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KAREN BARTA: Good morning. I'm Karen Barta with news from Minnesota Public Radio. Transplant surgeon John Najarian goes on trial tomorrow in federal court in St. Paul. Najarian faces 21 counts, accusing him of theft, filing false tax returns, ignoring drug safety rules, and trying to block the investigation into his conduct.

The 1996 Minnesota legislative session opens tomorrow, and one of the topics up for discussion will be raising the speed limit. A task force is recommending that speed limits in Minnesota be raised to 70 miles an hour on rural interstates and to 65 on urban interstates and other divided highways. Republican representative Dave Bishop of Rochester, a member of the task force, is sponsoring a bill that would follow the task force recommendations for all roads, except for rural highways.

DAVE BISHOP: I go back in my bill to the speed limits that we have on the books right now and that have persisted since 1973 after, but they have been overlaid by the energy savings 55. That's 65 daytime, 55 nighttime. That's a major difference on speed limits between my bill and the task force.

KAREN BARTA: Congress and President Clinton lifted the national 55 mile an hour speed limit last month, leaving it up to individual states to set their own limits. The state forecast today-- increasing clouds. Snow is likely this afternoon in the north, and there's a chance for light snow elsewhere. Highs from 5 below in the far north to the teens in the south.

For the Twin Cities today, mostly cloudy. There is a 30% chance of light snow in the afternoon, a high around 12. Tuesday, mostly cloudy with a high near 32 degrees. Around the region this hour, in Duluth, it's cloudy and 4 below. It's mostly sunny in Rochester and 9. It's cloudy in St. Cloud and 1 degree. And in the Twin cities, the wind chill is minus 22. It's partly sunny and 4. That's news. I'm Karen Barta.

CHRIS ROBERTS: It's 6 minutes past 10 o'clock, and you're listening to midmorning on Minnesota Public Radio.

[PIANO TUNE]

There is nothing humble about Arvonne Fraser's roots. Long before she traveled the world to encourage women to fight for their rights, she managed political campaigns and helped her parents run the farm. Today, on Midmorning, on Voices of Minnesota, we'll hear from Arvonne Fraser.

Nearly every Monday at this time, we bring you the voice of a Minnesota resident with a really interesting life story. 70-year-old Arvonne Fraser lives in Minneapolis and has worked the past 20 years in one official status or another to protect human rights and expand women's rights. She's worked for the US Agency for International Development and for the US government at the United Nations.

She's been instrumental in crafting the documents presented at International Women's conferences, including the recent one in Beijing. She's worked in politics nearly all her adult life, managing the campaigns of her husband, Don Fraser, a former Minneapolis mayor, state lawmaker, and member of Congress.

Fraser was raised on a farm near Lamberton in Southern Minnesota. She told Minnesota Public Radio reporter Karen Louise Boothe, there's no substitute for growing up on a farm.

ARVONNE FRASER: I think it teaches you self-reliance. It teaches you that circumstances influence what you can do and what happens to you. The major circumstance on a farm, of course, is weather. And so you get very attuned to weather and to watching external things.

For children-- they're involved. They're intimately involved in this enterprise as observers, but also as participants. Children today are too isolated from what I call real life. They experience family life and school life, but they don't experience much else. And I think that's a real disadvantage for children, and I think it's a source of a lot of our problems with children today.

KAREN LOUISE BOOTHE: So you're writing a memoir about your life as a farm kid?

ARVONNE FRASER: Yes, I'm trying to. I'm trying to figure it all out. And it fascinates me because I-- here I am feeling like a farm kid, but I'm also looking at it from being 70 years old and having been around the country and around the world.

KAREN LOUISE BOOTHE: How would you describe yourself as a child? Were you an outdoor kid. Were you a bookish? What were you like?

ARVONNE FRASER: I was a tomboy who read books. I became a sort of farm hand during World War II because all the men, the hired men were gone to war. So I had, in many ways, a unique experience. I was the oldest of three girls and then two little brothers, and the little brothers weren't of any use on the farm.

And so we three girls, my next sister Bonnie and I, were the outdoor people, and my youngest sister was the help Mom.

KAREN LOUISE BOOTHE: I was wondering, you've talked about life on the farm shaping you as a person and all the way into your adult life. But what were your parents like? Were they influential as well?

ARVONNE FRASER: Well, my mother always wanted to be a doctor, and she ended up a country school teacher and a farm wife. And she worked her head off. My dad was very smart but not educated. And interestingly, during the depression, he made money because he was a trader. He traded horses and machinery and everything else.

Also, we were sort of an English and French family in a German community. So we were different in many ways from a lot of our neighbors and me, from my classmates. And so I suppose I enjoyed being different. I mean, I got used to it, and that was a way of life. My dad was also a very avid farmer labourite and talked politics all the time.

KAREN LOUISE BOOTHE: How did you come to the decision that farm life wasn't going to be for you? When did you leave the farm?

ARVONNE FRASER: I realized when I was about 40 that we were programmed to get off the farm, to go to the cities. We had all these aunts, all of whom had done that, all of whom I realized now worked outside the home. And they were the model. I went to a trade school first.

What was so interesting is that I came home from school one day, and there were these people there and my mother and dad talking to these people. And apparently, I don't know how this happened, but they were recruiting for a trade school for people to work in war work. I went right smack out of high school the week after I graduated to this summer trade school and learned Morse code and other things that I can't remember now.

And then I was too young to be hired because I wasn't 18. So I went to work in at Northwest Airlines at the St. Paul airport in their war project, whatever it was. I think it was so secret, I don't know. We were fabricating airplanes, obviously. And then I decided to go to the university spring quarter.

KAREN LOUISE BOOTHE: Why? Did you want something different?

ARVONNE FRASER: Sure. I had thought about going to college and had written away for Vassar stuff and so on. But I decided I didn't want to work like this all my life. And I had always liked learning, and I guess I'd always intended to go to college. I was entranced with American studies. We had a strong American studies program.

I loved political science. I took shorthand because my mother had always told me, always be able to support yourself, take typing and shorthand. [CHUCKLES] But I took shorthand from a woman who had invented and written the Brief Forms book. And so she taught us the theory, and I'm fascinated. And to this day, I take shorthand.

KAREN LOUISE BOOTHE: Is this how you met your spouse? How did you meet Don? Is that another story?

ARVONNE FRASER: Well, that's another story because I've been married twice when I was in college, but that marriage only lasted three years. And I graduated from college. And the same week or the next week. I went to work in the Humphrey campaign for the United States Senate. Some time later, he walked in. And sometime later, I got divorced. And sometime later, I married him and so on. [CHUCKLES]

KAREN LOUISE BOOTHE: Over the years, how did you balance your marriage? How do you make it work?

ARVONNE FRASER: Well, we agreed before we got married, I guess, that this was a partnership. I wasn't about to be the submissive spouse. I'd done that-- my previous marriage, that had been the role that was assumed.

KAREN LOUISE BOOTHE: You had said to a newspaper reporter earlier this year that losing a child forever transforms a parent, and you've lost two children. How does that change or how did that change Arvonne?

ARVONNE FRASER: You get tougher if you survive. You learn there's nothing worse.

KAREN LOUISE BOOTHE: What was the Nameless Sisterhood?

ARVONNE FRASER: [CHUCKLES] When I went to Washington, I got depressed, frankly, because I was supposed to give up my career here and become Mrs. congressman. And I wasn't the only one like that. It was a new generation came to Washington the year we were elected, and there were a lot of women like me.

So I went to work in Don's office, which was the normal thing to do, unpaid, I should add. Shortly thereafter, Betty Friedan wrote her book. I mean, she had the same sort of problem. And so we-- another friend and I organized this group of mothers, pretty much, and wives in Washington, and we didn't have a name for the group. We just called it "the group" until some reporter heard about this and came and asked who our husbands were.

Well, that did it. Forever after, we called ourselves the Nameless Sisterhood. Because we had had a rule that in the group, you went around and introduced yourself. But you couldn't introduce yourself as related to any man. You had to introduce yourself. And one of the saddest things was, one woman said, this is the first time in 20 years in Washington that anybody has asked who I am. They always want to know who my husband is.

KAREN LOUISE BOOTHE: Is this really the beginning of your real thought of women's economic and political status.

ARVONNE FRASER: In a way, conscious thought. There's another factor. I had been entranced in a way by Myrtle Cain, who was one of Minnesota's first state legislators. And she was a much older woman and worked in the DFL office with me. And she told me all the stories about the suffrage movement. So I had that background, and so I was totally ready for the new women's movement.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Arvonne Fraser talking with Karen Louise Boothe as part of our Voices of Minnesota interview series. I'm Chris Roberts, and this is Midmorning. 70-year-old Arvonne Fraser says she's content for the moment to do some writing at her home in Minneapolis. Even so, the phone rings constantly with calls from people seeking her advice on politics and women's issues. Let's return to Karen Louise Boothe's conversation with Fraser.

KAREN LOUISE BOOTHE: And is a backdrop to that, the conference in China-- what's your review of that now?

ARVONNE FRASER: I think the Beijing conference was a superb culmination of 20 years of work internationally and about 10 years of real organizing by women at the grassroots level in all the developing world. And the excitement that came out of Beijing was from the south, the developing world, not from the north.

And what's so fascinating is it represents the politicization of women, because that Beijing conference document really says, women are not victims. They've got to be part of the solution, and they have to propose the solutions. It's a coming of age of the women's movement, which spent a lot of time feeling like victims, or at least a lot of the women's movement did in their past, that they're saying, we aren't going to be victims. We're going to do something.

And so I look for the women's movement in the Southern Hemisphere to re-energize the women's movement in the Northern Hemisphere. And that's why I say, I think you will see a lot more women going into politics, going into all kinds of areas in which they decide they're going to be the decision makers, not just the helpers.

KAREN LOUISE BOOTHE: Has the United States signed the human rights treaty that's now been ratified by 138 other countries?

ARVONNE FRASER: We've signed it, but we haven't ratified it. We signed it in 1980, one of the first countries that signed. We are not ratifying, because we're in the political situation we're in right now. And because the US Women's movement focused internally, partly because we're such a big country and surrounded by oceans and friendly countries to the north and south.

But again, Beijing, I think, internationalized or gave American women much more of an international perspective. And so does the global economy, by the way. And so I look for us to ratify that treaty within 10 years.

KAREN LOUISE BOOTHE: I've heard criticism that some of the signatories have no intentions of respecting human and women's rights. What would the value be of the United States ratifying it?

ARVONNE FRASER: Just simply making us credible within the human rights community. We can't talk about women's human rights and then be the country that hasn't ratified it. I mean, we look then like the big evil America. We're going to tell the world what to do, but we aren't going to do it. Or we're going to do it our own way.

So we will ultimately ratify it. You see, we ratify only when we can conform. Many other countries ratify only with the promise to conform. So there I can defend us. We do what we say we will do, and we don't, in terms of treaties, say it until, in a way, we've done it.

KAREN LOUISE BOOTHE: It was about 18 years ago when President Carter appointed you to head Women's Development Programs. What's your view now of how much Western countries, including the United states, can really do to affect changes for women in cultures where oppression still occurs, other cultures?

ARVONNE FRASER: We can do a lot and we did a lot. We essentially told them they didn't have to suffer that oppression, but only they could undo it. We told them that, I guess, to be equals, you have to act like an equal. And you need education. You need employment. You need health.

And you need to know how to take care of your own life and your own self. But that doesn't come unless you're healthy and you have some money, and you're educated. So I think few people understand that educating a woman is the most revolutionary thing you can do if you're dealing with women in very oppressive countries.

And of course, the oppressors know that, which is why you get such resistance, because the oppressors, to put it in that language, know that education is freedom. They don't want the others to be free. And this isn't just true of men and women. I think it's true of any group that wants to keep another group under control withholds education and information from that group.

KAREN LOUISE BOOTHE: Right now, there has been a lot of discussion about Islam and the criticism that Westerners just simply don't understand the nature of Islam, and that these arguments just don't hold up. They're not culturally relevant. With the rise of Islam, and now also the rise of it in the United States, what's your argument to that?

ARVONNE FRASER: Islam is one of the world's major religions. It, like any other religion, can be politicized. And it has been and by a small group. And I have many women Islamic friends, and many were at Beijing. And they argue that the Quran does not say what some of the what we would call fundamentalists say it does.

And there are wonderful Islamic scholars, male and female, who would agree with that. And so I think the right-- the fundamentalists, as they're called, or the right wing or whatever you want to call it, of all the religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, are essentially using their religion for political ends. And that's hurting both them and the world.

KAREN LOUISE BOOTHE: What's your assessment of things for women in our country? More women than ever are at work. Wages are still, though, collectively, 2/3 than what men earn. What still needs to be done? What can be done?

ARVONNE FRASER: Well, I think a couple of things. Number one, we have to understand that children are not a free gift that women give to society anymore, if they ever were. And so we need a well-thought out, comprehensive children's policy.

This country in the world depends on the next generation. And you can't ask parents to both support those children financially and all by themselves and also raise them. Because children take time. And if you're gone for work 8 or 10 hours a day, somebody has to take care of those children. This is our real dilemma in this country and in all of the industrialized world.

Secondly, women have to understand that they have to be equal partners, and they have to give up some of their control in the house and over children. And I don't think that idea has been-- either of those two ideas has been talked about enough. We act as if the world can go on at home the way it's always gone on, and the world outside changes totally. Well, this is just craziness.

So I think there will be these young women who will-- they're already thinking and talking about it-- who will say, hey, look, it's got to be done differently. And I want to have children. I know I'm going to have to work, and I'm not going to do it all by myself. I'm going to change this country so that it's better for us.

KAREN LOUISE BOOTHE: Do you see that the children's agenda or policy-wise is really now starting to bubble up from the bottom? I'm seeing, even in some ways, the local political agenda shifting in that direction ahead of the national. Would you agree?

ARVONNE FRASER: Sure, because kids are local. I mean, they're right here. And I think we're seeing a lot of the problems with kids because we think of kids as a problem and not as a resource. This isn't original with me. I was talking with a Black friend of mine last night, and she said exactly that.

We don't see these kids as a resource. They don't see themselves as a resource. We see them as a problem. And of course, then they end up problems. And maybe we're going to have to go through a terrible generation. I don't know. Maybe we're in a terrible generation, but we just have to deal with this.

And women can't do it all by themselves. The men have to be involved. And I say this to my husband about every time he talks about this. And they can't just be involved the way they used to be, that I'll support you and the kids. And you raise good kids. Economically, that's not possible anymore. It was only possible in the growth economy that I lived through.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

CHRIS ROBERTS: Arvonne Fraser talking with Karen Louise Boothe. Our Voices of Minnesota interview series is produced by Dan Olson with help from intern Marci [? Tabit. ?] Coming up on Midmorning, we'll be taking a look at how the ethos of cool operates on the streets of Black America. But first, we'll get an update on the news from Karen Barta. Good morning, Karen.

KAREN BARTA: Good morning, Chris. The late Martin Luther King Jr. is being remembered at Ebenezer Baptist church in Atlanta with scripture, reading, singing, and later, remarks from President Clinton. Today's ceremonies are a continuation of King Day events that began Sunday.

A huge prisoner exchange is off in Bosnia today after the Muslim-led government refused to participate. Officials say they first want to know what's happened to nearly 25,000 people missing in areas overrun by Serbs. The Hennepin County Board will submit a proposal to the state legislature calling for sweeping changes in how County services dealing with poverty and mental health care are delivered. Hennepin County Board chair Peter McLaughlin says it's a way of producing better results for people in the system.

PETER MCLAUGHLIN: Our concern is that over the years, there have been so many rules that have accumulated, so many different categorical programs that have accumulated that it makes it difficult administratively to operate the programs. But it's also difficult for the individual families.

KAREN BARTA: The proposal would institute flexible benefit packages and minimize entitlements. The US Forest Service is already taking reservations for travel permits this spring and summer to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Some canoe outfitters say they have had to turn away people in the past because they couldn't get them permits during the peak summer months.

The state forecast-- increasing clouds. Snow is likely this afternoon in the north. There is a chance for light snow elsewhere. Highs from 5 below in the far north to the teens in the south. And for the Twin Cities, mostly cloudy at 30% chance of light snow in the afternoon with a high around 12.

Around the region in Duluth, it's cloudy and 4 below. Its mostly sunny and 9 in Rochester. In St. Cloud, it's 1 degree with cloudy skies. And in the Twin Cities, the wind chill is 22 below. It's partly sunny and 4. Chris, that's a news update from Minnesota Public Radio.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Thanks, Karen. Today's programming is sponsored in part by Julie Brunner in honor of husband Dale Ulrich's birthday today. You're listening to Midmorning on the FM News Station. I'm Chris Roberts.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The American dream seems to be getting more elusive for most people. But for a large proportion of African American men, it has always been out of reach. Because achieving the dream is a measure of manhood in this country, Black males have had to create their own definition of what it means to be a man.

Writer Marlene Kim Connor says cool is the system they've come up with as a way to coexist with each other and respond to the rest of the world. Her book, What is Cool? Understanding Black Manhood in America, is an attempt to explain how cool functions as the most important force in a Black man's life. In an interview, which originally aired in early June of last year, Connor told us that the roots of cool can be traced back to slavery.

MARLENE KIM CONNOR: The rituals that brought a boy to manhood for those Africans that came here-- those rituals were gone. Those rituals were stripped. They were placed together out of their tribes or out of their communities. They're just placed together haphazardly. So whatever rituals, they're not necessarily interchangeable from one group to another.

So that was immediately stripped. The idea of becoming a man was stripped. The only definition of manhood left was what the white man saw as manhood. So you had that. The rituals were lost to be from a boy-- for a boy to become a man.

And then there was the need to control emotions. And that's a really important part of cool, just being cool. You got to be cool to survive. I mean, it was, at first, a basic survival mechanism, and we're talking about survival for your life, physical survival.

And so they had to learn to control the emotions. You've got a child-- your child stripped from you and made into a footstool. I mean, that happened. How do you really deal with that? Well, you have to be cool. You have to control yourself.

If you retaliate, if you get angry, you could lose your life or be beaten as a slave. So that's the beginning of the notion of being cool and controlling emotions. And it's the beginning of a need for a new system, for a boy to become a man.

And that system got into place with the migration to the north and the cities where all the Blacks were basically, quote unquote, "free" and living with each other and in desperate straits. Now you've got people with not a lot, not a lot of money, not a lot of trust, not a lot of understanding of how to make it out here, and living all together in close circumstances. And I think that was the beginning of a system.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

SPEAKER 1: Years ago when people used to say, what is soul? It's that little bit-- it's like a lot of people say 1 and 1 is 2. But a lot of Black people is like, it's three. It's a little bit extra. It's just that little bit extra. That's what cool is in the Black community. It's that unique. It's that a little bit extra.

I mean, cool is a style. I mean, it's exactly a style. It's how you present yourself, how you carry yourself, and how you deal with life as a whole, and how you deal with your fellow man.

SPEAKER 2: Cool can mean anything to different people because I look at other people. And what they think is cool, I might think it's a crime. You know what I'm saying? Well, it's cool to go down here and rob somebody's mother and then think, I'm great, until they come after me. Then I don't feel so cool no more. See?

Their idea of cool-- as long as they're running over you stepping on, you might even be taking over your house. But when you put your foot down, then all of a sudden, that word "cool" goes out the door. And then it's uncool. See? It's uncool to retaliate. Some cools are just different from others.

MARLENE KIM CONNOR: It's unbelievable how much it's trivialized. What you basically don't understand is that, number one, he's not reacting to white society. I mean, that's probably the most important thing. He's not rebelling. He's not doing things in the opposite way, which is how it sometimes looks and looks as though he's just deliberately doing things just to annoy you or just to do it differently.

It has nothing to do with you, actually. It has to do with each other. They're operating within their own world. So what you don't understand is, is that the man he becomes-- if he's respected in his community as a cool guy, that's the same level of manhood that you've achieved when you get the little house and the minivan and the 2.5 kids, because it's a major, major achievement to survive those obstacles and to become cool. And he has gained a level of respect in a very volatile situation that deserves a great deal of respect and self-esteem and confidence and all of those things.

And white people tend to see it as swagger, or they see it as a lot of things that it really isn't. He is a man. He's not like you, necessarily. But as long as America doesn't support him, by the way-- I mean, the reason why his cool will exist is as long as the streets exist and as long as America doesn't support his growth, cool will operate because he has to become a man.

He just will not become the man that you would like him to be, that you can relate to and feel comfortable with, because he doesn't live where you live. And it's very different, and that's the thing that I think white America doesn't understand the most.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

SPEAKER 3: Cool the group of people that you beat with, that can get along with what you're doing. That's what cool is. It's not cool to be with somebody that's not going to do the same thing that you're into. That's what cool is, and being able to distinguish between that and in trouble. Because if you're not cool, you get in trouble.

That's just like what she said, you know what I mean? It's all about adaptability. Number one, we're the minority. You know what I'm saying? It's a whole lot of things we want that you guys got. You know what I mean? It's a whole lot of ways that we can't get it by being cool.

It's a whole lot of ways that we can seem like we are all right if we don't have it, you understand? It's a whole state of mind. It's a culture, living in the projects versus living downtown. You know what I mean? That's why we have to be cool over in the corner over here and play above all suspicion.

Because just by being Black, we got it on us already. We have to be cool. Even when other minorities come to town, they get on you guys side instead of our side. And then the women, they gets on the minority program just because they're women. That hurt our cause. Everybody get on the bandwagon, hurt their-- hurt their cause.

So you have to be cool. And what is cool? What is cool? Not killing your own self, not getting a gun and blowing your brains out, [CHUCKLES] for real. I mean, for real, that's what cool is. It's really a state of mind, really.

MARLENE KIM CONNOR: The one thing that a Black boy has of value-- and this is really important to think about. The only thing of value he has is his life. And in white society, you've got a lot-- not just white society, in American society, you take chances with a lot of other things rather than your life to prove to yourself what you can do.

You have lots of ways of boy challenges themselves. Unfortunately, in communities of poverty, there aren't a lot of those things. And so he challenges himself with his life, and it can be a very violent situation. Sometimes it's fighting. Maybe it's dabbling with drugs. Maybe it's jumping rooftops. Maybe it's-- I don't know what.

But these are all ways that you just-- you're getting out of it, out energy. We're talking about young boys now. You're just playing. But at the same time, you're challenging, and you're learning about yourself. And it can be violent sometimes. Now, he can live that every day, and he can't be challenged with his life every day.

So eventually, the system of cool takes hold. And he's got to learn how to challenge himself, to feel confident enough to exude this so that he doesn't get picked on, so that he doesn't have to kick butt. And ultimately, that's what cool looks like, is this guy who knows what he can do, but he doesn't have to do it.

[HIP-HOP MUSIC] Striving to survive every single day

Every single day

In the projects, making babies, doing stick-ups every day

21 in the ghetto

Striving to survive every single day

Every single day

In the projects, making babies, doing stick-ups every day

As I twist up--

SPEAKER 4: Check it out. Cool it's fat loot in your pocket.

SPEAKER 5: Yes.

SPEAKER 4: It's mad loot in your pocket.

SPEAKER 5: Yes. A lot of females.

SPEAKER 4: A lot of females.

SPEAKER 5: Not necessarily a lot of females, just that a few females that you can go talk to and you see on the street and say, what's up. Hey, girl, what you doing, and stuff like that.

SPEAKER 4: That's true.

SPEAKER 5: And cool is a nice car with preferably an MC or a Cutlass Supreme around 80. Yeah. And cool is when females that nobody can ever talk to-- a person who can do it-- if you can do it, you get respect.

SPEAKER 4: See like, we're the players. We got we got this thing called the players click, see? And with the players click is positively living, although you and everyone else rather sell out click. That's the synonym for it, see?

And then we are well respected in this area because people look up to us as being in the players click. Ask people who are-- we live here ourselves. We have a four-bedroom home here. I'm 20. He's 21. So we got our shit going for us, and it's not illegal. It's all legit.

And we get looked up to that. So that's cool to everybody else about us, and that's cool for ourselves to get looked up as positive people. So it's about respect. To me, it's about respect.

SPEAKER 5: Yeah, it's about respect.

SPEAKER 4: You can be-- I mean, you can be as cool as you want. But if you're not respected, you're not cool to me.

(SINGING) 21 in the ghetto

Striving to survive every single day.

[INAUDIBLE]

In the projects, making babies

MARLENE KIM CONNOR: Men will always say that they try to be cool because women like it. And that's really not true. Well, it's a catch-22. Women like it, and they don't like it. They want the coolest man because he's a survivor and because he's got all the self-esteem and all of the respect in the community.

And they want that guy because they think-- it's sort of almost instinctive. Nature is sort of dictating this. You always looking for a man. I don't care what color he is, but you're looking for a man who you think is going to achieve and is going to succeed and who's going to provide and all that kind of stuff.

And within the Black community, with cool operating as much as it does and defining so much of what manhood is all about, the coolest guy ends up seeming as though he's the one that will succeed and will keep going and will provide. And what ends up happening, though, is that cool-- while they say it's something they're working on because girls like it so much, cool is really something that guys are doing among themselves and they're defining among themselves.

And while women are important because they've got to have the finest girl, or they've got to have a girl, or whatever, they're not really working on something for her. They're not really working on something that she will like. She thinks she's going to it because he's really cool, and that means he's strong. That means he's confident.

But once she's with him, he's very cool. He's cold. He's not as-- he's not very emotional. He's very cautious. He's very protected and protective of his emotions and himself. And it takes a lot to break down cool. And for him, it takes a lot of trust.

And sometimes, by the time he gets to the point of really being cool, he has no trust. He won't break it down. There's a lot of guys that totally lose themselves to cool. And she's just frustrated because she's just trying to get more and more emotion, more and more caring or whatever from him. And it becomes a very emotionless relationship.

[R&B MUSIC] My bear's coming back for the honey

hey, y'all

My bear is coming back for the honey, the honey

My bear's coming back for the honey

Hey, y'all

My bear's coming back

I'm no dummy, no dummy

Hey, hey, when you snooze, you lose

Nothing that can help you [INAUDIBLE].

SPEAKER 6: A female really don't want to be with you unless you got some females.

SPEAKER 7: --props for yourself.

SPEAKER 6: Yeah, if you got props-- props in the hood, basically, props in another-- a different hood that she's not known in or something-- so if she's seen with you in a nice ride-- in a nice ride going to Minneapolis, right, from St. Paul going to Minneapolis over north, and she see you in a nice-- or she's seen in a nice ride and then go into a nice restaurant--

SPEAKER 7: She feels good, yeah. Because if you're treating her like she's somebody, then she'll bed She'll tell her friends, oh, girl, he treats me good. Because as us being in the [INAUDIBLE], we're respected because they see us with cars. They see us having a house and everything and knowing that-- I mean, the synonym, like I gave you before, explains everything about how we are, that we're positively living.

And the females like that. They think it's cool that we could be teenagers and young men having an own home, having cars, and working out here, getting, getting stuff without being out here, hustling everything. And it's cool to them.

SPEAKER 6: --legitimate.

(SINGING) --no love all them corners

You should known ain't no love on them corners

And now you want to return to your former

You should have known ain't no love on them corners

You should have known ain't no love on them corners

You should have known there's no love on them corners.

MARLENE KIM CONNOR: A lot of people who made money left the community, as well they should. This is what we're all fighting for. Left the community, went to the suburbs, went wherever, and the community changed. So you had a group of Black people living in poverty, were living in lesser-- with lesser means.

And you had-- it was a much more desperate situation. And the kids growing up in that situation felt abandoned and felt not listened to. And you got this whole culture of rap music, which started off great, actually. And you had a lot of competition through rap music rather than fighting on the streets.

And I know we've all heard this all before 1,001 times, but you really have to hear this. Crack and guns entered the community. I wish that white people would really stop and think about that and not think about it in terms of, you know, well, that's the way it is, like you look at-- I don't know-- when somebody is killed, and it's on the news. Think about that. Crack and guns entered the community, and the diversity left. It all kind of happened at the same time.

And it became very desperate and it became very cold. And I cannot blame that on cool. Cool was still trying its damnedest to do something, to dictate. But guns was dictating a lot more. It was no longer a thinking man's game. It was no longer finesse. It was no longer basically challenging yourself.

Now, if you thought you were cool, somebody just pull out a gun and say, you ain't, you ain't, you're not. And you would have to back down and admit, no, I'm not that cool. And so it all kind of lost track.

[III AI SKRATCH, "DON'T SHUT DOWN ON A PLAYER"] Well it's the low down and I'm low key

I get you loose like the deuce-deuce O-Z

Niggas know me cause I'm a king like T, make you run like D

MC like A, keep it real like B

From Cypress Hill, I might just fill your ass with the lead

Explode till the next episode code red danger exit--

SPEAKER 8: Are guns cool?

SPEAKER 7: Yeah, depending on what kind of gun you got. Yeah, sure is. A deuce-deuce, a regular Russian gun. Man, that's not cool, all right? But if you walk around not flossing it, because that'll get you killed. But if you just buy a gun and it's nickel plated with your name on it or got gold bullets in it, yeah, that's nice, like a TEC or real nice guns that hardly anybody has.

Certain groups-- certain groups, I say, two guns would be cool. Me, myself, I'd be like, nah. I would like to have one just if-- just in case I needed it and something pop up because the hood is hectic. The hood is hectic. And sometimes, you need it. And it's just-- it's just good to be there when you may need it because there's a lot of trippy people in the hood.

(SINGING) --that make your move

That's when I break the rules and I'll snake your jewels

Give it to you how you how you want it cause I'm blunted

As I role with my cold old Gold 800

I got the bankroll, who got the bank?

I'm ready to stick it to you because of the liquor that I drank

I don't think that's something that I really want to do,

So I bounce with my crew

MARLENE KIM CONNOR: I think the system of cool has to break down. It just needs-- yeah, it needs to break down because it doesn't translate well. The reality is, if you're going to walk in a corporation and shake hands and he's going to walk in the corporation and slap five, they're going to hire you because they are about making money. They don't have time to teach him to shake hands.

It's very simple. He should do both if he has to. I don't know what the answer is. This is between Black men and white men. I am not going to fight this war. I think Black women in some ways deserve that cool, deserve that cool, exotic drink on the sidelines right now. It's really your battle.

I didn't write this book for America to do anything. I wrote this-- I just hope that people read this book. And instead of debating-- well, it'd be nice to see everybody debating. But I would like for people to be quiet because that means I really made them think about something.

I just want them to see these men and boys for who they are, to respect who they became because they survived some really tricky business. The biggest issue right now for Black men is respect. Now, he ends up not looking like you want him to look. But he's a survivor, and he's a man. And he deserves the respect for that. And when he doesn't get it, he's ready to explode.

[COOLIO, "THRU THE WINDOW"] I take a look through the window, and all I see is pain

Burning on my brain like a weird type of acid rain

Or a virus, it's something that I can't explain

I used to be different, but now it seems that I'm the same as the rest of these hotheads in my hood

CHRIS ROBERTS: Writer Marlene Kim Connor-- her book is called What is Cool? Understanding Black Manhood in America. Our interview with Connor originally aired in early June of last year.

(SINGING) --Kitchen sink, a uppercut and a left hook

How can I explain this battering that we caught

It wasn't the way I was raised

It was the way I was taught

And the streets is a motherfucker, motherfucker

But I be growing up like another sucker, another sucker

I say the bomb be the last as I reflect on the past with my face pressed against the glass

Going down slowly, slowly going down

Going down slowly, slowly going down going down slowly, slowly

You're listening to Midmorning on the FM News Station. I'm Chris Roberts. In honor of Martin Luther King Day today, Powderhorn Park will host an entire day of free events, celebrating African American, American Indian and Hmong traditions, from Afro-Brazilian martial arts to jewelry making.

And from noon to 6:00, the Landmark Center will feature dancing, games, family activities, and the high school winners of a Martin Luther King Day essay contest. The event cost $6 for adults, $1 for seniors and students. We'll conclude Midmorning today, as we always do every day, with Garrison Keillor and The Writer's Almanac.

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GARRISON KEILLOR: Here is The Writer's Almanac for Monday, the 15th of January, 1996. It's the birthday in Paris in 1622 of Jean Baptiste Poquelin, who became the great French playwright Moliére and wrote his plays in the 1660s, Tartuffe, The School for Wives, The Miser, and many others.

It was on this day in 1920, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution went into effect in this country, which forbade the manufacture or sale of any drink with more than one half of 1% alcohol in it. Prohibition went into effect 1920. It lasted until 1933.

And today is the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., born in Atlanta on this day in 1929, the second of three children of Baptist minister. Went off to seminary, got a doctorate in philosophy from Boston university, and in 1954, accepted his first pastorate at the Dexter Avenue Baptist church in Montgomery, Alabama, where, the following year, a woman named Rosa Parks defied an ordinance requiring segregated seating on city buses. And Martin Luther King began the Montgomery bus boycott that began the Civil Rights movement. Martin Luther King's birthday.

Here's a poem for today from the Bay Psalm Book, the singing book of Puritan New England in the latter part of the 17th century. This is the 121st Psalm.

"I to the hills lift up mine eyes from whence shall come mine aid,

Mine help doth from Jehovah come, which heaven and Earth hath made,

He will not let thy foot be moved, nor slumber that thee keeps,

Low he that keepeth Israel, he slumbers not nor sleeps,

The lord, thy keeper, is the Lord on thy right hand, the shade,

The sun by day, nor moon by night shall thee by stroke invade,

The Lord will keep thee from all ill, thy soul he keeps alway,

Thy going out and thy income the Lord keeps now and aye."

From the Bay Psalm Book, the 121st Psalm.

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That's The Writer's Almanac for Monday, January 15th, made possible by Cowels Magazines, publishers of historic traveler, and other magazines. Be well. Do good work, and keep in touch.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Minnesota Public Radio operates in association with the following institutions-- St. John's Abbey and University Collegeville; Concordia College, Moorhead; Luther College, Decorah; the College of St. Scholastica, Duluth; Michigan Technological University, Houghton; Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter; and the College of St. Benedict, St. Joseph. That's Midmorning for this morning. Thank you very much for joining us, and stay tuned for Midday with Gary Eichten, which is coming up next.

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ANDREI CODRESCU: I'm Andrei Codrescu. Join me, John Rabe, and the Washington crew for the news and long looks into the human soul. It's All Things Considered every day at 3:00 on the FM News Station, KNOW FM 91.1.

CHRIS ROBERTS: You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio. Mostly cloudy and 4 degrees with a wind chill of minus 22 at the FM News Station, KNOW FM 91.1, Minneapolis, St. Paul. Look for mostly cloudy skies today. There's a 30% chance of light snow in the afternoon in the Twin Cities, highs between 10 and 15 degrees.

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GARY EICHTEN: Good morning. It's 11 o'clock, and this is Midday on the FM News Station. I'm Gary Eichten. In the news this morning, President Clinton is in Atlanta today to speak at ceremonies honoring the late Martin Luther King, Jr. Clinton is speaking at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where both King and his father once preached.

Here in Minnesota, there are several activities underway today, including ceremonies at Concordia College in St. Paul, with Governor Arne Carlson scheduled to participate. Hillary Clinton says she may testify before the Senate Whitewater Committee. Hand-to-hand combat is reported in a small village in Southern Russia where Russian forces are trying to overrun Chechnyan fighters who have been holding 100 Russians hostage.

The Bosnian government has refused to participate in a scheduled prisoner exchange in Bosnia, and a debate is underway in Britain over a new definition of hell. Those are some of the stories in the news today. Coming up over the noon hour, we'll mark the Martin Luther King holiday. We'll be hearing from King's eldest daughter, Yolanda, in the Twin Cities today and President Clinton, who's in Atlanta.