The Biography Of Nate Livingston

Now yesterday morning Nate Livingston attempted to explain the public significance of the shenanigans going on regarding a custody case between himself and Amanda Mayes.

He compares it to the case going on with IRS worker John Snyder who is being investigated for snooping on the tax records of at least 197 celebrities.

Nate further goes on to criticize "the 3 white boys who run The Cincinnati Beacon" for criticizing HIM.

Uh, well, yes, I'd have to say that this intrigue involving what should be a simple custody case DOES take on public implications when you get to talking about records being mis-appropriated, taxpayer-sponsored lawyers being involved, and pretty much ANYTHING involving Tyrone Yates is subject for public discussion.

HOWEVER ...

Nate pretty much utterly and totally assasinated his own credibility (not that there was much of it left to begin with) by going on an SSN posting festival.

Just the technical manifestation of that little maneuver resulted in the destruction of one of the more valuable sub-domains on Blogspot.

The comment stream under The Dean's original posting about the "Cincinnati Black Blog" being taken down is still hot and heavy with accusations and counter-accusations flying all over the place.

So, I got to thinking - you know what we need? We need a coherent Biography of Nate Livingston.

We need to know where he grew up, where he learned his politics (God only knows his sister wasn't so racist - at least not 25 years ago), when he started being a professional Baby Daddy, etc., etc.

Otherwise I'm not going to be able to make a lick of sense out of any of this pretty soon ...

The Genealogy Of Nate Livingston

Nate Livingston himself stopped by my blog this morning to straighten me out on the very serious possibility that Nate and I have actually never met.

Now, when I first heard "Nate Livingston" on the radio many years ago, I was almost certain that I remembered a girl from my class who had a little brother named "Nathaniel Livingston" who I met for the first time in the "Resource Center" of the "Eight Building" of Aiken High School where Ms. Livingston and I worked for a teacher by the name of Rob Quelle (God rest his soul).

Now, when I saw pics of Nate in the paper and on the web, there was a very distinct similarity between him and the Ms. Livingston that I went to school with from 7th - 12th grade.

However, there were also some things that DIDN'T add up. The voice didn't sound right. More importantly, the "little brother" Livingston that I knew just didn't strike me as the type to get thrown in the hoosgow shouting down the mayor with a bullhorn. The kid that I met was very bright, but very QUIET to say the least.

Now it looks like Nate's younger brother is "Emanuel", and he too was on WDBZ at one time. It looks like he graduated from Aiken in 1988 and Ms. Livingston and I graduated in 1986. If I'm doing the math right, Nate would have been in the class of 1987, and, yes, if memory serves (but apparently it doesn't), the little brother of my friend was at least a year or two younger than the class of 1987.

Which still leaves one monstrous mystery on our hands - if Ms. Livingston graduated from Aiken in 1986, and Emanuel in 1988, how did the "middle sibling", Nate, get separated in school from his brother and sister?

And then how did I make my mistake? Yes, "my good buddy" is dripping sarcasm as the "little brother" Livingston that I knew I met maybe twice. It would, however, explain several BIZARRE phone calls I have had with members of Nate's household where they CLEARLY recognized the sister's name, but didn't know me from Adam.

Very, very interesting ...

Nate Livingston BANNED From Blogger!!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, a legend of the Cincinnati blogosphere, my old Aiken High School buddy, Nate Livingston, has been BANNED from Blogger - presumably for publishing the names, dates of birth, addresses, and various other personal information associated with several individuals he was mad at for, as he explains it, posting personal information about his daughter.

I just found out about this myself from a comment over at the Cincinnati Beacon.

My guess is that it won't take more than a couple of days for Nate to be back up and running on Wordpress or somewhere of that sort.

Now, onto the rest of the comment from "Urbanists II is Dead" - he doesn't seem to get the point on my latest riff in response to a comment that someone made that "Nate Livingston is a racist".

A few months back, The Dean posted a considerable diatribe taking umbrage with the fact that the media calls Barack Obama "Black", whereas, so far as we know, Obama's Anestry-By-DNA test would come back almost exactly 1/2 African and 1/2 European, or, in conventional terms, almost exactly 1/2 "Black" and 1/2 "White".

However, somewhere in the last couple of generations, it stopped working like this. When I was in high school, occasionally a few people would be called "mixed", but, by the time I got to high school this practice had pretty much stopped and the term became "light-skinned black".

And then of course sometime in the last 20 years it seems that pretty much so long as there are any visible African traits left in a person at all, even if they are 1/4 or even 1/8 African agains 3/4 or 7/8 European, they tend to still be called "Black".

This change in procedure I remember being articulated the most specifically by Halle Berry's mother, who, in an interview said that she, if I remember the words correctly, "raised Halle exclusively Black". I imagine this may have been to avoid confusion or something of the sort.

Then The Dean comes along and somehow takes great umbrage with the fact that, if you can follow this logic, the fact that the media calls Obama "Black" negates the White ancestry of his own children.

Get with the program, dude.

Henry Louis Gates: "Does it upset you that we found this much European ancestry in your background?"

Maya Angelou: "Why? It's who I am."

Yes, you can be absolutely, 100%, unabasedly, unashamedly (reviewing the Trinity United Church of Christ web site quickly) Black and STILL have a European-linked Y-chromosome, European linked mitochondria and maybe pushing 7/8 European nuclear DNA.

The truly enlightened (and here's where I start an argument :) ) would get hip to the fact that having European ancestry and coming into contact with people of European ancestry is an inalienable element of BEING Black in America.

My comments of course were more about THE DEAN than about Nate.

You see - I knew Nate's family in high school.

In fact, I was in the motorcade with his sister when she was picked up by her prom date - a young man of considerable European and Native American ancestry who called himself "White". This was considered just slightly scandalous at the time, but I remember her mother saying something to the effect, "Oh, that's not so bad - I mean - goodness gracious - my grandmother married a White man."

Presuming that Nate and his sister had both parents in common, this makes Nate at least 1/8th European. According to The Dean, it sounds like if you have more than 1/8th of your ancestry different from your "primary" ethnic identity, you lose your ethnic identity privileges altogether. This would mean that Nate is neither White nor Black, and, if that were the case, I'd say it would be pretty difficult to be racist.

But of course Nate considers himself Black.

And maybe a little like Malcolm X, perhaps his knowledge of his European ancestry makes him even meaner?

Maybe we should just have Nate sit down with Maya Angelou for a heart-to-heart and he could at least keep himself out of trouble for a while ...

Related:
Nate Livingston– Get a Grip, Man! - Cincy Report