Sardonic Sistah Says

Around the globe the value of the dollar is dropping, but what we really want to know is:

“Will they take food stamps?”

In today’s NYT it is projected that 28 million Americans will be receiving food stamps this year which is the highest level of aid since the program began in the 1960s.

The article cites economic conditions, eligibility rules, enlistment drives and natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina for the spike.

One in eight residents now receive food stamps in Michigan.  Ohio and Illinois are also reaching new highs.  Other states that have seen a rise are Arizona, Florida, Maryland, Nevada, North Dakota and Rhode Island. 

A few weeks ago, before the whole Jeremiah Wright blow up, a friend of mine (a rabid H. Clinton supporter) claimed that little is known about Obama and worried that he was a jihadist in disguise because of his odd sounding/foreign name and his African father (sad to say this friend is black).  I did what any good friend would do to assuage another friend’s fears: I told her to shut the hell up and stop talking smack.  She sent me a barrage of questions: Where was Obama born?  What church did he attend?  What was his race?  What was his religion?

I answered her: Hawaii, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chi-Town, he’s biracial: black Kenyan Father, white American mother and he’s a Christian.

I emailed her back: where was H. Clinton born?  What church does she attend?  What is her racial background?  What is her religion?  I also asked why she thought H. Clinton pursued the Senate seat in NY instead of her home state?

She ignored my letter so I sent it to her twice more.  She said that I was being belligerent.

Since the Jeremiah Wright debacle Clinton has made sure to point out that she would never attend a church with such a man at the helm?  But what church does she attend?  We know where Obama stands and what McCain thinks on religion (this election cycle anyway) but where does Hillary Clinton go to get spiritually fed?

Writer and activist Barbara Ehrenreich thinks that is an excellent question and she has the answer.  In her March 19 article on the Huffington Post, Ehrenreich writes about the secretive bible study and prayer group that H. Clinton attends which is called “The Fellowship”. 

“The Family’s most visible activity is its blandly innocuous National Prayer Breakfast, held every February in Washington,” writes Ehrenreich.   ”But almost all its real work goes on behind the scenes — knitting together international networks of rightwing leaders, most of them ostensibly Christian. In the 1940s, The Family  reached out to former and not-so-former Nazis, and its fascination with that exemplary leader, Adolph Hitler, has continued, along with ties to a whole bestiary of murderous thugs.”

A more in-depth look at H. Clinton’s affiliation with the family can be read in the September 2007 issue of Mother Jones magazine.

Should we more concerned about H. Clinton’s religious affiliation than Obama’s?  Whereas Obama’s minister went on a jeremiad with his religious speech, Rev Wright has no political power because he doesn’t hold office.  But H. Clinton is attending services with Sam Brownback, John Ashcroft, and Rick Santorum and has aligned herself with some conservatives issues such as flag burning and religion in the workplace.  This isn’t the first time some have wondered if H. Clinton wasn’t a dl Republican and in her earlier years she worked on the Goldwater campaign. 

Also, in trying to curry favor with the John Edward to get his support Clinton said she would take up his cause for the American poor.  But can someone who doesn’t worship the Jesus of the but feels, as Ehrenreich writes, “believes… only the elites who matter, the political leaders who can build God’s “dominion” on earth”, will Clinton really look out for those in need?

But was she really going to look out for anyone who couldn’t afford to buy a night in the White House, anyway?

It’s a mini documentary but it’s still interesting.  Our Pride: the Spirits of Black Japanese in Georgia is a 32 minute movie by Yohei Suzuki about the offspring of African American fathers and Japanese mothers and how the individuals deal with being biracial/bicultural.

“We need to know how to deal with the issues and how to socialize with individuals of other ethnicities.  This documentary will uncover the existence of Blackanese and their ethnic pride,” Suzuki said in an interview with his college newsletter.  Suzuki realizes there are racial tensions between Japanese Americans and African Americans and hopes his documentary will bring “new culture into both communities”.

To view the video click on the link here.

(Thanks to Black-Asian Families with Children for the heads up)

Izora must be rolling over in her grave. 

His administration may be as harmonious as their singing.

This story is the talk of the Asian-Black community right now.

Tiffany Rubin has been battling over custody with her ex-husband Jeffrey Sako for a few years now.  They shared joint custody although Sako was facing up to six months in jail for non-payment of child support.  He decided to get out of it by returning to his home country of Korea and taking his child with him.

Rubin hacked into her ex’s email account and found out where he had gone.  With an anonymous tip to her MySpace page and the help of her new sister-in-law hooking her up with the American Association for Lost Children, Rubin found her son living in Gamsil, a town near Seoul.  She immediately went to Korea to retrieve her son.  She went to the school he was attending and told the teacher she needed to speak with him.  Once in the hallway, Rubin put a wig on her son and along with the representative for Lost Children they went to the American Embassy. 

Salko is still in South Korea.

This story man not have all of the intrigue as “Not Without My Daughter” but I would love to see a Lifetime or WEmovie of the week on it.  They did one for the Buttafuco’s they can do one for this.

Sources for this story are Yahoo News and New York Daily News. 

For the Fox News video click here

Although John Edwards has pulled his bid for president, his candidacy has helped to put the spotlight on poverty in the United States.  Right now everyone is buzzing about race but we can’t really have a true dialogue about race without also looking at social/economic status because the two are inextricably linked. 

To see how linked they are please check you local PBS listing to catch the four-part series called “Unnatural Causes… Is Inequality Making  Us Sick?“.  The first show is called “In Sickness and in Wealth” and looks at health disparity among people of different economic classes in Louisville, Kentucky. 

Four people represent different segments of society and three of them work in the same hospital in different positions.  The first person is a white male who is the CEO of the hospital; he has a high life expectancy and although a stressful job it makes less of an impact on his health than for the other three.  The second is a black female engaged to an Asian male who is on an economic rung lower than the first guy.  She is a supervisor at the hospital.  The next is a black male who works in custodial and last is a white female who is at the bottom of the economic ladder.  The white female doesn’t work at all and along with caring for her children she has to take care of her husband who is disabled along.  The show points out that, contrary to the stereotypical black face of poverty, more whites than blacks in the U.S. are poor.

Next week’s episode is equally intriguing.  That show will discuss why black babies have the highest infant mortality weight regardless of the mother’s economic status.

So, while we are arguing over who has the better health care plan and looking at matters of race perhaps we need to look at it through an economic prism and figure it out.  It costs us all, whether we know it or not.

Well, for this hour I’m on that music tip so I want to pass along that Dionne Farris’ latest cd is now available for purchase.  Her last cd, “Wild Seed, Wild Flower” came out 14 years ago and is a neosoul classic.

So yay!

But –you can only purchase it from her MySpace website.

Say what?!

Mmm-hm.  Man, I still have my daughter walk me through the downloading on my 1stGen iPod shuffle (I usually listen to music on my iRiver mp3 player –easier to download music to) and she wants me to buy her music from there?  

Well… 

I guess I better get my daughter to walk me through it one mo ‘gin.  But Farris is worth it.

Well, I thought that Brown Eyed Soul referred to the music put out by Latinos/Chicanos that had a soul flavor but, according to an article I found on Reika no rakuen, it also refers to Korean Soul music because of their eye color.

Black folks have brown eyes, too.  But I guess since we are the progenitors of the music the point is kind of moot.

But anyway, the Korean soul group “Brown Eyed Soul” and their latest album dropped late last year.  If you like it you can pick it up on YesAsia.com

Everyone is wondering about what the allure is of a certain presidential candidate.  Some are thinking that many are getting wrapped up in his sonorous speeches and not really questioning the politics behind it.

But I disagree.  Of course I disagree. 

I think this time is for the burgeoning cosmopolitans that Americans should be.  Big business keeps saying we live in a world economy.  Our government keeps dispatching our brothers/sisters over to lands that we can’t pronounce the names of nor do we know what type of sovereignty they might be under.  What pollutants we use here may have repercussions for a child in a far off country.  So for those of us who want to stand not just as Americans but also as earthlings who share one globe we can’t be discounted as Hippie Flower Children Reduxed for the New Millennium.

Okay, perhaps we can, but then you are missing the point.

We aren’t alone, we don’t want to be alone and if we are going to lead then we should decide where we are going so others will want to follow.

I snatched the following from over on Roslyn Holcomb’s website.  I’m not sure where she got it from (and neither is she) but I think it best sums up how we as Americans can be world leaders as well as world citizens.

Ghetto Lit is a quickly growing genre, but will I be able to complete one book of it? 

Currently there is a popular saying that has been gaining more and more popularity at the ends of emails and on black radio talk shows.  “If you want to hide something from black people, put it in a book.” People feel that it has been said so much that it has to be true.  Most Americans don’t read so it isn’t as if black people are an exception.  But I will say this; if you really want to hide it from African Americans don’t put it into a book of Urban Literature. Urban literature, also known as ghetto lit, gangsta fiction, urban novels, whatever you want to call it, is popular with a lot of African Americans today, young and old.  I was first introduced to the genre years ago when two of my coworkers were discussing what books they were going to read next.“Don’t you like to read?” she asked me, holding out a book.  I took it from her and read the inside cover, my brow furrowing a bit.  I handed it back to her and said,