Everybody is blogging, everyone with even minimal writing skills and a heady opinion is getting their voice out there. But sometimes good writing/opinions get overlooked so I am going to use this page to highlight an essay I think people should pay attention to. It doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree with the person, I’m just giving props to those who are out here slugging away in the proverbial (verbal) trenches.
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I Love Ya Ms. Keys but You May Want to Curtail Your Time at The Barbershop! Alicia Keys & the Great Gangsta Conspiracy!
I don’t want to spend too much time on this but I would like to say my piece on this latest bit of celebrity drivel. First, what is the deal with the media’s obsession with people of color who self-identify themselves as Black (Keys, Obama, Halle) and whose parentage is biracial? America’s societal structure has been pretty clear as to how much African blood is deemed tolerable….none. So when Keys made some rather off the wall comments centered on conspiratorial thinking, I noticed several newspapers that often preface her lineage first
for the rest of this article visit AfroNerd’s website
http://afronerd.blogspot.com/2008/04/i-love-ya-ms-keyes-but-you-may-want-to.html
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Not Exactly Diverse
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A little over a week ago, I received a phone call from a woman who happens to work with my mom. This woman, K., is only a few years older than I am and has three children; her youngest child is in the same grade (Kindergarten) as our daughter. Apparently, my mom has been doing some grandmotherly boasting about her granddaughter, which led to various conversations between my mom and K. about the school where K’s children attend. It’s a relatively small preparatory academy that is highly regarded by several fellow educators and parents that I know. Before our daughter started Kindergarten, I actually did a fair amount of research on this school and though I strongly believe that its academic rigor would have been well suited for our daughter, I ultimately was looking for a more diverse student body than this school had to offer. (According to the school’s website, almost 93% of the student body identifies themselves as White.) One of the reasons K. called was to tell me more about the school in case I was interested in applying for the next academic school year. I told her that my main concern was the lack of racial and ethnic diversity amongst the student body. “Well, it’s true that most of the students are White, but we do have some diversity. Our school has plenty of Orientals,” she said proudly. for more of this article please go to Heart, Mind, and Seoul |
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Why Black folks Dislike Bi-Racials
by Siditty
Let me put a disclaimer on this post. Black people do not really dislike biracial or light skinned people, but rather there is some animosity, in my opinion of the black community when it comes to colorism within that community.
am going to say this. Black people tend to dislike biracial folks. I say this as I am married to a white man and there is the possibility of having biracial children. I say this having limited exposure to those who are biracial.
Why do blacks hate biracials? A little background.
At one time, biracial people were just black folks. Heck you could be 75% white and only 25% black and still be just black. The shame of having an ounce of black in you, made those who didn’t even look black, black.
Back in the day even though these biracials were just black, they were the upper echelon of black society. The black upper class was overwhelmingly those of obvious mixed ancestry. There were light skinned folks using the brown paper bag test to determine marriage partners. There were schools and organizations (The Blue Veins) they discriminated against darker skinned blacks.
for the rest of this blog click on the link:
http://siditty.blogspot.com/2008/03/why-black-people-dislike-biracials-and.html
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The White Man’s Burden is Not the Black Man’s Responsibility
by Jasmyne Cannick
Civil rights icon the Rev. Joseph Lowery once said, “The country’s creating a 51st state—the state of denial.
I guess if the history books favored my race against all reality, I’d be pissed off at anyone who tried to say otherwise. Too bad.
The fact is that Rev. Wright isn’t the first or the last preacher or Black to call out America for her racist history. A history that for some reason we are always being encouraged to forget because today Americans are transcending race. Is that why Black men and women are being imprisoned almost as fast their mothers can give birth to them? Is that the reason why a man who called a group of young Black women “nappy-headed ho’s” is still on the air? And were we rising above race when it was joked that Tiger Woods should be lynched? Is us transcending race to blame for the pimps and ho’s parties on university and college campuses around the country?
The belief that America is somehow transcending race because whites voted for a Black man is dangerous thinking.
for more of this article click the link:
http://jasmynecannick.typepad.com/jasmynecannickcom/2008/03/the-white-mans.html
Steinem speaking out for Hillary is just so yesterday
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Steinem, who at 73 is two years older than John McCain, tried to make the case that Hillary’s faltering campaign was owing to America’s greater guilt over racism than sexism. Voters feel worse about slavery and Jim Crow than they do about “gynocide,” according to the Ms. magazine founder.
“A majority of Americans want redemption for racism, for our terrible destructive racist past and so see a vote for Obama as redemptive,” she said.
Steinem isn’t the first to note the redemptive quality of voting for Obama. Shelby Steele wrote a book about it, saying that Obamamania is largely a white phenomenon for the reasons Steinem mentioned. But like Steinem and Clinton, the white-guilt vote belongs primarily to an older generation.
Young people who didn’t experience the civil rights movement — or Steinem’s feminist movement, for that matter — aren’t thinking about race in the same ways older Americans do.
And though Obama’s race clearly did count among African-American voters — 80 percent of whom voted for him in the states he carried up through Super Tuesday — his youth and perceived racial transcendence are what speak loudest to post-boomer voters.
for more of this article go to
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/5602667.html
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by Rebecca Walker on the Huffington Post
The fact is there have always been many “feminisms,” but one dominant, more visible Feminism, which is essentially comprised of the needs, views, and philosophies of straight white women with a certain degree of privilege. Now we can add “and of a certain age” to that list. Women of different backgrounds have been speaking to this issue of exclusivity for decades, and their critiques have been voluminous. The lack of resolution of these critiques is currently manifesting in an exacerbated form, and labeled “infighting.” There are no new issues on the table. For example, my mother, Alice Walker, did not create the term “womanist” in the late ’70s because she was feeling creative. I did not offer the concept of Third Wave in the ’90s because I wanted to inject a catchy phrase into the Feminist discourse. And, many “mainstream” women did not reject the Feminist label in the ’60s to present because they don’t know what Feminism really is.
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No, He Can’t Because Yes, They Will
by Larry C. Johnson
Huffington Report
If you think for a minute that the Republican party — who used Willie Horton on Michael Dukakis to devastating effect, who portrayed triple amputee and veteran Max Cleland as a bosom buddy of Osama Bin Laden, and convinced many voters that decorated combat veteran John Kerry was a fraud — will give Obama a pass come the fall then you are in serious denial.
But, unlike the attacks on Dukakis, Cleland, and Kerry, the ammunition that Obama has provided to his political foes is significant and deadly. But try telling that to Obama disciples. You get name calling and character assassination (just read the reaction to this piece). At the same time, Obama is treated with a reverence and fawning that I have never seen in my life for a political figure… So, while Democrats engage in self-censorship and promote the worst kind of affirmative action pandering in promoting the myth of Obama, the Republicans are keeping mum and, like Brer Rabbit, begging not to be tossed into the briar patch and face the fearsome Obama. (Want to bet how many accusations of racism I will get for referring to Brer Rabbit?)
for more of this article click on this link
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Why Blacks Should Vote for McCain
by William Jelani Cobb
…All this points to one clear – if unlikely – conclusion: if Hillary Clinton receives the Democratic Party nomination, African Americans should consider voting for John McCain. But before you fix your lips to call me a sellout consider this: Carter G. Woodson once remarked that any race that consistently gives its vote to one political party is asking to be taken advantage of.
If politics is the art of advancing one’s interests, the 2008 election, and the Clinton campaign in particular, indicate that the Democratic Party has become so cavalier with black folk that our interests are nearly invisible. In short, South Carolina (not to mention that LBJ did more than MLK comment) revealed that the Clintons operate on the presumption that they can alienate black voters and still rely upon our support in the general election….
For more of this article click on this link.
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by Will Wilkinson
Ask two different economists and you’ll get three different answers about whether or not the U.S. economy is about to enter a recession. However things pan out, now’s a great time to contemplate what scholars have learned about the consequences of recession: Sustained economic slowdown is more than a pain in the pocketbook. If recession drags on too long, it can poison a nation’s moral climate.
In his 2005 book The Moral Dimensions of Economic Growth, Harvard economist Benjamin M. Friedman shows that time and again, economic expansion has fostered greater opportunity, tolerance, social mobility and a concern for fairness. Meanwhile, economic contraction has gone hand-in-hand historically with xenophobia, self-defeating trade protectionism and the political persecution of minorities.
When the economic pie is expanding, and most of us are enjoying rising standards of living, we tend to feel optimistic, expansive, magnanimous. When jobs are thick on the ground and livin’ is easy, we’re most likely to feel there’s enough for everybody. Racial equality in the U.S. has most often made strides when poor whites have felt that they had the least to lose from the economic advance of blacks during periods of growth.
For the rest of thos blog go to Marketplace
For more ideas from Wilkinson check out his blog
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This article is a few years old but it’s still funny and a good way to kick off Black History Month.
Black History Month is coming soon. I wonder: Will anyone pay me to be black for them this year?
By Debra J. Dickerson
Dec. 4, 2006 | When you’re as neurotic as I am, it’s important to plan ahead for things to worry about. That’s why Thanksgiving found me obsessing over Black History Month. You see, it’s early December, and no one’s asked me yet to come and be black for them in February.
Just as all professors yearn to be stand-up comedians, those of us who eke out a living writing in our basements long to be highly paid blowhards on the lecture circuit where, if you’re shameless enough, you can make serious dough for just a few hours’ work. If you’re black, February is the optimal time to cash in. All the lucrative keynotes and fancy book clubs sign their speakers six to 12 months in advance, so I was pitifully late in the all too obvious realization that I had been passed over. Still, I got to thinking. Even if I had been invited somewhere, I wouldn’t have the least notion what to say about the role of race in modern life, except that I’m pissed only to be asked the question once a year. The irony of Black History Month is that it makes life a bitch for blacks. All that pesky thinking about how to take advantage of an opportunity that’s condescending, if well-intentioned, at its core.
for the rest of this article go to this link
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by R. L’Heureux Lewis
January 28th, 2008 ·
As a young Black man in New York City a day seldom goes by that someone doesn’t ask me one of the above questions. While I consider myself to be political, I have tried to take a step back from the Presidential race and its million candidates… particularly Barack Obama. Now that the fray is sorting itself out, I recently have been engaging these conversations, albeit a bit cautiously, especially among my friends who tend to be like minded. By like minded I mean, decently far left, of color, and cynical. Surprisingly, these conversations have all ended with my colleagues discussing Barack Obama as transforming the racial landscape and me vehemently fighting this claim. Sure editorials and articles point to Obama accomplishing the “impossible” in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina but delegate victories are improbable, not impossible. Shifting the way race is understood in America is a much larger task, one that I think even Obama cannot do.
for more of this article go to:
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For this reason, I feel compelled to use responsibly the rights that I have. This year marks my first year eligible as a voter in a presidential election. One might assume that I am presented with a difficult task: Do I-a hyper-political young feminist-vote for a woman under the assumption that Hillary (back) in the White House brings all women to the White House? Or do I-a socially-conscious activist dedicated to the pursuit of racial equality-vote for the first black man considered a front-runner in a presidential primary?
You see, it’s really not that simple, and I resent, Ms. Steinem, the manner in which you pit race against gender in your op-ed. To your credit, you aim to avoid this juxtaposition, writing, “The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together.” But the very premise of your piece (”Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life”) contradicts this cursory warning. Using Obama’s Iowa victory as evidence, you say, “Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women.”
from Common Dreams
click on the link for the full article
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Last week H. Clinton had her feet to the fire over comments about MLK. This week, democrats of every hue are wondering WTF Obama meant when he gave props to Ronald Reagan.
And it wasn’t the “Bedtime for Bongo” Ron (who was a B-movie actor) but Pres Ron.
The Jed Report does an excellent job of explaining why in minimal time.
Click the link
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Babel: How Racism Can Build Bridges
by Debra Dickerson
Come the halfway point, we survivors (seriously high attrition rate) graduated to this cool dude young Korean guy (Dr. Lee) as a teacher and encouraged him to let us waste time in all sorts of ways. He’d practice his English on us (it was excellent, much better than ours, but he was trying to get better still) and we spent our time trying to get him to teach us curse words.
One day at lunch, one of us (Army of course.) had been making fun of how ‘Asians’ talk, you know, the horrible stuff—‘ping pong ching long one ah-dah poke flied lice’. When we got back to class, somehow we were determined to find out how ‘Asians’ made fun of (American) English. It took a long time to make him understand what we were asking, but when he finally did - and could take nomore of our goading - his face became gleeful and he let loose. The gist was that, to at least that Korean, Americans sound something like this: sharl, sharl, sharl. There was more but that was the basic idea.
for the full article click here
The Widening Trade Deficit With China, in an Election Year
by Robert Reich
America’s trade deficit with China looks like it will exceed $250 billion for 2007. That’s more than the previous record of $233 billion, set in 2006. Is the answer for China to raise the value of its currency, the yuan? Thanks to a surge in recent weeks, China’s yuan ended 2007 up nearly 7 percent from a year ago. That’s twice the rate it appreciated against the greenback in 2006. But that’s probably not be enough to calm American politicians in an election year, whose constituents are understandably worried about their jobs and wages.
for more of this article click here
Wrath of Hillary
Clinton calls Obama a flip-flopper. Oh, the boxing gloves are so on.
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http://colorlines.com/article.php?ID=262
I’m Afro-Norwegian
This desire to know the ethnicity of those around us is a curious one, and it often betrays people’s desire to order the world. You are black, and I have a box for this. You are white, and I have a box for this. While these boxes can create and perpetuate negative stereotypes, I do think that race and ethnicity need to be recognized. The colorblindness mentioned in today’s enlightened society is a mistake. That only works if we were able to press the reset button on history and culture.
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The Invasion of the Katrinians
This veers a bit from my original intent of putting people’s words onto my page but I think this particular cartoon points out a few things that blacks are speaking about.
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Obama’s Color Line
by Juan Williams
Most amazing, Mr. Obama has built his political base among white voters. He relies on unprecedented support among whites for a black candidate. Among black voters nationwide, he actually trails Hillary Clinton by nine percentage points, according to one recent poll.
At first glance, the black-white response to Mr. Obama appears to represent breathtaking progress toward the day when candidates and voters are able to get beyond race. But to say the least, it is very odd that black voters are split over Mr. Obama’s strong and realistic effort to reach where no black candidate has gone before. Their reaction looks less like post-racial political idealism than the latest in self-defeating black politics.
Mr. Obama’s success is creating anxiety, uncertainty and more than a little jealousy among older black politicians. Black political and community activists still rooted in the politics of the 1960s civil rights movement are suspicious about why so many white people find this black man so acceptable.
for more of this article go to New York Times
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A recurring theme in sports: Live hard, die fast
November 28, 2007
It’s always tragic when a 24-year-old’s life ends abruptly and senselessly, but there was nothing shocking about Sean Taylor’s violent death.
It’s a sad reflection of an evolving societal subculture where guns, gangs, celebrity and confrontation have become so common that we’re not only anesthetized to such awful news, we’re also instantly suspicious of its origins.
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Is it terrible? Yes.Are we surprised? No.
The financial and career status of Taylor — a Pro Bowl safety for the Washington Redskins — didn’t protect him from becoming another number in a distressing demographic: a young black male meeting a violent end.
The police investigation will attempt to peel away the multitude of layers surrounding this hideous crime, shedding more light into the specifics of Taylor’s shooting in the bedroom of his suburban Miami home early Monday morning.
That’ll come in time. And perhaps the police will discover the shooting was nothing more than a random burglary gone awry. But it’s also possible further investigation will reveal that Taylor’s shooting was the last domino in a chain of recklessly irresponsible events that involved the young man.
Would it surprise anyone if that were the case? No.
Those mourning Taylor on Tuesday remembered him as someone who had matured from previous mistakes. He apparently turned the corner emotionally, becoming more respectful of his own life after becoming a father more than a year ago.
But he also had a past that included an aggravated assault with a firearm charge. In 2005, Taylor allegedly pointed a gun at two people whom he and his entourage thought stole some vehicles belonging to Taylor.
After a year-long legal battle, Taylor pleaded no contest to two misdemeanors that protected his football career and $40-million contract from the Redskins.
In addition, Taylor was charged with drunken driving early in his pro career (the case was dismissed in court), and he was fined at least seven times for late hits, uniform violations and other infractions over his first three seasons.
Taylor was, in many ways, the stereotypical modern professional star athlete who existed within a nest of enablers. It didn’t matter how he conducted himself away from the game because there always was someone there to clean up his mess.
That lifestyle should become an integral part of the investigation into what took his life.
If the loss of two NFL players this year to gun violence doesn’t serve as a wake-up call for star athletes and the sycophants that surround them, they’re beyond reason.Denver defensive back Darrent Williams was shot and killed in the early hours of New Year’s Day, sitting in the back seat of a stretch Hummer outside of a nightclub. Assailants peppered the vehicle with gunfire in a drive-by attack.
For the rest of this article go to Drew Sharp’s column
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This essay comes from John Ridley’s blog Visible Man which is at NPR.org.
Green Bay Packers receiver Donald Driver, shown in a 2004 file photo, overcame many difficulties in his early life.
Evan Vucci/AP
It was looking to be a bad week for black men “up top” — brothers ascended to high places. Over the weekend there was Barack Obama’s shameful Embrace the Change (Your Sexuality) tour, emceed by gospel singer Donnie McClurkin, who says God delivered him from homosexuality. Time Warner had to deny rumors that CEO Dick Parsons might be on his way out. And now CEO E. Stanley O’Neal has gotten the boot, or the golden parachute, at Merrill Lynch.
Shame to see black men of supreme achievement caught up in scandal, rumor and shake-outs.
For the rest of this blog please go to Visible Man.
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