Saturday's Charles Blow:

“On 16 November, while proceeding towards the front at night, Sergeant Rhodes’s motorized patrol was advanced upon near a village by a lone enemy soldier. Sergeant Rhodes jumped from the truck and as a group of enemy soldiers suddenly appeared, intent upon capturing the truck and patrol intact, he opened fire from his exposed position on the road. His fire forced the enemy to scatter while the patrol dismounted and took cover with light casualties. Sergeant Rhodes then moved toward a nearby building where, still exposed, his fire on the enemy was responsible for the successful evacuation of the wounded patrol members by newly arrived medical personnel. Sergeant Rhodes was then hit by enemy shell fragments, but in spite of his wounds he exhausted his own supply of ammunition then, obtaining an enemy automatic weapon, exhausted its supply inflicting three certain casualties on the enemy. He spent the rest of the night in a nearby field and returned, unaided, to his unit the next afternoon.”
...
My grandfather’s actions were the first among the Buffalo Soldiers to be recommended for a Distinguished Service Cross, according to surviving records. That recommendation was declined. In fact, only four enlisted soldiers from the 92nd were recommended for the service cross. They were all denied. It was given to just two black members of the unit, both officers, and only one of those officers received it during the war. The other received it nearly four decades after the war was over because of the investigative efforts of another historian.
...
Even when this news of the Buffalo Soldiers was making headlines in the ’90s, my grandfather never said a word. There’s no way to know why. Maybe it was the pain of risking his life abroad for a freedom that he couldn’t fully enjoy at home. Maybe it was the misery of languishing in a military hospital for many months and being discharged with a limp that would follow him to the grave. Or maybe it was simply the act of a brave soldier living out the motto of his division: “Deeds Not Words.”

Who knows? But it wasn’t until after he died that I learned of his contributions. My mother came across his discharge papers while sorting through his things and sent me a copy. On a whim, I Googled his name and division, and there he was, staring out at me from a picture I’d never seen and being extolled in books I’d never read. My heart swelled, and my skin went cold. I wanted to tell him how proud I was, but that window had closed.

It illustrates just how quickly things can fade into the fog of history if not vigilantly and accurately kept alive in the telling.

Can you relate?
Do you have a strong, quiet man in your past, who sacrificed and perhaps saw and did things as a warrior that he might not have wanted to talk about in his role as a family man in more peaceful, civilian times? Who paid a personal price and persevered, instead of complaining how bad he's got it?

That's an American tale that never gets old in the telling. How -- and why -- Americans of all ethnicities and races were able to come together for a time, in the hardest of times, yet keep an established identity, to take on some bigger challenge.

ADDED: Here's some of Blow's work -- from 3 years ago -- about integration, immigration and politics in one American neighborhood. Not a satire, but a more honest reality...

Often, the manner of telling is ... telling.

-----------------

Make it a great Friday then, no matter what obstacles might still stand in your way today.