ER Shipp

Sometimes are arms are too short to box with God

2007-08-21T09:39:00.000-05:00

We have to realize our limitations and say: No mas. That's what is prudently being said in Utah were six men have been trapped in a mountain as a result of a mining accident. Even though it seems unlikely the six men still survive -- tests of air quality from holes drilled into several areas of the mountain indicated that the air was not sufficient to sustain life --heroic efforts were made to tunnel into the mountain to try to rescue them. And that effort claimed three lives last week, while injuring six others of the rescue team.

Family members of the six who were initially trapped are understandably disappointed that the tunneling has been stopped, upon the orders of federal safety officials. But why risk the lives of rescue teams when it seems so unlikely that the original six can possibly alive after more than two weeks?

At some point we have to be prudent and realistic, even if that brings little comfort or closure. The families of those who died when that bridge over the Mississippi collapsed in Minneapolis seemed to understand that and to exercise patience. They could see the danger in sending divers into the murky waters at night amid all sorts of hazardous debris while trying to recover the dead. That task has stretched out until now. The last known missing person was pulled out of the water yesterday.

If you knew Rudy the way a lot of us do

2007-08-10T03:10:00.000-05:00

I have faith that most people tuned in to what’s happening in the world beyond their own everyday lives will pay attention to what the various presidential candidates are saying versus what the truth is. If they do so, they must help spread the word about Rudy Giuliani’s blatant attempt to rewrite his past and pull the wool over the eyes of people who’d barely heard of him as of Sept. 10, 2001.

Take a look at Wayne Barrett’s explication of the Rudy lies and exaggerations about his expertise in handling terrorist attacks – all based on his exploitation of Sept. 11 and his confidence that by evoking the image of him “leading” New Yorkers from Lower Manhattan that day will bring about such reverence that enough people will be bamboozled into choosing him as the nominee of the Republican Party and, ultimately, the President of the United States. Barrett’s Village Voice piece totally eviscerates that strategy.

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0732,barrett,77463,6.html/full

Motive Behind a Journalist's Assassination

2007-08-09T09:28:00.000-05:00

Chauncey Bailey (see previous post) was working on a series exposing how a rump group of criminals calling themselves Black Muslims were involved in all manner of crime, including rape, murder, fraud. Take a look at this article from the San Francisco Chronicle's Leslie Fulbright, where a member of the family involved, the Beys, tells of being Bailey's main source.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/08/07/MNA1RDQAE1.DTL

And take a look at this piece from the Village Voice, where a journalist named Chris Thompson tells of being threatened by members of that Bey clan when he, too, ventured into dangerous territory -- namely, the truth.

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0732,thompson,77457,2.html

True journalists speak truth to power -- regardless of race, creed, color or anything else -- as often as possible. They are the eyes and ears and noses that try to hold accountable those aspects of government and civil society that mean the difference between true democracy and bullshit served on a stick.

Bailey was the victim/hero/martyr here. Don't forget that as others may try to turn this into a persecution of the Beys.

Refreshing Perspectives from Obama

2007-08-07T14:47:00.000-05:00

Hillary Clinton says she thinks Barack Obama is inexperienced and naive if he thinks he can bring a fresh approach to foreign affairs. Too bad. What's wrong with the current approach is evident in the US standing in the world when it comes to respect. Obama would meet face to face with leaders of nations George W. Bush considers evil. Obama also would not let Pakistan off the hook when it comes to fighting terrorism. If Pakistan won't do the job of going after terrorists hiding there and in the border areas with Afghanistan, the US will.

Obama also has a good take on the intense focus on the N, B and H words by some civil rights and civic leaders to the exclusion of other issues. In the current VIBE magazine, where he's on the cover, he says: "My priority as a U.S. senator is dealing with poverty and educational opportunity and adequate health care. If I'm ignoring those issues and spending all my time worrying about rap lyrics, then I'm wasting my time."

The NAACP has taken up this cause; so, too, has Al Sharpton. Let Obama focus on other matters.

Journalist Assassinated in Oakland

2007-08-07T14:19:00.000-05:00

On most days being a journalist in the United States is not nearly as dangerous as being a taxi driver. Outside the U.S. the killing of journalists – the killing of the messenger, if you will – is more commonplace.

Last week, for the first time in several decades, an American journalist was assassinated in the line of duty in Oakland, California. A masked gunman shot to death Chauncey Bailey, the editor of Oakland’s Black weekly newspaper, The Oakland Post. A 19-year-old member of a splinter Black Muslim group has confessed to the slaying. Hardly anyone believes he acted alone. [[The young man's group is not affiliated with the Nation of Islam.]]

West Coast media have paid attention to this. So has CNN. So has Farai Chidaya, host of National Public Radio’s daily program, News and Notes. Richard Prince, the online columnist has been all over this story (http://www.maynardije.org/columns/dickprince).

But where there should be outrage-tinged coverage among other media, there has been no coverage at all. When will Black + American yield equal treatment? When will Black life be as valued as that of Whites? Had a White editor been gunned down on an American city street, most likely because of a story on which he was working, wouldn’t that editor’s name – or at least the incident – be the subject of conversation and protest across this land?

Contact your local media and ask what’s going on.

The Closing of Copeland's

2007-07-30T05:12:00.000-05:00

If you are a New Yorker, especially an uptown Manhattan person, you've no doubt heard about, and probably even patronized, Copeland's -- the dream and product of hard work of Calvin Copeland. But times caught up with Mr. Copeland and Sunday was his final day in that famous space on West 145th Street. For $25 Sunday you could enjoy some wonderful live music and you could eat all you could. Believe me, some of the folks did just that.

People came from far and near. Some came because they'd seen or heard something in the news and wanted to represent. Some, including a celebrity baker, came as volunteers. Most, like myself, had once been regulars though the myriad choices now available in a booming Harlem made Copeland's less the must-go-there place. Star Jones Reynolds and her husband Al heard about the closing while vacationing in France and upon landing stateside Sunday made a bee-line for Copeland's where Star said she just had to have a final order of chicken wings from one of her favorite places. Rep. Charles Rangel, among the many politicians to attend or send representatives or issue proclamations, noted: "Calvin Copeland for over five decades has endured, through the riots of the 1960s, the crack epidemic of the 1980s, personal financial ruin and even fire, [and] found a way through his cooking to keep people like me, Muhammad Ali, Richard Pryor, Stevie Wonder, David Dinkins, Harry Belafonte, Dakota Staton, Natalie Cole, Bishop Tutu, Sammy Davis Jr. and Michael Jackson as frequent and enthusiastic customers...."

Malcolm X's daughter, Attilah Shabazz, stood on line with everybody else, some for more than an hour in the rain, trying to get in for that final meal. Mr. Copeland, 82, was the gracious host, chatting with everyone, posing for pictures.

There were parties of six and parties of twelve and parties of twenty -- and I couldn't help but think if all these folks had been more faithful, maybe Copeland's would still be around. But, on the other hand, Mr. Copeland did not keep up with the times and has said that he was caught off guard by this boomtown Harlem and its culinary tastebuds.

I’m Cheering for Barry Bonds!

2007-07-24T07:48:00.000-05:00

Even though this San Francisco Giants player is two home runs shy of tying the record set by Hank Aaron in 1974 and may do so during the current series against my beloved Atlanta Braves, I’m cheering for him to tie and break the record.

Probably because so many others – especially white people – are rooting against this man who lives by his own rules of media engagement. White sports journalists are not accustomed to this and have accentuated the negative. That has poisoned the history-making home run record chase for others.

I was disappointed Sunday by a commentary on CBS Sunday Morning by a journalist I ordinarily admire: Bob Schieffer. He said, among other things, “Barry Bonds is no hero. He is just a guy who hits home runs. Who would want a kid to be like him?”

See his full commentary at:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/07/22/opinion/schieffer/main3086258.shtml

A whole lot of white people hated the Braves’ Hammering Hank Aaron when he homed in on the previous record set by Babe Ruth. People then, as they are now with Bonds, sought ways to place an asterisk next to his record, questioning forever its legitimacy. Now he is the home run god and Bonds is the evil interloper. Because Aaron and a number of baseball’s bigwigs have said they won’t be present whenever Bonds ties or breaks the record, I’m cheering for this godson of the great Willie Mays all the more.

Go, Barry!

Amazon.com, I love you, but at the same time...

2007-07-24T06:32:00.000-05:00

I greatly admire Amazon.com for its commitment to getting merchandise to customers at the time guaranteed. I live on an island for much of the year, and even here, books arrive at the appointed time. If not, then Amazon makes it up to customers.

My Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is a prime example. The three copies I ordered did not arrive by July 21st, as promised. They did arrive on July 23d. So I get the books for no charge except the $5.97 shipping fee. That means three copies of Harry Potter for just under $2 (yes, two dollars!) per book. Not the $35 list price or the $18-$19 pre-release price of some of the big retailers.

But in dealing with customer service to straighten out a glitch in the initial order, I found myself talking to a customer service person in INDIA. Then when dealing with customer service to report that I had not received my books on the 21st, I found myself talking to a customer service person in THE PHILLIPINES.

On a personal side, I suppose I am benefitting from this outsourcing of jobs from the U.S. to countries with cheaper labor costs. But as an American I am angry that Amazon is paying foreigners to do jobs that Americans would be perfectly willing to do even for minimum wage, which just today went up to $5.85.

Genarlow Wilson: Update

2007-07-21T11:12:00.000-05:00

The Georgia State Supreme Court now has the ball in its court: to find a way to release this young man from a mandatory 10-year prison sentence for having had consensual oral sex with a fellow teenager (He was 17; she, 15) or to let him rot behind bars when not only his lawyers say this is cruel and unusual punishment but so does almost everybody else – including members of the prosecutorial side.

The former legislator who sponsored the bill that became an anti-child molestation law in 1995, told the court: "The General Assembly never intended for the Child Protection Act's harsh felony sentences designed to punish adults who prey on children to be used to punish consensual sexual acts between teenagers close in age."

No one has come up with a face-saving way to rectify this situation – even to free Wilson, now 21, on bond while “the wheels of justice” move ever so slowly and judges prepare to take off the month of August for vacation and politicians run for cover.

See my posting on this subject from earlier this month.

Who Knew? Michael Vick, Abused Dogs and the Federal Government

2007-07-21T10:34:00.000-05:00

Vick, the star $105 million quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons (not counting endorsements), has been indicted for involvement in a dog-fighting ring associated with his estate in Smithfield, Virginia. Who knew that this was a federal crime? Who knew this side of Vick’s life?

Nike has postponed releasing the latest in a line of $100-plus sneakers named for Vick, whose nickname is said to be "Ookie", though it has not yet dumped him. The Falcons are taking a wait-and-see approach. But there’s a groundswell out there among sports commentators, sports fans and animal rights activists to ban him from the National Football League.

My best friends among the four-legged species are cats – specifically, Frank Sinatra and Sammie Dee. But I understand the outrage among those for whom dogs are best friends. I don’t understand, however, why dog-fighting is a federal crime when other things orchestrated by humans against other humans or other animals are not. That’s another story.

But back to this Vick thing. He has been charged with "conspiracy to travel in interstate commerce in aid of unlawful activities and to sponsor a dog in an animal fighting venture." Not just one dog, mind you. He and his pals are charged with trafficking in dogs for not just Virginia but also from New York and North Carolina. As Michael Wilbon of the Washington Post has written: “No burst of speed is going to get him out of this one. There are no linemen to follow toward the pylon.” He apparently purchased for $34,000 a parcel of land at 1915 Moonlight Road that became Bad Newz Kennels. The “bad newz” was apparently Vick and his sadistic friends and the people attracted from far and wide for their pitbull prizefights.

The Smoking Gun reports: In the indictment's most harrowing parts, federal investigators describe what happened to some Bad Newz Kennels dogs that either lost matches or did not perform well in test fights. After a March 2003 loss by a female pit bull, codefendant Purnell Peace, “after consulting with Vick,” electrocuted the animal. In April, prosecutors allege, Vick, Peace, and Quanis Phillips, “executed approximately 8 dogs that did not perform well in ‘testing' sessions. These animals, the indictment claims, were killed "by various methods, including hanging, drowning, and slamming at least one dog's body to the ground."

You can check out the indictment at The Smoking Gun website:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0717072vick1.html

Michael Vick is an embarrassment to civility. Remember him giving the finger to fans? In a more dignified way, I think fans should do the same to him. Don’t wear his No. 7. Don’t buy his shoes. Don’t support his lifestyle.

Poverty

2007-07-17T10:04:00.000-05:00

While John McCain's presidential campaign is suffering from a poverty of ideas in which he really believes and that the conservatives he is courting really believe, John Edwards is touring some of the poorest areas of our country and, reminiscent of Bobby Kennedy, reminding us of how too many of us live. His message is about "presidential failure and governmental neglect." Sometimes celebrity, even political celebrity, is a good thing. Check out this site and all the links, which make my point:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12017456

People may poke fun at Edwards, a rich man, focusing so much attention on the poor, but I say: God bless!

Ultimate Perp Walk of Dumb and Dumber

2007-07-13T07:22:00.000-05:00

Start with stealing a luxury SUV from a car dealership to which they were connected. And then move on to shooting two NYPD officers who had pulled them over after verifying that the plates on the SUV were not registered to that SUV. And then fleeing, leaving behind the vehicle, shell casings, unfinished fried chicken dinners from a fast-food joint and guns traceable to them. Despite a circuitous route, they were easily tracked in the Poconos Mountains of Pennsylvania. Dexter Bostic and Robert J. Ellis earn the title of Dumb and Dumber. Throw in an “alleged” if you want. They, and the driver of the SUV (the boyfriend of Bostic's sister apparently), were identified from surveillance video. Those chicken plates yielded fingerprints and DNA. Bostic and Ellis both had ties to a car dealership from which the SUV had been taken. They were caught woefully unprepared as would-be hikers in the Poconos. Ellis was pulled from bushes with a jar of peanut butter.

As I watched their mug shots being telecast while they were on the lam with a reward pool of at least $64,000 on their heads and then after watching them, apprehended, being trotted out for the cameras, all I could think was: Heaven help them.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly says that all the resources of the department will be used to see that justice is done. But the police officers, especially the colleagues of Officers Russel Timoshenko, 23, and Herman Yan, 26, are in a vengeance-is-mine mood, especially because Timoshenko is paralyzed and on life support from being shot in the head. This is a telling sign, from The New York Times today:

“Officer Yan’s handcuffs were placed on Mr. Ellis’s hands. Officer Timoshenko’s had been used on Mr. Bostic earlier. ‘It’s an important symbol, and I think it shows that this is a very close-knit organization,’ Mr. Kelly said."

The perp walk is designed to humiliate and intimidate a suspect in a crime with extensive media interest. Law enforcement gets to show off its work; the hungry press is satiated; the rest of us, supposedly, can breathe a sigh of relief that we and the streets are a bit safer.

So, in a carefully choreographed show, and at an appointed time, the cops bring the suspect to the precinct or out of the precinct en route to an arraignment – a first appearance before a judge to determine basic details about the case, about the suspect, etcetera.

The ultimate perp walk took place in Brooklyn yesterday. Not only were reporters and photographers present for the show outside the 71st Precinct, but also were dozens of NYPD officers, men and women in blue, many of them black, forming a phalanx, there to let Dumb and Dumber know that, as that Sting song goes: “Every breath you take/And every move you make/Every bond you break, every step you take/I'll be watching you.”

They have a serious whipping in store out of view of the public. That’s the way the system works. So, with that in mind and as much as I think that Dumb and Dumber are reprehensible, their civil rights must be assured. Let’s be vigilant and, while holding our noses, demand that they be treated fairly.

Genarlow Wilson Needs Your Help

2007-07-11T09:53:00.000-05:00

If you aren’t familiar with the name, check out my piece at BET.com, under “news.” The long way to find the piece is to use this link:

http://www.bet.com/NR/exeres/4927A8FA-C78B-4A7F-BA42-580C489DAD91.htm?

Wilson behaved rather irresponsibly when he was 17 and, at a raucous party in 2003, had oral sex with a 15-year-old girl. No one – not even the girl’s mother – denies that the sex was consensual. But under a law then in effect in Georgia, Wilson was charged with child molestation and was ultimately sentenced to a mandatory 10-year prison term in 2005. If he did the same thing today, the maximum sentence he would face is a year in jail. Even though the law changed last year, it does not cover him.

Of course, something CAN be done about that if enough people pressure the right people. These include:

Attorney General Thurbert E. Baker, Office of the Attorney General, 40 Capitol Square SW, Atlanta, Ga. 30334. Phone: 404-656-3300. Fax: 404-657-8733.

Douglas County District Attorney David McDade
dmcdade@co.douglas.ga.us
Phone: 770-920-7292

According to the Rev. Raphael Warnock of Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, various officials say they are afraid that freeing Wilson – though it’s the right thing in his case – would “open the floodgates” and lead to chaos in the criminal justice system because other sex offenders would demand reconsideration of their cases. But, Warnock notes, of the roughly 1,300 sex offenders behind bars in Georgia, only seven involve people who were minors when prosecuted and not all of those seven were involved in consensual sexual acts.

“It just boils down to basic politics,” Warnock said of the officials hiding behind the old law and passing the buck – while Wilson remains in prison with an uncertain future.

Chinese Food

2007-06-28T14:13:00.001-05:00

Why are we so reliant upon imports from China -- whether food for our pets or toothpaste or, in the latest scare, certain varieties of fish? As long as the Chinese take shortcuts on their exports and, in this country, the FDA and other agencies take shortcourts on inspections, let's stay local and forget that part of the global choice.

Nigga ,Please!

2007-06-27T05:58:00.000-05:00

I don't use that N-word, but I am impressed with the way some young folks are dealing with this issue. Check out:

www.youthcomm.org

It starts with this:

The N-Word: Not in my vocabulary
By Desiree Bailey

"Nigga, please."
My friend Jeff and I were having a slight disagreement at school last month when he decided to call me the N-word.
Since we're both black, he somehow thought it was appropriate. But it's not to me. I hate to be referred to in that way by anyone, no matter what his race.
"Don't you ever call me a nigga," I said. And so our heated discussion began.

Read on>>

Amazing Grace

2007-06-26T14:27:00.000-05:00

For some time I’ve wondered who this Wintley Phipps guy is other than a favored Black gospel singer for the White House when it needs a Black gospel singer. Well, check this out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMF_24cQqT0

Paris Hilton, God -- and Who Gives a Heck?

2007-06-25T13:20:00.000-05:00

I'm so disappointed in news media for expending so many resources on covering this Paris Hilton Goes To Jail story while ignoring so many more important stories and firing, laying off or buying out serious journalists because they have limited resources!!!

I'm also outraged that any media company worth its weight in ethics would consider paying Ms. Hilton $1 million for an interview about her time behind bars. Think of how far that kind of money could go towards the rehabilitation of others who have done serious time without the benefit of private doctors or Barbara Walters as a mouthpiece.

Radio Golf Needs Your Seat in the Seats!

2007-06-23T11:45:00.000-05:00

Congratulations for that best-play Tony nomination! Bummer that this last of the late August Wilson’s 10 phenomenal plays about Blacks in the 20th century IS CLOSING after only 81 performances.

Are you feeling guilty? Good. Try to see it by July 1st at the Cort Theater in Manhattan. A friend of mine took a group of 80 to see it , and they had a wonderful time before the play socializing, during the play taking it all in and after the play debating its message.

This is an excerpt from a New York Times review by Ben Brantley in May:

"As Mr. Wilson portrays them, the 1990s are an arid, soul-sapping time for the black man. This is because his characters at last have the chance to enter the white man's kingdom of money, stocks and bonds and real estate and takeovers and, oh yes, the moneymaker's favorite pastime, golf. A poster of Tiger Woods figures in 'Radio Golf,' and it says much about the play's priorities that tearing it down becomes a small moral victory.

'''Radio Golf' centers on the Faustian figure of Harmond Wilks (Harry Lennix), a real estate developer poised to run for mayor of Pittsburgh. Harmond's wife, Mame (Tonya Pinkins), is in line to be head of the public relations office of the governor of Pennsylvania. And Harmond and his longtime friend Roosevelt Hicks (James A. Williams) are on the verge of clinching a big redevelopment deal to revitalize the Hill, erasing its history in the process.

'''This is the big time,' Roosevelt says to Harmond, 'nothing but blue skies.'

"But there's a blot on those skies in the form of a house that must be torn down to make way for a new shopping and apartment complex (which will include Whole Foods, Barnes & Noble and Starbucks, of course). The address of that house is 1839 Wiley. And if you know your August Wilson, you know this was the address of the ancient Aunt Ester, the former slave who lived for centuries on the Hill as the embodiment of a past that must never be forgotten."

Urbanworld/VIBE Film Festival

2007-06-23T11:25:00.000-05:00

You no doubt know about Sundance and maybe about Tribeca, but if you really care about Black images on the big and small screens, then you should find a way to support this effort, now in its 11th year.

There’s still time this weekend to check out some wonderfully engaging and thought-provoking film at the AMC 34th Street Theater (312 W. 34th St., between 8th and 9th Avenues in Manhattan). In my circles people are constantly complaining about the depiction of Blacks or the absence of Blacks on the screen. This festival showcases independent film that covers the range from serious to silly. Many of the films are about Blacks, but there are also films that cover others on the edges of recognition in this urban environment.

The website for learning about the schedule is: www.urbanworld.org. Some of the board members of the sponsoring organizations are Samuel L. Jackson, Danny Glover, Rosie Perez and Debbie Allen.

Beyond the festival, look for the films. Demand the films!

Here are descriptions of two:

DIVIDED WE FALL
Driven to action by the murder of a turbaned man in her community, a college student drives across America in the aftermath of 9/11 to discover stories that did not make the evening news. From the still-shocked streets of Ground Zero to the desert towns of the American West, Valarie Kaur’s inspiring journey uncovers remarkable stories of hate, violence, fear, and unspeakable loss – until she finds the heart of America halfway around the world.

761st

The 761st Tank Battalion became the first African-American armored unit to fight in WWII. Requested by General George S. Patton, they assisted in heavy combat during the famous Battle of the Bulge. Despite this, they faced racism at home and death overseas, fighting a war for many freedoms they did not enjoy back home in America. This is their story.

AL SHARPTON’S STRATEGY

2007-06-23T11:18:00.000-05:00

For everyone who wonders why Al Sharpton is in the public eye as a Black civil rights Superman when so many others are accomplishing so much more in a less flamboyant way, I recommend reading an online article in City Hall (www.cityhallnews.com) by Edward-Isaac Dovere.

A couple of snippets:

“Cynics say, ‘He plays the media,’” Sharpton said. “But if I play the media toward the end goal, that’s saying I’m competent.”
------------------------------------------

Sen. Hillary Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama are among those doing the math. Both want his presidential endorsement, and Sharpton has been making them wait. Both could benefit enormously in public perception from the reverend’s backing—Clinton by cementing the foothold in the African-American community her husband enjoyed in his own presidential runs, Obama by using it to help dispel a disconnect some prominent African-Americans have described feeling toward him. Both have made very strong appeals.

One thing many assume is weighing on Sharpton’s mind is jealousy of Obama, a worry that the Illinois senator’s ascendancy might mean that Sharpton gets eclipsed on the national political scene.

Sharpton dismisses this notion.

“We’re both athletes,” he said. “I box, he plays baseball. I mean, it’s different parts. It’s crazy.”
----------------------------------------------

[ I kind of get his point. Scary!!! Actually, as anyone who knows Obama knows, he plays BASKETBALL!!]

Blogger Interrupted Now Returns

2007-06-23T11:16:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the silence. Believe me, I did not run out of opinions two months ago. But I've had other matters with which to deal. I'm back at it!

Disparaging Blackfolks in the Language of Your Choice

2007-04-23T17:06:00.000-05:00

Why do so many people feel so free to dehumanize Black people and use racial slurs to promote their own aims? Why does this come so trippingly off the tongue – whether in Germany or China or the United States?

In Canada recently, a Black family purchased a brown leather sofa. Upon its delivery, the 7-year-old inquisitive girl in the family noticed that its color was described as “nigger brown.” Who can make up this stuff? Read the story that ran in the Toronto Star and that is now making its way around cyberspace:

Racial Slur on Sofa Label Stuns Family
http://www.thestar.com/Article/200265

This comes not long after the revelation that a German military training film was told conscripts to imagine that they were shooting Blacks in the Bronx. This is how the Associated Press reported the incident:

“The clip shows an instructor and a soldier in camouflage uniforms in a forest. The instructor tells the soldier, “You are in the Bronx. A black van is stopping in front of you. Three African-Americans are getting out and they are insulting your mother in the worst ways. ... Act.” The soldier fires his machine gun several times and yells an obscenity several times in English. The instructor then tells the soldier to curse even louder.”

Why do we permit ourselves to be such easy targets of racial stereotypes that even an over-the-hill radio jock can casually label a dignified and disciplined team of women basketballers, most of them Black, “nappy-headed hos”?

Whenever people say that if Black people can use such language and convey such attitude a la mode then why can’t people who are not Black, then make it clear that not all Black people permit this. As I said in a discussion at a Society of Professional Journalists meeting a week ago, some people find use of such historically demeaning terms “liberating,” but with me the only thing liberating about such usage in my presence is the liberating of my fist upside someone’s head when they even dare to call me the N word or even a “nappy-headed ho.” Not that I mind the acknowledgment that I wear my hair in the natural style, but that I don’t condone that plus the implication of promiscuity as a default definition of Black womanhood.

Nor do I tolerate hearing kids in my Harlem neighborhood who are not African American casually calling each other “nigger.”

In a recent trial in New York, a defendant – a white guy who’d grown up around Blacks and Latinos – argued that his use of the N word while walloping a Black guy was not indication of a hate crime. He had pronounced the word as “nigga” – a hip hop version of “my brother” or “my friend” or whatever. If he had used “nigger,” then that would have been the measure of racial contempt.

Pity the fool!

But didn’t too many of us open the door to such thinking? This is now global when even someone who can barely speak English and knows nothing of African-American history can feel as free as a Klansman to treat us as scum of the earth.

Back in Canada, the father of the 7-year-old, “explained the origins of the word to daughter Olivia, telling how it was a bad name that blacks were called during the days of slavery in the United States.”

We’d all be so lucky if use of that word had ended in 1865!

Let's Stop This Vicarious Guilt

2007-04-21T03:18:00.000-05:00

I read that some Korean Americans are afraid that they will somehow all be tarred with what Seung-Hui Cho did at Virginia Tech earlier this week. One woman said that upon hearing the killer of 32 students and faculty members was Asian, she said something like, "Please don't let him be Korean!"

I know that prayer. I've said it any number of times when something horrendous happens. "Please don't let him [or her] be Black!" I've said.

But I've come to realize that I'm not responsible for evil acts of other Black folks. I feel no racial guilt that a Black man named
Robert Williams apparently raped, tortured and tried to kill a Columbia University student who lives in my neighborhood in Harlem. If all that's been reported about him so far is true, this con is scum. This is how The New York Times reports what the NYPD Police Commissioner has said of what happened after this man forced his way into the student's apartment:

"Over the next 19 hours, [Commissioner Ray] Kelly said, the man tied the woman to her bed with computer cables and taped her mouth closed, raped and sodomized her repeatedly, burned her with hot water and bleach, slit her eyelids with scissors, and force-fed her an overdose of ibuprofen or a similar pain reliever.

"At one point last Saturday afternoon, Mr. Kelly said, the assailant took the woman’s A.T.M. card, withdrew $200 at a bodega on West 141st Street and returned to her apartment. A few hours later, he set fire to the woman’s futon and left her, unconscious, to die, Mr. Kelly said. She woke up to the smell of smoke, used the flames to melt the cable that bound her to the bed frame, and escaped, Mr. Kelly said."

Those of Korean ancestry -- whether citizens or legal residents or visitors -- need feel no special guilt about Cho. Nor should misguided avengers hold them accountable.

But all of US should empathize with Cho's family. Sun-Kyung Cho, his sister and a State Department contractor, said on behalf of the family: "We are humbled by this darkness. We feel hopeless, helpless and lost. This is someone that I grew up with and loved. Now I feel like I didn't know this person. We have always been a close, peaceful and loving family. My brother was quiet and reserved, yet struggled to fit in. We never could have envisioned that he was capable of so much violence."

Buckling Up and Battening Down

2007-04-15T11:23:00.000-05:00

Maybe you know this, maybe not. But New Jersey's multimillionaire, impervious-to-rules-the-rest-of-us-must-follow and rather arrogant Governor Jon Corzine nearly died a few nights ago in a car accident because he did not use a seat belt. He's in critical but stable condition even as the governance of New Jersey is also in critical but stable condition.

Buckle up for safety. Buckle up. Whether in the front seat, the back seat, the middle seat.

And as the weather does its thing this week (as all those fancy-dancer meteorologists and their satellite gizmos are telling us it will) batten down the hatches -- that is to say, be prepared. Make sure you know how to reach key relatives and friends, and vice versa. Same with vulnerable neighbors. Do you have phones and radios that don't require electricity? Do you have batteries? Do you have water and juice? Do you have foods that don't require cooking? Do you have what your pets need? Do you have first-aid kits? Do you have waterproof boots and other gear? Do you know what to do in case of tornados and Nor'easters homing in on YOUR home?

Just asking.

I'm Happy to Be Nappy

2007-04-15T10:32:00.000-05:00

In the US -- as well as elsewhere in the African Diaspora -- Blacks have internalized the White racist notions of worthiness that have been part and parcel of this society since at least the 17th century.

Over time, we've learned that the closer you came to the White measure of normality and beauty, the more worthy you were for acceptance into some parts of mainstream society -- whether as field slave or house slave, mistress or butler or even leader of the Black race. Good hair. High yellow skin color. Proper manners. In elementary school I had big fights with girls who seemed to get a pass because they were the teachers' pets based on such characteristics while, I, an unmistakably nappy-haired brown-skinned girl had to work for everything I sometimes begrudgingly earned from some of those teachers.

When Imus thought he was being funny by characterizing a dignified group of college students as "nappy-headed ho's", he had no idea into what he was tapping. Nor did his core audience, I'm sure. Even this weekend, some of the elites who appeared on his show to talk about politics or their new books, say they never tuned in to the program long enough to know what he was all about. But he obviously counted on his core audience to know what he was about and to yuk it up with him. He miscalulated this time -- and, maybe, as a nation we will be the better for that.

"I did a bad thing, but I'm a good person," Imus keeps telling himself -- and all of US. Maybe he inadvertently did a good thing.

Now White people know that while Black people like me who long ago rejected the perm and are happy to be nappy, there are many others who are struggling with their identity within a US culture that uses terms like "all American" or "girl next door" when the images are of blonde White women -- most of whom are skinny to boot! Whether it is a reflection of liberation or denial, some Black women are now sporting blonde do's. And while ads are more cosmetically subtle than those in the 1950s that pushed bleaching creams for Blacks who wanted to lighten their skin, there is a market for such products even today.

The pain and complexity involved in "nappiness" may have been foreign to many in Imus's audience. BUT, it was the reference to these All-American young women, disciplined scholar-athletes who came close to winning a national championshp after exceeding all pre-season expectations that made it possible for ALL Americans, especially Whites in corporate America, to understand that Imus's version of humor is really cruelty that perpetuates stereotypes and demeans their own daughters. So many television executives and advertisers noted that they were the fathers of daughters!

Now they need to use that heightened sensitivity to take a next step: Pull out of the corporate support for the worst of rap music and rap videos that depict females as sex objects, liberally using the B-word and the H-word while showing young women shaking their booties. Corporate America -- including some entities that yanked their support for Imus In The Morning -- is making huge money from this.

I'll take it as a sign that the US is finally getting it, when corporate America -- led by all those fathers with daughters -- pulls its money from where its sensitivity now dictates and when mainstream media like NBC and Fox and CNN devote as much attention to those who among Black folks have been crusading against the hip-hop filth for at least two decades as they have devoted to asking if Imus is the victim of a double standard.

April 15: When All Hell Broke Loose….

2007-04-15T02:36:00.000-05:00

...not just in baseball (See Red Barber's book by this name), but in US society. Sixty years ago, April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson became the first Black man to play in baseball’s Major League in the modern era. We have to add that “in the modern era” because long before the 20th century, Blacks played professional baseball with White folks, just as Blacks were jockeys in the big-time racing circuits.

He was 28 years old. When he died at age 53, many people said that baseball and the stress of being the first, of being abused initially by not only fans and opposing team players but by his own teammates, of having to ever be the gentleman and not strike back, cut his life short.

Jackie Robinson, No. 42 for the Brooklyn Dodgers, forced the US to deal with its racism. To this day many older Blacks are fans of the Dodgers (now the Los Angeles Dodgers) because of Jackie Robinson.

In honor of his accomplishments on the field, many Major League Baseball players and coachs -- and the NY Mets' manager Willie Randolph -- will wear No. 42 today (Apr. 15).

But to really appreciate Robinson, one must know about the man off the field, the man who challenged the status quo in a segregated Army prior to his baseball career and challenged the economic status quo after his baseball career by helping found a bank for Black people in the 1960s. He was a prominent participant in the 1963 March on Washington. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Robinson to bring yourself up to speed on Robinson if he’s not in your pantheon of people to be admired and whose spirit and courage are worth emulating.

The Imus Mess

2007-04-13T01:52:00.000-05:00

I

IMUS was never a must for me

Imus is going down – at least on MSNBC on television and CBS on radio and with major advertisers and with politicians and journalists and other celebrities who’ve lent credibility to his show so many years.

I’ve never listened to or watched Imus or any other shock jock. Just as I refused to watch a sitcom that famously billed itself as a show about nothing (Seinfeld), I’ve refused to participate in the shock jock cult. There’s too much to be shocked about in the real world to support repugnant, outrageous, insulting commentary as entertainment, often at the expense of the underdog.

Why Imus and his producer felt the need to denigrate 10 young women who had overcome great odds to reach the final game in the NCAA basketball championship is beyond understanding. These young women, ages 18 to 20, were not “nappy headed” (Most seem to have perms, for god’s sake!). And there is absolutely nothing to indicate that these very disciplined, very academically sound young women are “whores”. (Definitions: “a prostitute; a person considered sexually promiscuous; a person considered as having compromised principles for personal gain”)

Hmmm. That last definition sounds more like Imus than the Rutgers team.

II

Where are White women?

Imus did not just insult Blacks, but also women. Quickly this became an Imus versus “the Black community” conflict. The sexism in his no-infamous line has pretty much been ignored except by a handful of Black women. And so I ask again: Where are White women?

III

There is power in protest

If anything, this fallout from Imus’s on-air idiocy has demonstrated the power of speaking out and of making economic demands that can influence social policy. It was one thing for the Rev. Al Sharpton to use his various bully pulpits to speak out; this went to a whole new level when major advertisers listened and decided to withdraw their support for Imus’s show.

Vote with your hands. Change the dial. Don’t listen to the Imuses of the airwaves. But if the other Imuses out there say something as despicable as he did, don’t fear to use the power of the purse. Encourage advertisers to withdraw their support.

I’m encouraged by this mobilization of this particular coalition of the willing. Now it needs to carry on to assault those aspects of hip-hop culture that have usurped that culture and turned it into something that makes an Imus comfortable with referring to Black women as whores. There are big corporate bucks out there behind this aspect of hip-hop. Let’s go after them.

IV

Post-embarrassment “therapy”

Imus didn’t rush into therapy for alcoholism or temporary mental illness or whatever the way other celebrities have done after getting caught with their inner-hatred unleashed and facing the loss of income.

But that 2 ½ hours at the New Jersey Governor’s Mansion with the Rutgers team and its coaches must have been more intense than anything Isaiah Washington or Mel Gibson experienced during their rush-to-therapy after expressions of homophobia (Washington of television’s Grey’s Anatomy) and anti-Semitism (Gibson, the actor, director and producer) or racism (Michael Richards, the comic most famous as a character on Seinfeld).

V

Once again Sen. McCain called it wrong

As various Imus regulars – politicians, journalists, etcetera – announced their intent to boycott Imus’s show, McCain said he accepted Imus’s apologies and would gladly return to Imus In the Morning.

He can’t get it right. Just a few days ago, after visiting a market in Baghdad surrounded by about 100 heavily-armed soldiers and with military helicopters hovering overhead and sharpshooters positioned on rooftops, he came back espousing the Bush administration party line: The streets are much safer in Baghdad these days; the war is being won.

And then he had to admit, after public humiliation by not just US bloggers but also by Iraqi civilians who know otherwise, that he’d been wearing rose-colored glasses and had “misspoke.”

Is this man ready for his closeup as a viable presidential candidate?

Money, Money, Money, MONEY!! But...

2007-04-04T10:28:00.000-05:00

What does it all mean that the leading Democratic candidates and, on the Republican side, Mitt Romney, have raised so much money this soon into the presidential campaign season -- or that Sen. John McCain is panicking at trailing not just Romney but his own expectations?

Sen. Clinton has raised $26 million in the first quarter of the year. Sen. Obama has come on strong, "nipping at her heels," as one TV news anchor put it, with $25 million raised this quarter in a shorter period of actual fundraising. John Edwards has raised $14 million.

While McCain, the presumed frontrunner according to pundits and his own sense of self, raised $12.5 millon, that was dwarfed by Romney's $20 million. New York's former mayor, Rudy Giuliani, has raised $15 million.

For now, it's the ability to raise money that seems to influence news coverage of who's on first in each party. But I want to hear a whole lot more about issues and less about money and popularity and star quality.

Coach Eddie Robinson Dies

2007-04-04T06:37:00.000-05:00

I trust that you've heard of Eddie Robinson, the legendary and long-lived coach at Grambling University. If not, make yourself aware. The Associated Press has reported that he died at age 88 last night.

More from its report:

"Super Bowl MVP quarterback Doug Williams, one of Robinson's former players, said the former Grambling State University coach died about 11:30 p.m. Tuesday. Robinson had been admitted to Lincoln General Hospital on Tuesday afternoon.

"Robinson had been suffering from Alzheimer's, which was diagnosed shortly after he was forced to retire following the 1997 season, in which he won only three games. His health had been declining for years, and he had been in and out of a nursing home during the last year.

"In his 57 years in football, Robinson set the standard for victories with a 408-165-15 record. John Gagliardi of St. John's, Minn., passed Robinson in 2003 and has 443 wins.

"Robinson's teams had only eight losing seasons and won 17 Southwestern Athletic Conference titles and nine national black college championships.

"He sent more than 200 players to the NFL, including seven first-round draft choices.

"It was a career that spanned 11 presidents, several wars and the civil-rights movement. His den was packed with trophies, representing virtually every award a coach can win. He was inducted into every hall of fame for which he was eligible."

Thanks, Coach. Rest in peace.

Martin Luther King Jr.:A Sobering Anniversary

2007-04-04T06:02:00.000-05:00

Today marks the 39th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis while supporting the efforts of sanitation workers to achieve dignity and better working conditions. He has been dead as long as he was alive. 39 years.

In that relatively short, Jesus-like lifespan, he accomplished so much. From the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, he was there in the lead of a nonviolent army. He reluctantly took on the role of public leadership of the Montgomery bus boycott triggered by the arrest of Rosa Parks in 1955; he so eloquently expressed his -- and Black America's -- dream in August 1963; he just as eloquently, but not so well publicized, expressed the nightmare that was reality after four young girls were killed in the terroristic bombing of a Birmingham church later in 1963. King connected the dots between a fall-off in federal budgetary support for President Johnson's War on Poverty and his escalation of the war in Vietnam. What a parallel to what we are experiencing now, as the US pours billions into Iraq, pallets of which have disappeared, unaccounted for, but can't get its act together on resurrecting Gulf communities this long after Hurricane Katrina!

King's works and his philosophy, his challenges and his courage should be on our minds every day as we vow to do our very best to make this a better world.

Honors for First Black TopGuns from WWII

2007-04-03T08:28:00.000-05:00

For a younger generation, the name Tuskegee may not mean all that much. But for people at least my age – 51 – it stands for much. It is the Alabama town where Booker T. Washington founded a school now known as Tuskegee University. It is where the federal government shamelessly abused Black men in an experiment observing the effects of syphilis while withholding medical care.

But it is also where a unit of young Black airmen formed what became known as The Tuskegee Airmen. That President Roosevelt (with the prodding of Eleanor Roosevelt among others) permitted the airmen to be trained to fight in World War II was itself a milestone, but the record amassed by those fighter pilots and their support team was even more historic.

At long last, they are receiving their due – those who are still alive, that is. Each day, as with all WWII vets, their numbers decline. But a few days ago 300 of them and their family members – coming from New York, Missouri, Michigan, North Carolina, Iowa, Ohio, Maine, Georgia and Florida, among others states – were honored at the US Capitol with the rarely given Congressional Gold Medal.

"To my heroes, so many of you have said thank you," Rep. Charles Rangel told them during a ceremony that included Congressional leaders and President Bush. "It doesn't work that way. We cannot say enough thank-yous to you." Rangel, from Harlem, and Sen. Carl Levin, from Michigan, sponsored a bill to award the airmen with the medal, first presented in 1776 – to George Washington.

Bush told them: "I would like to offer a gesture to help atone for all the unreturned salutes and unforgivable indignities. And so, on behalf of the office I hold, and a country that honors you, I salute you for the service to the United States of America." He actually pulled off a pretty crisp military salute.

We should all salute them -- as well as the contributions many of them went on to make to their communities in civic affairs, in politics, in business, in education.

To Everything There's a Season...

2007-04-02T11:35:00.000-05:00

...and a very special one begins this week!

For some, spring is a March date on the calendar or the day we manipulate time by going into daylight savings mode.

For me, however, this week brings the convergence of what this season really means.

On the secular side, the NCAA men's championship will be decided tonight: Ohio State or Florida? Tomorrow, the women's championship will be decided. Rutgers or Tennessee? The baseball season has begun -- officially starting yesterday with the NY Mets whipping the St. Louis Cardinals 6-1; but for me, really, today, when the Yankess take on the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in Yankee Stadium.

On the sacred side, this is Holy Week. Sunday for Christians marked Palm Sunday, the day when Jesus triumphantly entered Jerusalem, greeted by followers bearing palm branches en route to sharing the Passover with his disciples. By the end of that week, he would have been betrayed, arrested, tortured, crucified and then, as Christians believe, resurrected. So this week I'll share a seder meal with my Jewish friends observing Passover and do Good Friday and Easter with my extended Christian family.

Then I'll go out to the country and start my gardening.

Spring has, indeed, sprung!

Jazz Lovers Alert: Tribute Tonight to Michael Brecker

2007-04-02T09:31:00.000-05:00

Brecker, a saxophonist, sideman and band leader, died in January. Tonight on WBAI-NY, 99.5 FM and via webcast (www.wbai.org [[The "Listen Now" icon on the upper right of the home page]) This takes place from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern time.

From my friend Greg Thomas, comes this information: "In addition to performance examples over a quarter century span with Michael Brecker as a sideman and leader, we’ll hear his own voice in interviews, revealing a gentle and soulful man behind the astounding technique he displayed on tenor sax."

Special guests include:

· Alto saxophonist David Sanborn, long-time friend and colleague of Brecker, and

· Bret Primack, producer of a moving video tribute to Brecker on his Bird Lives videoblog. Bret also hosts the JazzVideoLand channel at YouTube.

Watch Your Pets

2007-03-31T07:24:00.000-05:00

I felt relief upon learning that canned pet foods were on the list of those to be avoided during this crisis in the food supply. My cats, Frank Sinatra and Sammie Dee, mainly eat dry food – and a by-prescription-only dry food at that.

Now, the federal Food and Drug Administration is saying that the pet foods to avoid may include dry food. So now I am carefully scrutinizing not just the labels of the food, but also watching my cats like a hawk, so to speak. They are definitely not lethargic; they chase each other through the house as always; they like water but don’t seem to be drinking any more than usual; and I haven’t seen any unusual vomiting or any diarrhea. I read the label on a bag of their food and did not find wheat or wheat gluten or additives that include ethoxyquine or propylene glycol. Their brand does include the additives BHT and BHA and one expert on a television show this morning said when perusing labels, look for them.

To learn if your pet food is on the list of brands to be avoided for now, call Menu Foods, which distributes products sold under a variety of names: 1-866-895-2708 or go to the Website: http://www.menufoods.com/recall/. Also check the Hills Pet Nutrition Inc., which has recalled one of its prescription products for cats: http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/hills303_07.html

My cats consume a different prescription product than the one Hills is recalling. According to wire services: "Hills Pet Nutrition is recalling all Prescription Diet m/d Feline dry cat food, which contained wheat gluten from the same supplier used by Menu Foods - the Canadian company that has recalled 60 million cans and packets made between December and March. No other Hill's Prescription Diet or Science Diet products are affected, said the company, a division of Colgate-Palmolive Co."

Also check the FDA site: www.fda.gov

I appreciate what one retailer, Waggin' Tails, whose products I use (Yes, I spoil my cats with all sorts of gadgets and other comforts!), said in an e-mail blast to its customers: "For over 12 years, we have devoted ourselves to the health and well-being of your pets. Our philosophy is quite simple here. Menu Foods produced toxic food. Without specific information that clearly identifies the problem and assures us that the problem is isolated to just the foods on the recall list, we do not feel safe offering anything produced in their facilities. We will continue to update you as new information is available. Again, we extend our deepest sympathy for anyone with a dog or cat affected by this event. We invite any questions to us at info@waggintails.com"

Let’s be careful out there!

Rev. Jackson Likes Barack Obama

2007-03-31T07:22:00.000-05:00

After some Blacks in prominent positions have raised questions about Sen. Obama’s bonafides as the candidate Black voters should embrace as THEIR candidate, the most visible leader in the civil rights community ended speculation about where he stands.

On Thursday, the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. told the Association Press, "He has my vote."

Among Blacks, that endorsement may go far. But we are a multifaceted people with multiple interests. When Jackson sought the presidency in 1984 and 1988, Black pride was a great part of his appeal. But we are past that. Now Obama’s positions must be weighed against those of others who are campaigning for the nominations of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.

Boys Choir of Harlem Founder Dies

2007-03-23T16:36:00.000-05:00

Walter Turnbull, whose vision and passion led to the creation of the renowned Boys Choir of Harlem, but whose artistic and personal ego led him to remain in charge of the choir to its detriment in recent years, died a few hours ago.

This is how the news was reported locally in New York City by New York 1 News:
http://www.ny1news.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=1&aid=67985

Rest in peace.

We'll make assessments later. Check out my posting at www.bet.com.

My First Colonoscopy

2007-03-20T01:44:00.000-05:00

I'd postposed this procedure twice, but finally got it done yesterday. And, now as with all new converts, I am proselytizing.

Get yourself tested to determine if you are at risk of various colo-rectal problems, including cancer. Check out this informative Web site:

http://www.webmd.com/colorectal-cancer/Colonoscopy-16695

Other than making up your mind to have the exam, the hardest part is prepping the day before, when you drink a fluid designed to, shall we say, "clean out your system." Then there's no eating until after the exam the next day. The procedure was relatively brief and very much painless as I was admnistered a sedative intravenously.

I'll do this again in five years.

This “Blood” Cherokee vs “Black Cherokee Freedmen” Issue Won’t Go Away

2007-03-18T01:48:00.000-05:00

The Cherokee Nation, that rump group of Native Americans who are more proud of their White heritage than their Black heritage, voted to expel Blacks from the nation. That means they have to share $$$$ coming to the tribe via US government and gaming enterprises, with fewer people.

Among the many who have spoken up about this is the Congressional Black Caucus, which, according to the Associated Press, is asking the federal government “to weigh in on the legality of a vote by the Cherokee Nation earlier this month to revoke citizenship from descendants of former tribal slaves."

This from the AP: "Saying they were 'shocked and outraged,' more than two dozen members of the Congressional Black Caucus signed a letter to the Interior Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs questioning the 'validity, legality, as well as the morality' of the March 3 vote.

"'The black descendant Cherokees can trace their Native American heritage back in many cases for more than a century,' said Rep. Diane Watson (D-Calif.). 'They are legally a part of the Cherokee Nation through history, precedent, blood and treaty obligations.'”

Read what Mike Shelton, a member of the state legislature in Oklahama, says about how the Cherokee Nation is marching on the wrong trail: http://www.muskogeephoenix.com/opinion/local_story_070192128.html

 

50 Shots; Black Man Dead

2007-03-16T17:28:00.000-05:00

This has been disturbing from the first, when Sean Bell, a young man literally hours away from his wedding ceremony in November, was gunned down by five cops who for some reason thought he was something other than a young man leaving a strip joint with friends on the eve of his wedding.

Apparently three cops have been indicted on charges of manslaughter.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/17/nyregion/17grand.html?hp

This won't be official until Monday. But officials -- elected and appointed and self-appointed --have been encourgaging US to be cool, to chill, to not go mau-mauing no matter what the results.

OK. But let's also put ourselves in the shoes of cops on the beat in a bad neighborhood trying to make the nabe safe for all of US. This is not an easy issue, is it?

St. Patrick's Day

2007-03-16T08:28:00.000-05:00

The united states of us requires effort.

I have heard so many people say that they have no knowledge of what St. Patrick’s Day is all about except that it involves Irish people and drunkenness. There is much more to St. Patrick’s Day than that.

I have heard so many people say that they know nothing about Black History Month because they are not Black. Or they don't understand Chinese New Year because they are not Chinese. Or they ignore Columbus Day because they are not Italian.

I have heard so many people presume that Thanksgiving is about turkeys and football, but don’t realize the religious base for it. Or don’t see a commonality of purpose in celebrating Thanksgiving and Kwanzaa or Easter and Passover.

If the US in the United States are to truly be that, we need to reach beyond our limited concepts of from whence we’ve come. Even if that means rejecting some of that which our parents or teachers have burdened us with.

I have heard too many people say that Christianity is Catholicism and that’s it. As a good and faithful Baptist, I try to explain Protestants to them.

I make a point of expressing my Irishness this time of the year and using the opportunity of the holiday to generate discussions – in pubs no less! – about the connections between Blacks and Irish in this country. The Irish were considered the “niggers” of the British empire and then, after a few decades here, considered themselves to be White. Google the Draft Riots for a start. A lot of people of Irish backgrounds ended up in the antebellum South and a lot of us are their descendants, whether acknowledged or not.

In this nation, with all our resources, there is no excuse for not knowing more about our neighbors and workplace colleagues.

I am proudly Irish this weekend – and am preparing to cook my corn beef-and-cabbage luncheon for friends of any hue and religiosity – after an Irish breakfast at one of the nearby firehouses in Harlem.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Let's Find This Cretin!

2007-03-15T00:34:00.000-05:00

A guy beating up on old ladies? My first thought was: Let me at him! But, first of all, he has to be caught. This brother is no brother. And I am so proud that the group of Black police officers has offered a reward for the capture of this predator. Who beats up old ladies for $33? A punk. A loser.

Someone out there knows who this is. But to see the video that captured him on tape attacking a 101-year-old woman in the lobby of her building, check this out:

http://www.nbc4.tv/news/11231241/detail.html

If anyone has any doubts about turning this creep in to the authorities, get over it.

As of a few days ago, more than 1,000 tips had come in to the New York City Police Department, but so far this guy is still out there. See: http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/ny-nymug115125712mar11,0,6702012.story?coll=ny-nynews-print

Keeping the Malians in Our Thoughts

2007-03-12T06:55:00.000-05:00

Today will be one of the saddest days for the families and friends of the 10 victims of that raging house fire in the Bronx last week. Today comes the funerals and, for five victims, burial in a New Jersey cemetery. Others will be flown to Mali , one of the poorest countries in the world, for burial in family plots.

The public response has been heartwarming with people bringing everything from teddy bears to food to cash. But we have also been reminded that, in situations such as this, there will always be predators. By one account, a man in the neighborhood set up a container to raise money for the families, collected lots of it within a few minutes, then absconded. The City of New York, the State of New York and various civic associations have pledged to do all they can to help the surviving family members. The New York Yankees' principal owner, George Steinbrenner, has offered to cover the funeral costs. A real estate developer has offered, for free, to rebuild the gutted home on Woodycrest. Air France, for free, will fly the Malian funeral party to Mali. Politicians like U.S. Rep. Jose Serrano will try to ease immigration restrictions to permit family members, including a father of some of the children, to be able to travel to Mali for the burials and return to this country even though there are some "immigration papers issues" (You know, red tape?)

As I said in an earlier posting, the neighborhood Islamic center -- and site of the funerals -- is receiving donations. If you want to contribute, here's the information:

Magassa-Soumare Family Fund
c/o Islamic Cultural Center
371 E. 166th Street
Bronx, NY 10456

The telephone number you may call is 718-293-5323.

The Cherokee Nation's "Ethnic Cleansing" Is Not Acceptable

2007-03-12T06:47:00.000-05:00

I could not believe what I was learning: The descendants of Native Americans who once owned slaves and later under a federal treaty and other legalities, made the slaves and their descendants citizens in the Cherokee Nation, were stripping them of their rights. The audacity! The racism! The greed! See how the official Cherokee newspaper, The Phoenix, reported this: http://www.cherokeephoenix.org/News/News.aspx?StoryID=2480

The New York Times explains some of the background to this in a Mar. 8 editorial (www.nytimes.com):

“This bitter dispute dates to the treaties of 1866, when the Cherokee, Seminole and Creek agreed to admit their former slaves as tribal members in return for recognition as sovereign nations. The tribes fought black membership from the start — even though many of the former slaves were products of mixed black and Indian marriages.

“The federal courts repeatedly upheld the treaties. But the federal government fanned the flames when a government commission set out in the 1890s to create an authoritative roll of tribal membership. Instead of placing everyone on a single roll, it made two lists. The so-called blood list contained nonblack Cherokees, listed with their percentage of Indian ancestry. The freedmen’s list included the names of any black members, even those with significant Cherokee ancestry.”

The actual election results – 3 to 1 for expelling descendants of slaves from membership, including access to health and educational benefits as well as any profits from tribal gambling enterprises -- can be seen at the official tribal site: http://www.cherokee.org/TribalGovernment/Election/home.aspx?section=ResultsSE&year=2007

At www.indianz.com, Tim Giago offers an explanation, but reaches, as far as I am concerned, an untenable conclusion. See: http://www.indianz.com/News/2007/001790.asp

We sometimes gloss over the complicated history between Native Americans and Black Americans. But, since attending a journalism convention some years ago in Atlanta, where journalists of color – including Native Americans and Blacks, among others – I have never forgotten how the Cherokees in their capital city, New Echota, thought of themselves as White as any “actual” White Southerners. (http://gastateparks.org/info/echota/) Now some of them are behaving like the Whites in the Thomas Jefferson family who refuse to acknowledge Black descendants of Jefferson, refusing them such benefits as membership in various Jefferson societies and the right to burial on the Jefferson estate in Virginia.

Of course, there are dissidents among any group. So there are members of the Cherokee Nation who are fighting against the expulsion of the Cherokee Freedman, just as some White Jefferson family members challenge the exclusion of Black Jefferson descendants.

A member of the Cherokee tribal council, Taylor Keen, has been quoted in various newspapers as saying: “This is a sad chapter in Cherokee history. But this is not my Cherokee Nation. My Cherokee Nation is one that honors all parts of her past.”

Now it is up to the courts, and perhaps the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, to prevent this injustice being perpetrated by a people who should recall how much the tribe suffered when forced out of Southern states in the 1800s. The Trail of Tears, this episode was called. Now, perhaps the way that abused children often become abusers, the Cherokee Nation is promoting a 21st century version of that Trail of Tears.

After the Fire: The New York Yankees Step Up to the Plate

2007-03-09T23:10:00.000-05:00

George Steinbrenner, the Yankees' principal owner, has announced that the team will pick up the costs of the funerals of the nine people -- including eight children -- who died in that awful fire in the Bronx, not too far from Yankee Stadium. Funerals will take place Monday. Some will be buried in New York; others will be flown home to Africa for burial in Mali.

People of lesser means than the Yankees' organization have been dropping by a makeshift memorial outside 1022 Woodycrest Avenue and giving money that by tonight amounted to at least $20,000, according to a WNBC television reporter.

The neighborhood Islamic center is receiving donations. If you want to contribute, here's the information:

Magassa-Soumare Family Fund
c/o Islamic Cultural Center
371 E. 166th Street
Bronx, NY 10456

The telephone number you may call is 718-293-5323.

"We Have A Fire!"

2007-03-09T10:04:00.000-05:00

I cannot imagine the horror at that four-story house on Woodycrest Avenue in the Bronx Wednesday night when it went up in flames – possibily because of the misuse of an obviously much-needed space heater – and forced grownups to make split decisions about how to save the lives of as many of their family members as possible, including about a dozen children.

In the end, eight children, some as young as seven months old, perished. God bless their souls. But others survived because one of the adults tossed them out of a third-floor window of the house to Good Samaritans on the ground.

If somehow you have missed this story, catch up with The New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/nyregion/index.html

Also: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bronx-Fire.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
("Mosques Comfort Survivors of NYC Fire")

… and with one of the local NYC television stations:

www.wnbc.com
www.wabc.com
www.wcbstv.com
www.ny1news.com

So far, there is no really solid information on how to help the family – this was an extended immigrant family from Mali, in West Africa. But they obviously need everything from diapers to dollars. When I learn more, I will post more.

But be vigilant yourselves. When we switch to Day Light Savings Time Saturday night/Sunday morning, have fresh batteries installed in your smoke detectors. And work out family evacuation plans in case of fire. More importantly, I suppose: Know fire safety rules. Talk to your neighborhood firefighters.

Oh, Heck. My Family Didn't Win...

2007-03-07T08:53:00.000-05:00

Upon hearing that one winner of this humongous MegaMillions lottery was someone in Georgia and then getting a constant busy signal at my mother's phone in Conyers, Ga., I just let myself imagine that she'd won and that the line was busy with congratulation calls. Of course, I was thinking that in her generosity, if she had won, she'd kick a million or so my way!

Oh, well...

Someone had left the phone off the hook.

Congratulations to whoever won. And please be smart and generous in handling all that cash. Remember Luke 12:48:

"For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask more."

Farrakhan Leaves the Stage

2007-03-05T11:30:00.000-05:00

Now that Louis Farrakhan is reducing his role in the Nation of Islam – because of age and bad health – it is time for that organization to rethink its place in the Muslim world and to consider becoming aligned with orthodox Islam.

The Black Muslim movement, begun in Detroit in the 1930s, is rather passé. Malcolm X had turned in the orthodox direction after his expulsion from the NOI and his spiritual journey to Mecca; W. D. Mohammed, a son of the NOI’s founder, and his followers pursue a truer path of Islam than the NOI. Some of Mohammed’s followers consider Farrakhan’s to be members of a cult.

I consider Farrakhan to be a hatemongering, but charming, fanatic. The former entertainer managed to charm his way into some semblance of respectability through such events as the Million Man March. At his two-hour valedictory speech, he was joined on the podium, according to The Chicago Sun-Times, by the singer Anita Baker, hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, US Rep. John Conyers and leaders of organizations involved in reviving New Orleans post-Katrina.

Vibert White, a former NOI minister who is a professor of public history at the University of Central Florida, told The Christian Science Monitor: "His tone has changed because of a changing society. But his history has been one of hostile language, inflammatory language, elements of separation and segregation and 'America is the whore of the planet Earth' - he's not going to change those views overnight."

And, in The New York Times, a spokesman for W. D. Mohammed said of the NOI after Farrakhan: ''In the final analysis, they have no option but to move in the direction we are or to just dissipate or disappear. This community is going to reconcile itself to pure Islam and reconcile itself to being American citizens who are part of a multicultural society.''

I’ve been no great fan of Farrakhan, but I do recognize that this changing of the guard is historical. "My time is up," he said in Detroit. Good. But in the Christian tradition I wish Farrakhan peace and blessings.

Bloody Sunday, Part Two

2007-03-04T15:49:00.000-05:00

If this was a competition, Barack Obama won in the Bloody Sunday Showdown in Selma, Alabama, today. No question.

Hillary Clinton gave a speech at the First Baptist Church. Barack Obama Jr. gave a politically-tinged sermon at the Brown A.M.E. Church, which was headquarters for the March 7, 1965, march for voting rights that ended in the beating and battering and tear gassing of the participants. He paid homage to the “Moses generation,” some of whom were in the congregation: the men and women who did so much to lead Blacks out of bondage but never quite made it to the Promised Land.

"We are in the presence today of a lot of Moseses. They are giants whose shoulders we stand on. They are people who battled on not just the behalf of African Americans, but on behalf of all Americans for America's soul....Like Moses, they challenged Pharoah, powers who said that some are on top and others are at the bottom and that's the way it's always going to be."

His is the “Joshua generation,” he said, tasked with the obligation to continue the journey and to move in directions the Moses generation could not even have imagined. "It's because they marched that the next generation hasn't been bloodied so much" and has excelled in many fields, including politics.

Not so subtlely silencing his critics about his racial identity, he recounted the life story of his Black grandfather, still called a "houseboy" when he was in his 60s in colonial Kenya and required to carry a passbook to get from one place in White-controlled Kenya to another part. But he dreamed and passed on his hope to his son, Barack Obama (Sr.), who benefitted from a US program to bring Africans to the US for education and to repair the American image abroad as a result of the well-publicized injustices and brutalities of the civil rights era. The possibilities for the Obamas changed "because some folks were willing to march across a bridge."

"So don't tell me I don't have a claim on Selma, Alabama. Don't tell me I'm not coming home when I come to Selma, Alabama. I'm here because somebody marched for our freedom."

His message, beyond connecting his family’s racial odyssey and his own to the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, was not that different from Clinton’s. They both said that the march must continue.

“We have to finish the march,” Hillary said. “That is the call to our generation, to our young people.”

"There are still some battles that need to be fought, some rivers that need to be crossed," Barack said.

And referring to God's message to Joshua, Barack admonished his listeners to “Be strong and have courage.” Blacks seem to be warming to that message.

The NAACP Is At It Again...Lost!

2007-03-04T15:06:00.000-05:00

This news comes from the Associated Press today: The president, Bruce Gordon, who was hailed as the next great wave of leadership of this venerable civil rights organization, has given up -- and quit.

NAACP President Resigns After 19 Months
By ERIN TEXEIRA
The Associated Press
Sunday, March 4, 2007; 2:57 PM

NEW YORK -- NAACP President Bruce S. Gordon is quitting the civil rights organization, leaving after just 19 months at the helm, he told The Associated Press Sunday.

Gordon cited growing strain with board members over the group's management style and future operations.

"I believe that any organization that's going to be effective will only be effective if the board and the CEO are aligned and I don't think we are aligned," Gordon said. "This compromises the ability of the board to be as effective as it can be."

He spoke by phone from Los Angeles, where he had just attended the taping of the NAACP Image Awards.

Dennis C. Hayes, general counsel of the Baltimore-based National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is expected to serve as interim president, Gordon said.

Hayes filled the same role after Kweisi Mfume resigned the presidency in 2004 after nine years.

Gordon said that while the NAACP is an advocacy organization, it needs to be more focused on service and finding solutions.

"I'm used to a CEO running an organization, with the board approving strategy and policy," Gordon said. "But the NAACP board is very much involved."

© 2007 The Associated Press

Bloody Sunday, Part One

2007-03-04T11:37:00.000-05:00

If the New York Times' Maureen Dowd had her way, the bloody part of this commemoration of a very important day in US history, would come from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton duking it out in Selma, Ala.

But Bloody Sunday is much more sacred than that. The name comes from that date in March 1965 when scores of Black people, including a very young John Lewis who is now a senior congressman from Georgia, had the crap beat out of them as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in a march to the capital, Montgomery, to demand the right to vote. Because so many people, including those in the White House, were horrified at the televised beatings, another march was scheduled, with Martin Luther King Jr. leading the line of advocates along with clergy of various faiths who came in as reinforcements. And President Johnson decided to use his muscle to convince Congress to enact the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

This is an account of what happened that Bloody Sunday, taken from Juan Williams' Eyes on the Prize, a riveting companion book to the PBS series of the same name in the 1980s. Look for the book in your local stores; the documentary is available on DVD.

"'When we arrived at the apex of the Edmund Pettus Bridge," recalls Lewis, 'we saw a sea of blue[-clad] Alabama state troopers.' Gas masks hung from the belts of the troopers, who were slapping billy clubs against their hands....Major John Cloud ordered them to turn back. 'It would be detrimental to your safety to continue this march,' he said....Fifty policemen moved forward, knocking the first ten to twenty demonstrators off their feet. People screamed and struggled to break free as their packs and bags were scattered across the pavement. Tear gas was fired, and then lawmen on horseback charged into the stumbling protesters....'The police were riding along on horseback beating people,' remembers Andrew Young. 'The tear gas was so thick you couldn't get to where the people were who needed help'....Television coverage of the police assault interrupted the networks' regular programming; ABC broke into its broadcast of the film Judgment at Nuremberg. 'When that beating happened at the foot of the bridge, it looked like war,' recalls Mayor Smitherman. 'That went all over the country. And the people, the wrath of the nation came down on us.'"

Hillary is showing up with her ace in the hole for courting Blacks, former President Bill Clinton. Obama is speaking in the church that was headquarters for the Selma campaign, the Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, and he has John Lewis at his side, along with others like Joseph Lowery who were King's aides and successors.

But rather that political strategizing, this day should be one for remembering what Blacks and some of their White allies went through to gain the right to vote that had been included in the US Constitution since 1870, but never really enforced. In essence, Blacks gained the right to vote in 1965 because of Bloody Sunday.

So Does THIS Make Obama "Black Enough"?

2007-03-03T14:38:00.000-05:00

As you know, I reject this litmus test that some Blacks have for Obama or any other Black person seeking the US presidency -- that is to say, Were your forebears slaves?

Obama's mother, a White Kansan, and his father, a Black Kenyan -- and a healthy dose of ignorance, of course -- are the bases for raising the "Black enough" question.

So guess what? Obama is still showing how our racial identities are all mixed up and should be irrelevant as a determinant of whether one is worthy of our votes. It turns out that some of his mother's forebears OWNED slaves. So, I ask, does that make him Black enough? It's a connection to slavery!

Professor Ron Walters, a political scientist, said this to the Baltimore Sun, which ran the story as a major front-page "exclusive": "The twist is very interesting. It deepens his connection with the experience of slavery, even if it deepens it on a different side of the equation."

Check this out in The Baltimore Sun:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/politics/bal-obama0301,0,789030.story?coll=bal-home-headlines

Here's another article, from the New York Daily News, that suggests that Obama's family tree might also contain Quincy Jones. Does THAT make him Black enough?

A spokesman for Obama said: "It is a true measure of progress that the descendant of a slave owner would come to marry a student from Kenya and produce a son who would grow up to be a candidate for president of the United States."

Giuliani's Repackaging Himself

2007-03-03T12:09:00.000-05:00

So Rudy, who says he doesn't always agree with himself, went to the convention of the Conservative Political Action Conference, the folks who don't like gay people, don't support abortion rights and harp upon family values. It seems that Giuliani has absolutely NOTHING in common with them.

But he'll grovel for votes, obscuring his actual pre-9/11 record as a husband and father and as New York City's mayor -- and these desperate CPACers seem willing to hitch their wagon to whoever looks like he can beat Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or any other Democrat. Forget that he's been married three times, including to a cousin and to a woman he cheated on then announced in a press conference that he was leaving her -- before he let her know it in person. Forget that he's estranged from his children. Forget that he supports gay rights and abortion rights and gun control.

And people wonder why so many of US are cynical about -- and turned off by -- politics?

For Rudy and the CPACers, the theme seems to be: "Anything Goes, As Long as It Doesn't Involve a Democrat."

Don’t Stop With Firing the Secretary of the Army!

2007-03-03T11:08:00.001-05:00

I’m dismayed daily when I hear reports that one or two or more of US troops have been killed and some far larger number have been wounded. If we focus on this at all, we focus on the deaths, we may drop a tear when we see funeral processions in our communities or see in newspapers those mesmerizing color photos of families and friends grieving at church services or burial sites.

But what about all those tens of thousands of wounded? Out of sight; out of mind.

Until a Washington Post series of articles that has lifted the curtain – and ending up, so far, with the firing of the Secretary of the Army, Francis J. Harvey. (See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2007/02/21/LI2007022100671.html)

“I am disappointed that some in the Army have not adequately appreciated the seriousness of the situation,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, said yesterday. He was described by the New York Times as “grim-faced” as he said that. Well should he be.

The wounded who are outpatients at the crème de la crème of military medical care, the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, are dumped into a moldy, rodent-infested building across the street from the main medical building – the one that the politicians and celebrities make sure to be photographed visiting – and are forced to jump through hoops – without arms and legs in some cases – to get adequate medical care. Washington Post reporters documented "mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses" as well as crumbling ceilings and floors. Even a Republican Congressman, Tom Davis of Virginia told the Post: "You could put all the wounded soldiers in the Ritz-Carlton, and it wouldn't fix the personnel management and recordkeeping problems that keep them languishing in outpatient limbo out there for months."

Too little too late, President Bush has said: “This is unacceptable to me. It is unacceptable to our country. And it’s not going to continue.”

Some say the military medical establishment has been overwhelmed because it did not expect so many troops to survive such serious injuries as are being seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just more proof of incompetence by the entire Bush regime in carrying out this so-called war on terrorism that is so very much helter-skelter.

No Sympathy for Teens Who Tortured and Baked a Puppy

2007-03-03T10:00:00.000-05:00

Two brothers who admitted torturing and killing a small puppy by baking it to death inside a gas oven will serve 10 years in prison.

Some people believe that is 10 years too much, that they should have been given some slap on the wrist. Short of a public tarring and feathering, I cannot imagine a sentence more appropriatee.

Justin and Joshua Moulder, who essentially threw themselves on the mercy of the court with guilty pleas to nine felony counts, found little sympathy from Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore at a three-hour sentencing hearing last month.

She described the acts the boys pleaded guilty to — taking the puppy and smearing paint on it, trying to set it on fire, hog tying its feet with duct tape and binding its snout before stuffing it into a searing hot gas oven — as "malicious, unbridled cruelty."

"The way we treat animals, the way we treat the least of these is a reflection of society," Moore said.
"We will not tolerate this conduct as human beings."

Moore sentenced the brothers, ages 19 and 17 and with lengthy juvenile records, to the maximum on several counts, merging the times in jail for a final sentence of 10 years in prison, plus 10 years of probation. The felony animal cruelty charge carried a maximum of 5 years in prison. However, the time in jail increased because of charges for burglary, criminal damage to property and child cruelty.

The sentence matched the recommendation of prosecutors. Defense lawyers asked for six months in prison plus four and a half years on probation. The brothers could have been given as many as 90 years in jail.

A few years ago, I would not have paid much attention to this story. I thought of myself as not into pets and not into children, either. But I’m the homework lady and the cookie lady and the Christmas tree lady to kids in my ambit these days. AND, I am the mama cat to Frank Sinatra and Sammie Dee, who I adopted six and five years ago, respectively. They were throw-aways. Now they are two of the most pampered pussies you can imagine this side of what Al Sharpton or Donald Trump can afford.

We share this Earth with all manner of creatures. Some of us like to think of humans as shepherds over God’s flock. These Moulder brothers, and perhaps other members of their family, violated the unspoken covenant we have with our fellow creatures – human and otherwise.

Let’s hope they figure that out while behind bars. In the meantime, the rest of US can do something about abused and neglected animals by contributing to the ASPCA (www.myaspca.org; 888-776-01111).

Clarence Thomas Speaks Out

2007-03-03T09:52:00.000-05:00

In many ways, I'm not so different from US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on the subject of affirmative action. I still believe that President Clinton's "mend it, don't end it" approach is, unfortunately, necessary. But I understand Thomas's abhorrence of a policy that begins with the premise that Blacks are, no matter their actual backgrounds, damaged goods in need of handouts to get a leg up.

We do not often hear from Justice Thomas beyond his utterances through the US Supreme Court, where he is the only Black. He is often the butt of jokes, scorned as an Uncle Tom and a conservative lackey, seen as so into his White world that he has forgotten from whence he came (poor Black folks near Savannah, Ga.)

I’ve actually read his opinions and, among the columns for which I was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1996, was one defending his position in a school-discrimination case. (www.pulitzer.org, See Commentary.):

July 12, 1995

Clarence Thomas' Input in Race Debate

THREE OF MY fellow Georgians stand at the forefront of our painful national debate on racism and remedies: House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the self-proclaimed leader of the Republican revolution; Rep. Cynthia McKinney, whose racially gerrymandered congressional district the Supreme Court deemed unlawful, and Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court justice who, if you listen to some folks, was single-handedly responsible for that decision and an earlier one limiting the federal courts' role in the area of school desegregation.

Thomas has been pilloried, "called everything but a child of God," as we say in Georgia. But rather than being "an Uncle Tom," as so many are so quick to say, at times he sounds to me like W.E.B. Du Bois, the scholar, founding member of the NAACP and Pan-Africanist whose bona fides has not been called into question as far as I know.

You probably think I'm nuts, but consider what Du Bois had to say 60 years ago when educators like himself and lawyers such as Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall were debating what to do about segregated schools. Work to raise their quality, while conceding the reality of American apartheid? Or sue to end state-mandated segregation, arguing that integration was the only assurance black children could get a decent education?

In the July 1935 Journal of Negro Education, leading scholars, including E. Franklin Frazier, Ralph Bunche, Horace Mann Bond, Alain Locke and Du Bois, weighed in on the subject. Du Bois chastised blacks for their "utter lack of faith" in their own schools. "[A]s long as American Negroes believe that their race is constitutionally and permanently inferior to white people, they necessarily disbelieve in every possible Negro institution." The quality of the education should be paramount, he said, not whether black kids sat next to white kids in integrated classrooms. "The Negro needs neither segregated schools nor mixed schools," Du Bois declared. "What he needs is Education."

Thomas seemed to echo Du Bois a few weeks ago in finding that a federal judge had gone too far in requiring an elaborate desegregation plan to achieve racial balance in the public schools of Kansas City, Mo., where, in some instances, schools were 90% black. Looking at black students' poor academic performance, the federal judge concluded that there was a link between the high proportion of blacks and the low quality of the schools.

"It never ceases to amaze me that the courts are so willing to assume that anything that is predominantly black must be inferior," Thomas wrote in a passionate critique of the Kansas City plan. Of the Missouri court's insistence on racial balance, he said: "This position appears to rest upon the idea that any school that is black is inferior, and that blacks cannot succeed without the benefit of the company of whites."

Thomas, like Du Bois, would say to local school officials and parents: Fix the schools to make sure that they are indeed educating kids. Demand that every school gets its fair share of education dollars. Let kids go to school in their own neighborhoods if they choose. And forget about what proportion of students are of what race. Thomas agrees with Du Bois that it's wrong to use children as "battering rams" in the elusive goal of creating an integrated society.

Admittedly, Thomas is a strange bird, but he seems to have more faith in the ability of blacks to stand on their own two feet than do some of those who berate him. His is an Old Testament-style tough love. He is yes, I do believe this a proud black man. But a confused one.

"We're a mixed-up generation, those of us who were sent to integrate society," Thomas once said.

I'm part of that generation that was the first to integrate this, that or the other. We've got the bruises psychic, if not physical to show it. So who better than us the expeditionary troops, the cannon fodder to force Americans to confront racism and shape remedies that make sense for the 1990s? Black thought on racism did not begin with the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education case. The remedies we seek should not end with it.

****************

Check Thomas out now, with his own take on how he got to where he is today. He still thinks he pretty much made it on his own. But the White benefactors probably did see him as an affirmative action hire. Maybe he can only be comfortable in his own skin by denying that.

Go to this web address:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-thomas3mar03,0,4638507.story?track=ntothtml

Regarding Ali

2007-02-26T00:52:00.000-05:00

On Sunday about midday someone involved in a public affairs type position told me that she had been informed that Muhammad Ali had died. I, of course, revved up my engines -- cellphones, e-mails, land line phones, whatever -- to find out the truth of this. Throughout the late afternoon and evening, I heard from folks in sports and in media who'd also heard that and who, like me, eventually after going through similar anxiety, had been assured that Ali was having a grand old time, even enjoying his favorite Popsicles.

When I heard it from Howard Bingham, his longtime friend and official photographer, I believed.

Long live the King!

So Al Sharpton Is Discovering the Roots Beneath the Hairdo!

2007-02-25T13:13:00.000-05:00

The New York Daily News and the Rev. Al Sharpton are making a big deal -- as in a multiple-part series -- about the Rev's learning a few days ago that some of his ancestors were once owned by some of the kinfolk of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond.

Well, wow!

Anyone who knows the history of this country knows that that is no big thing.

Most Blacks in the US, myself included, can trace some part of their family tree to some White folks -- and vice versa if Whites are so inclined. I do now have older White people considering me a "cousin" or somehow in an-as- yet-to-be-defined way, kinfolk. I've even been graciously hosted by White people on a visit to the remains of an Allison plantation in North Carolina where some of my folks toiled and some of their descendants still live. In South Carolina, there is a city called Aiken, named for White folks from Ireland whose family in South Carolina and in Georgia owned some of my ancestors. I've got a bill of sale for Ike Aikens -- spelling was always a matter of who was doing the writing -- the grandfather of my 103-year-old grandmother, Ethel Mae Aiken Moore, still ruling the roost in Conyers, Ga. I know so much about the White Shipp lineage that I sometimes hear from the White folks about getting started with their genealogical searches. (A bit of trivia: the "S" in Harry S. Truman, the president, was apparently SHIPP.)

After the death of Thurmond, a notorious racist as he built his political career but repentant towards the end, it was officially acknowledged that he had fathered a Black daughter some 70 years before and had, in his own typical-of-the-old-South way, supported her through college and beyond.

As I have said many times before, we are all mutts. A little dab of this, a little dab of that -- and that makes us all the more American.

Perhaps the presidential odyssey of Barack Obama, a true African American because of his White American mother and his Black Kenyan father, has us more attuned to issues of racial identity. Think of this: The only certified descendants of the relationship between Thomas Jefferson, the president, and his Black slave/concubine/mistress Sally Hemings is a WHITE family in Staten Island, N.Y. The putative BLACK descendants haven't been able to convince those who need to be convinced.

To understand how all of this is ridiculous when defining ourselves in the 21st century, take a look at a booklet done by the late J. A. Rogers called "The Five Negro Presidents." It was published in 1965 and is available online and in Afrocentric bookstores. Based on the way Blackness in the US was defined as any knowable or rumored genetic connection to a Black person, however meager, Rogers came up with five; to his list, others have added at least one more. So neither Jesse Jackson nor Colin Powell nor Barack Obama would, truly, be a first.

And, of course, we are ALL Africans, if you believe the scientists who have traced all living humanity to that continent. The Rev told the News this about the discovery of his supposed connection to Thurmond: "It tells you who you are. Where you come from. Where your bloodline is."

I beg to differ: This information may tell you something about your bloodline, but it can never tell you who you are.

Justice: Entertainment or the Real Deal?

2007-02-25T12:55:00.000-05:00

I don’t quite get it that so many people love all these judge shows – Judge Judy and Judge Hatchett, Judge Joe Brown and Judge Greg Mathis, Divorce Court and People’s Court, Texas Justice and, God knows, what all else. My mother is one of those who can sit in front of the television for hours following the ridiculous travails of plaintiffs and defendants – usually friends and family members in rather petty but potentially Hatfield versus McCoy conflicts– while wise and wise-cracking judges pronounce decisions on who is right and who is wrong. Who gets the dog. Who gets the car. Who gets reimbursed.

Perhaps that is why so many people – pundits in print or on the Internet and lawyer-commentators on TV – have been so quick to see Judge Larry Seidlin building an audition tape as he presided over an admittedly weird hearing in Florida over who should decide where Anna Nicole Smith should be buried. The former Bronx resident, who drove a taxi and studied law at night before eventually landing in Florida, establishing a legal career and becoming the judge assigned to the Anna Nicole Smith case, IS quite a character. But some prominent members of the Florida bar vouch for his sanity while laughing at his quirkiness.

I spent lots of time in court in years past – as a reporter, I should say – and, yes, there were quite a few characters among the judiciary. I swear that the sitcom Night Court was based on a judge about whom I had written. He once had a defendant flip a coin to determine what his sentence would be. And I’ve seen a judge walk through the courtroom during the night session of arraignments and introduce himself and explain what the “audience” of friends, family members and homeless people just looking for a place to keep warm could expect to see. I’ve known a judge who wore cufflinks, one of which said “Bull” and the other “Shit”, and he’d subtlety flash them at reporters covering proceedings before him. That was his commentary on the testimony we were hearing. One judge, with whom I was sitting as a reporter observing proceedings up close asked me what sentence I would give in a particular case and then, much to my horror, pronounced that sentence to the defendant.

I’d suggest that, rather than watching judges on TV, more people combine their interest in the general subject of courts and justice and do good at the same time: Volunteer to be a court observer, watching real trials and contributing to reports on how real courts actually work – or don’t.

In New York, we have, among other avenues, the Fund for Modern Courts, which has a Citizen Court Monitoring Project and a Citizen Jury Project. (www.moderncourts.org; 212-541-6741). Check YOUR local listings, as they say. But get up off the couch.

Food for the Soul

2007-02-25T12:00:00.000-05:00

If I needed encouragement for changing my diet, all it took was seeing all those rats running around in a downtown Taco Bell/KFC restaurant in New York City’s Greenwich Village like the Mouse King leading his mice into battle in an after-hours romp in The Nutcracker. There were rats here, there and everywhere from the kitchen to the counter to…. Oh, you don’t want to know!

Well, if you do, check out: http://video.wnbc.com/player/?id=64901

Watch what you eat, but also watch where you eat. If I go into a restaurant restroom and see signs reminding employees to wash their hands and then notice that the only water coming out of the tap at the sink is cold, I know that there’s a problem. Employees who handle food are supposed to wash their hands in very warm water, lathering up to their elbows, for at least 30 seconds. You cannot do that if the only water available is cold. MAKE SOME NOISE. COMPLAIN! GO SOMEWHERE ELSE!

You need to be aware of how long food has been sitting around waiting for you to come order it; don’t put it past cost-cutting managers to trot out the stuff they didn’t sell the day before or the day before that – and probably didn’t even store properly.

I love food. That’s why, most of the time, I’d rather cook it myself. I wash my hands so much and go through so many paper towels to dry my hands and wipe down counters that I sometimes look like a prune in winter.

Down home now – in Georgia – and even at friends’ gatherings here in New York, it’s hard to find food someone you actually know is responsible for preparing.

Whether it’s rats roaming around the premises along with the cockroaches, kitchen help that may or may not sanitize all utensils and dishes in preparation for the day’s shifts, insolent waiters spitting in the food of customers they disdain or the salt content of the food itself – you’ve got to be on guard.

I think I’ve just talked myself into preparing a nice Sunday dinner! And for extra inspiration, I'm going to tune in to one of my favorite shows, Soul Food, the family drama now in syndication on BET-J. Check it out.

Massachusetts' New Governor Should Be Ashamed

2007-02-23T11:08:00.000-05:00

Deval Patrick surely knows better. He was elected governor of Massachusetts, not emperor. But he has begun his term rather imperiously. There are the $12,000 draperies for his office. There’s a Cadillac being leased for nearly $1,200 per month. And, rather than assigning a staffer to help his wife with her public schedule as is typically done, he hired someone for a salary of $72,000. All on the state taxpayers’ dime at a time they are being told to face a shrunken government to address a budget deficit.

If he needed to transform his office decor, he could have raised tens of thousands of dollars privately. Wealthy man that he is, I’m sure he knows others with money.

Boston media have pounced upon this, but he should have expected each and every step he makes to be under a microscope. After all, he is the first Black man to hold that office. Now, the media have nicknamed him Governor Deluxe and Cadillac Deval.

For days he ignored the media uproar before finally acknowledging, “Oh, yeah, we screwed up.”

His experience reminds me of what happened in New York City in the early 1990s when a Black woman was put in charge of public housing – you know, housing for the poor? – and promptly spent $345,000 re-doing the executive offices, including $115,000 for her private office. The symbol of her out-of-whack priorities was a $3,000 pink leather sofa. She was forced to resign.

Commentators are saying that since this is so early in his term, Patrick has time to redeem himself. That begins with ending the lavish spending while asking others, less fortunate, less privileged, to make sacrifices.

Symbolism is sometimes as important as substance, Mr. Patrick.

Hillary and Obama

2007-02-21T18:08:00.000-05:00

So far surrogates are doing the trash talking while Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama insist they are taking the high road.

David Geffen, the Hollywood mogul, hosted a $1.3 million fundrasier for Obama Tuesday; in the past he has raised millions for the Clintons. This time around, though, he tries to boost Obama by calling the Clintons liars. Of course, much of media -- mainstream, fringe, Internet, whatever -- are having a field day with this. Of course, Hillary, rolling in the political dough, demands that Obama, who is just getting started, give back the money raised by his Hollywood supporters. Don't be a bitch, Hillary. And, Obama, don't be a sucker and fall lower than that high road.

"We aren't going to get in the middle of a disagreement between the Clintons and someone who was once one of their biggest supporters," Obama's communications director, Robert Gibbs, said in a statement. "It is ironic that the Clintons had no problem with David Geffen when he was raising $18 million for them and sleeping at their invitation in the Lincoln bedroom."

Geffen has said that his words are his own. Let's leave it at that and get on with the real issues of this campaign.

The British Are Leaving! The British Are Leaving!

2007-02-21T17:44:00.000-05:00

OK, maybe not as memorable as Longfellow's rendition of "The British are coming! The British are coming!" -- what Paul Revere supposedly yelled in the lead-up to what became the war between the American colonies and England in 1775.

But what does it say that Tony Blair, the Prime Minister in Great Britain, announced today that he is beginning to withdraw his troops from southern Iraq -- and that President Bush is still insisting upon sending more than 21,000 US troops into Baghdad?

Remember Malcolm X Today

2007-02-21T02:33:00.000-05:00

He was murdered 42 years ago in New York City by Black people. At whose behest is still debated, but Black men fired the shots in the Audubon Ballroom. Malcolm's been dead longer than the 39 years he walked and spoke among US. As is the case with Martin Luther King Jr., as time goes by, his image becomes less radical than it was as he lived. He's an image on a piece of headgear or a T-shirt. He's the name of a street in Harlem that we denizens still call Lenox Avenue.

Let's remember the radical, non-conformist, in-your-face and media-savvy Malcolm "by any means necessary"!!!

Who Kept The Dog Warm?

2007-02-20T09:40:00.000-05:00

I'm rather flummoxed by the notion of various narcissistic adventurers that if their butts get in trouble while they are climbing some mountain that doesn't cry out for their climbing it, others will risk their lives to find said adventurers.

Latest example: A group that decided to climb the 11,239-foot Mount Hood in Oregon. Three fell off a cliff, along with their dog, Velvet, a 4-year-old Labrador mix.

This from the Associated Press after an arduous, but ultimately successful, attempt to rescue them:

"The rescuers credited the group's rescue to two things — one low-tech and one high-tech: Velvet, who offered warmth as the three climbers huddled overnight, and the activation of a radio transmitter the size of a sunglasses case that helped rescuers to the group."

And this:

"Velvet, owned by [one of the three, Matty] Bryant, had minor cuts and abrasions on her back feet and legs caused by prolonged exposure to the snow. She was cleared to go home.

"'The dog probably saved their lives' by lying across them during the cold night, said Erik Brom, a member of the Portland Mountain Rescue team."

Are we obligated to indulge the hubris of men and women who choose to tackle mountains just because they are there? What about the humans and, in this case, dogs, who risk their lives to save them from themselves?

CNN As Arbiter of "New Black Leadership"?

2007-02-19T16:54:00.000-05:00

The new black leaders? What gives CNN the right to crown a new generation of so-called “Black leaders” as it plans to do this week in its focus on Blackness?

God bless her. Soledad O’Brien seems earnest in “uncovering” the Black America that is undiscovered territory for her and so many others in the US. Why do so many of US have to be “uncovered” for the rest of US? My folks have been in this country from at least the early 1700s. Why haven’t we and ours been “discovered” until now?

To pick a group of people, mostly entertainers it seems from the promos, as the “new Black leadership” is an embarrassment, an insult and a sign that corporate America, including mainstream media in the US, is not that far removed from two centuries ago when Blacks decided to form their own media to “plead our own cause.” While you’re “discovering”, check out 1827 and the first Black newspaper in the US. If you don’t know US by now, will you ever, ever, ever know US?

Ms. O’Brien in the introduction to a piece in this series said: “When it comes to African Americans, do two famous reverends have the first, last and only words?” Only, my child, if that is where you start and end.

When Blackfolk get in trouble, here and abroad, they often reach out to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, men with whom I’ve had—and still do have – disagreements on certain actions and topics. But they are the men to whom people turn when they need a spotlight focused on police brutality, the Hurricane Katrina aftermath, political shenanigans, Darfur, etcetera. As Sharpton told CNN, he is more the ambulance than the ambulance chaser. “People know we will come when the ambulance won’t come.”

I see all the time in photographs and in news telecasts a focus on Jesse or Al without the reporter having acknowledged any of the others in the frames I’m seeing. I see politicians and clergy, neighborhood activists, entrepreneurs, educators and even other should-be-respected journalists. But those sending the stories out to the world are IGNORANT most of the time. They go for the face(s) they know, not the real story of the people who are demanding – sometimes just begging for – justice.

“The media is lazy,” Bruce Gordon, the head of the NAACP says to CNN. Rep. Maxine Waters expands: “The media has identified who Black leadership is. They go to the same people over and over again. They are saying to the American public, ‘This is the person who speaks for the Black community.’”

Unless we people of color allow them to, media cannot define who leads people who are Black any more than they can define who leads people who are White. Gone are the days of Booker T. Washington and even Martin Luther King Jr., when one person was considered the HNIC – to use polite 21st century language: Head Negro In Charge.

We Blackfolk speak many languages and live in various settings. Give us credit for being Americans as reticent or as outspoken as anyone else among the US.

Caught Between Heat and a Cold Place

2007-02-18T09:04:00.000-05:00

Granted, hundreds of thousands of US citizens are now pawns in a geopolitical competition between the US and Venezuela, as the latter's president does all he can to castigate and embarrass the Bush Administration.

It’s too easy to berate Joe Kennedy – mainly for his name than his actions – than to DO SOMETHING. If the US provided ways and means for the less fortunate among US to afford heating oil to stay warm this winter, Americans wouldn’t need to call 1-877-Joe-4-OIL.

“I’m Joe Kennedy. Help is on the way,” he assures in his ubiquitous television commercials. What galls people who themselves are benefiting from fuel from questionable places – including Venezuela, which sends oil to Kennedy’s nonprofit Citizens Energy Corporation at a discount -- is that Kennedy gives credit to “our friends in Venezuela.” That country’s president, Hugo Chavez, is clearly no friend of President Bush, whom he has denounced at the United Nations as an incarnation of “the devil.”

Having unsuccessfully sought commitments from the major US oil companies and from oil-rich countries in the Middle East, this is what Kennedy has said about going with Venezuela and Citgo, which is a Venezuelan-owned company:

"Every single company said no. Every single one except one, and that was Citgo. So it is important that when a major company reaches out and does something like this, that we should acknowledge and celebrate the kind of action they are taking.

"Exxon made $10 billion in a quarter - in three months out of the year they made $10 billion. And they say, when it comes to helping the poor, 'Sorry, there is no money in the till'."

A Florida congressman whose tush is well-warmed has taken Kennedy to task, practically accusing him of being unpatriotic. To work with Chavez is to deal with a real devil, but if 400,000 American households are warm this winter…….???

As Kennedy says at the end of his ads: “No one should be left out in the cold.” Clearly the US government and its good friends don't give a heck while ignoring the fact that so much of corporate America – from Vice President Cheney’s good friends at Haliburton to airlines – is racking up billions in profits by doing business with Venezuela.

The King Memorial Inches Forward in Washington

2007-02-16T11:00:00.000-05:00

A sculptor from China has been chosen to carry out the project along the Tidal Basin on the National Mall, and according to a report in The Atlanta Journal Constitution, 16 quotations have been selected to adorn the proposed structure.

Among them:

• "Say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter."
— Feb. 4, 1968, Atlanta

• "We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
— April 16, 1963, Birmingham, Ala.

• "Make a career of humanity... commit yourself to the noble struggle ... you will make a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country, and a finer world to live in."
— April 18, 1959, Washington, D.C.

• "If we are to have peace on Earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective."
— Dec. 24, 1967, Atlanta

• "True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice."
— April 16, 1963, Birmingham, Ala.

For more information on this $100 million project – and to contribute – go to: www.mlkmemorial.org

Dreaming is fine; DOING SOMETHING is better.

Hardaway's Big Mouth Costs Him

2007-02-16T05:56:00.000-05:00

Obviously, Tim Hardaway forgot to study the play book before going off on a homophobic tirade on a radio show just before the National Basketball Association's annual All-Star splash.

So the former star player has lost a PR gig as an official representative of the league in the leadup to the big game, which will be held in Las Vegas this weekend.

"It is inappropriate for him to be representing us given the disparity between his views and ours," NBA commissioner David Stern said after Hardaway’s anti-gay rant created a storm.

Hardaway has a right to his views, but he doesn’t have a right to represent the corporate NBA, which likes to make money and put forth a face of tolerance when, as everyone knows, a lot of folks associated with the league probably agree with Hardaway. Why do you think John Amaechi waited until he had retired from professional basketball to disclose that he is gay? (His newly published memoir is "Man in the Middle.")

Hardaway, apparently not comfortable enough in his own sexuality and ignorant enough to believe that homosexuality is contagious, said, while discussing Amaechi’s revelation:

"First of all, I wouldn't want him on my team. And second of all, if he was on my team, I would, you know, really distance myself from him because, uh, I don't think that is right. I don't think he should be in the locker room while we are in the locker room."

When the radio host challenged him, Hardaway went on and on: "You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people. I'm homophobic. I don't like it. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States."

Maybe it’s views like Hardaway’s that “shouldn’t be in the world or in the United States.”

His handlers tried to clean up the mess he’d made by issuing a statement that you just know he did NOT write: "As an African-American, I know all too well the negative thoughts and feelings hatred and bigotry cause. I regret and apologize for the statements that I made that have certainly caused the same kinds of feelings and reactions.”

At least he didn’t claim to be checking into gay rehab -- either to become more sensitive to gay people or to be cured of one's own flirtation with homosexuality -- the way the actor Isaiah Washington (“Grey’s Anatomy”) did or the way the disgraced evangelical preacher Ted Haggard did.

Iraq-- God Damn!

2007-02-13T04:08:00.000-05:00

I'm hearing Sister Nina Simone and her outrage about Mississippi in the 1960s, the loss of lives there and the hesitation if not full-fledged resistance of those in power. Her song was Mississippi God Damn!

"Oh, but this whole country is full of lies
You're all gonna die and die like flies
I don't trust you any more
You keep on saying 'Go slow!'
'Go slow!'"

Iraqis are killing Iraqis by the hundreds on a daily basis -- and the US is still serious about sending in 20,000 more young American men and women to babysit and run the real risk of being killed or maimed?

Republicans still beholden to President Bush say the Democrats have no plan for victory. Well, excuse me, what is Bush's plan? Cheney's plan? Rice's plan? For four years they have been in charge of this mess that most Americans seem to realize is a mess. About 40 Americans have been killed this month alone in Iraq, adding to the total of more that 3,100. Even more alarming is that more than 20,000 of our men and women -- many of them teenagers or just barely out of their teens -- have been seriously wounded. I can envision that some years from now in the not-too-distant future we will be arguing about whether and to what extent to pay for their medical care. While still ensuring tax breaks for the friends of Washington powerbrokers.

We cannot even get a good argument in Congress on the course of the war -- now and in the future. What are our goals, really? Members of the US Senate are more interested in arguing about the rules of debate than carrying on an actual debate that would force their comfortable butts to take a stand. They are pathetic.

The House is poised to carry the debate to the public. Now is the time for all those Black chairs to pause in their celebrations of elevation to leadership in the House and begin to lead. Hmmm. What would Adam Clayton Powell do were he still the top Black dog in the House? I don't think he would "go slow."

Obama Makes It Official: “Let’s Get to Work!”

2007-02-10T15:29:00.000-05:00

Barack Obama stood in front of the statehouse in Springfield, Ill., where, like him, Abraham Lincoln served and in 1858 gave a speech known to history as “A House Divided.” ("A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.”) It was his justification for campaigning to save the US from its growing sectarianism. For Obama this was the setting for his justification for entering presidential politics – and winning – to save the Union once again by cutting through the partisan crap and bringing about peace and prosperity.

To those who braved the wintry weather and, of course, who were watching on TV, he said: “In the face of war, you believe there can be peace. In the face of despair, you believe there can be hope. In the face of a politics that's shut you out, that's told you to settle, that's divided us for too long, you believe we can be one people, reaching for what's possible, building that more perfect Union.”

Meanwhile, at Hampton University, in Virginia, where Tavis Smiley was hosting his annual talkfest about the state of Black America, one panelist, the Rev. Al Sharpton, said that Obama should have made his announcement there rather than at the house from which Lincoln launched his career. “We’ve got to quit giving the wrong people credit for our history!”

Sharpton’s notion of “we” and “our” is too much of the old school. Obama sees a wider canvas when talking about “we” and “us” – not bound by Black and White. His is, he said in making the announcement that he is campaigning to become the next president of the US, an “improbable quest.” He sounded much like Jack Kennedy, another senator with limited Washington experience, who upon his election in 1960, called upon his generation to take charge. Obama says it’s time for his generation – which I take to be my generation though I am a few years older than he – to answer the call to fix what’s broke in the US by honoring our core values.

"I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness - a certain audacity - to this announcement. I know I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change."

He probably hasn’t even thought how much he has to overcome to be heard by people who, even though they watched his speech, seem to have been hearing a different language. One of the first callers to C-SPAN after the speech was a woman who said that the United States did not need a Muslim as president. The call-in host told her that Obama was not a Muslim, that, indeed, he’s a member of the United Church of Christ. The woman said she thought he’d been influenced by some Muhammadism and had changed his name. The host explained that the senator was born with the name Barack Obama.

People are looking for reasons to sully the man before they even get to know him. (See Politico at http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0207/2694.html). Obama, you do, indeed, have to get to work. But so do those who share your vision of “what this country can be.”

Obama TOO Black?

2007-02-09T07:17:00.000-05:00

In an earlier post (Feb. 2) I examined the notion among some Blacks that Barack Obama is not Black enough because of his parentage (White mother from Kansas; Black father from Kenya) and where he grew up (Hawaii and Indonesia).

Now on the eve of his expected formal announcement of his candidacy for president Saturday, some White people are saying that he is TOO Black because he belongs to a Chicago church, the historic Trinity United Church of Christ, that is dedicated to uplifting Black people and especially to strengthening Black families. These critics are zeroing in on the church’s 12-point Black Value System (www.tucc.org/about.htm) and its motto: “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian.”

This too-Black salvo comes from a certain sector of White conservatism that is showing its true colors. (Illinois Review, www.illinoisreview.typepad.com)

On its web site (www.tucc.org), Trinity says: “As a congregation of baptized believers, we are called to be agents of liberation not only for the oppressed, but for all of God’s family…. W.E.B. DuBois indicated that the problem in the 20th century was going to be the problem of the color line. He was absolutely correct. Our job as servants of God is to address that problem and eradicate it in the name of Him who came for the whole world by calling all men, women, boys and girls to Christ.”

Obama told The Chicago Tribune, which carried a prominent story on this issue Feb. 6, "If I say to anybody in Iowa--White, Black, Hispanic or Asian--that my church believes in the African-American community strengthening families or adhering to the Black work ethic or being committed to self-discipline and self-respect and not forgetting where you came from, I don't think that's something anybody would object to.

"I think I'd get a few Amens."

Obama’s announcement will be carried on C-SPAN Saturday morning and no doubt on cable networks like CNN. My guess is that whatever he says will attempt to bridge the gulfs that race-based campaigns – on the Black side and on the White side – have revealed. This will be a true test of his mettle.

No Laughing Matter

2007-02-07T13:38:00.000-05:00

The meltdown of Lisa Nowak, the astronaut who went on a 900-mile trek by car from Houston to Orlando to confront the woman she thinks is in the way of a relationship she wants to develop with a fellow astronaut, has been good for laughs on the late-night television shows. I confess: I chuckled at a few Jay Leno jokes on the Tonight Show.

But the reality is that this is really a sad story -- and one from which I hope more of us will learn. Nowak, like her confreres in NASA, is driven, intense, competitive, super intelligent and, to the world that sees only that side of her, she has a near-perfect life. But she knows differently. She is as emotionally fragile as any of us.

And, like many of us, she hasn't managed to reach out for help in addressing that fragility before doing something so extreme and uncharacteristic. It's easier to laugh at her than to admit that we could BE her.

Reach out for someone's hand.

Florida Last Week; New Orleans So Many Months Ago

2007-02-05T05:46:00.000-05:00

Am I the only one who noticed that within hours – hours! – survivors of that string of tornadoes that brought death and destruction in their wake in Central Florida saw the US government swing into action? People may be receiving relief checks as soon as Tuesday.

And back in New Orleans…..

On television and in newspapers the faces of Central Florida have been White, except for some of the prisoners (we used to call them “chain gang”) out there working on debris clearance. The faces of New Orleans have been Black. Even now, Black people are asking for help in rebuilding their lives and their New Orleans, as they did last week when US senators toured the Lower 9th Ward to see for themselves how destructive Hurricane Katrina was and how inadequate government response has been. Duh! What’s taken so long?

“Whatever response is needed, we will make it quick and sure,” President Bush said in a speech over the weekend, even as relief was already on the ground in Florida, where his brother Jeb, the most recent former governor, is still a wielder of clout.

Granted, New Orleanians may be too much dependent upon government to jump start their hearts while the attitude expressed after the tornadoes in Central Florida was, according to CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, “We don’t need FEMA; we have Floridians.”

But if one can say that the response to the tornadoes reflects lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina, then those lessons should be applied forthwith to -- and within -- New Orleans.

Civil Rights Era "Cold Cases" Apparently Warming Up

2007-02-03T14:29:00.000-05:00

One can only say: It's about time. There are many unsolved cases from that time, when men and women were killed or disappeared under suspicious circumstances. One of those cases now supposedly being seriously examined by the FBI occurred in the section of Georgia where my roots are deep: Four young black people, two couples, were slaughtered in Walton County, where some of my relatives still reside and where I've found the burial sites of relatives going back as far as some of my great-great grandparents.

The lynching took place on July 25, 1946. The victims were Roger and Dorothy Malcom; Dorothy's brother George and his wife Mae. George was a veteran of WW2, one of those Blacks who, by their very exposure to the world beyond near-slavery that existed on the cotton farms, were considered "uppity" -- and, thus, a threat. White men were accustomed to having their way with their Black women servants; that may have sparked a fight that led Roger Malcom to stab the son of Dorothy's boss. As he was taken to jail, he predicted that he would not be seen alive again. "They're gonna kill me!"

Later, apparently after the White farmers had readied their plans, the owner of the farm where Dorothy, George and Mae were working offered to drive them into town to bail Roger out of jail. On a circuitous ride back, they stopped at a place along the Apalachee River known as Moore's Ford. The two couples were forced out of the car and marched into the woods and, according to reports, shot hundreds of times.

I'd heard nothing of this story until 1992, when a White man came forward to say that, when he was 10 years old, he'd inadvertently witnessed the entire slaughter in the woods. That brought the case to light to several new generations, though there are still elderly Blacks who know that of which they could not speak in the 1940s. And there are apparently some elderly Whites still in the area who were part of the lynch party.

Unlike in the 1940s, the FBI says it is now trying to do as much as possible to prosecute whoever is still alive (even if barely) in this case and others. As I said: It's about time.

Obama's Blackness

2007-02-02T19:43:00.000-05:00

Why do so many American-born Blacks, who take on African names and don African or African-inspired garb, now question the authenticity of a true African-American: Barack Obama? He is the progeny of a White American woman and a Black Kenyan man. How much more American and African can you get?

Barack Obama has never denied his Blackness. He has embraced it, though he has never denied his White or Indonesian relatives. In his pre-Senator Rock Star career, he was a community organizer in Black Chicago neighborhoods. He lobbied for Black interests as an Illinois state legislator. He's married to a Black woman, and he has two Black children.

Maybe it is fortunate that the Blackness issue is emerging so early -- even among well-meaning but patronizing folks like Joe Biden, who has been taken to task for thinking he was praising Obama when he described his fellow senator and potential presidential campaign rival as "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy."

Jesse Jackson has defended Obama's Blackness and has tried to depict Biden as guilty of nothing more than "foot-in-mouth syndrome." Forget Biden, though, and the kind of benign ignorance he represents. I'm more concerned about Black folks.

Is having a slave in one's family tree REALLY the litmus test? More important than that, and I say this as one who has slaves in her family tree, is his stand on the issues we care about -- or should care about.

Black History Month

2007-02-01T19:34:00.000-05:00

Today marks the beginning of Black History Month. If you have your eyes and ears open, you will be bombarded with all sorts of images of Black heroes -- many of these images shaped by corporate America. Think of this not as a full course of history, however. This is a sampling of what should be a year-long menu. Enjoy, but don't feel satiated.

August Wilson's King Hedley II

2007-01-30T21:09:00.000-05:00

How often can one attend live theater in New York for $15? Grab your ticket -- fast! The tickets went on sale a few days ago. The performances, at the Signature Theatre, run from Feb. 20 through Apr. 15 at 555 W. 42d Street (bet. 10th and 11th Avenues). 212-244-PLAY (7529) or www.signaturetheatre.org

HIV/AIDS

2007-01-29T14:54:00.000-05:00

No, there's no big event coming up, no anniversary that I know of. But that's why I'm talking about HIV/AIDS. It's every day. 24/7. Coretta Scott King, God bless her soul, said: "Anyone who sincerely cares about the future of Black America had better be speaking out about AIDS."

Mrs. King was my mother's generation, and Mama hasn't quite come to grips with the fact that my brother, John, and her brother, Richard, died of AIDS. Cancer? OK. Having Mrs. King say what she said was as profound as hearing the Rev. Dr. Calvin O. Butts 3d of the Abyssinian Baptist Church advising from the pulpit some years ago that folks -- especially men -- use condoms. The Black AIDS institute has great information (http://www.BlackAIDS.org). Phone: 213-353-3610. AIDS has become a Black disease, and we CANNOT deny that. Guys coming out of prison infect women -- many of them more older than younger and ashamed to say so. Teens often don't have a clue.

Read this excerpt from "AIDS in Blackface":

"Today, Blacks represent half of the more than one million Americans living with HIV. Between 2000 and 2003, Blacks accounted for 69 percent of new diagnoses among women -- and with an infection rate 18 times higher than among Whites. Among teens, Blacks are 66 percent of new infections."

We've got to DO SOMETHING about this. As Black History Month approaches and people get all nostalgic about what happened a hundred years ago and who invented what, PAUSE, REWIND and come back to the present.

United Negro College Fund

2007-01-29T10:02:00.000-05:00

“A mind is a terrible thing to waste….”

“When my soul was in lost and found, you came along and claimed me….”

The first quote is the slogan of the United Negro College Fund (www.uncf.org)

The second is a line from one of Aretha Franklin’s many hit songs, celebrated in recent days on cable TV’s salute to her as a way to carry on Lou Rawls’ dedication to raise money to make dreams reality for kids of color. Before his death a year ago, he helped raise $200 million for historically black colleges and universities.

I kind of regret that I did not attend one of those HBCUs (www.edonline.com/cq/hbcu); maybe I’ll wind up my teaching days by teaching at one of them – probably in Atlanta.

In the meantime, think of contributing money or mentorship. Go to the website or call: 1-800-331-2244.

Babies

2007-01-28T05:50:00.000-05:00

There's so much bad news these days about babies killed, babies abandoned, babies abused, babies kidnapped, babies with health issues that our various levels of government and our private institutions are not addressing.

BUT...

There are also good stories.

I want to welcome into the world two babies born to moms in my apartment building within days of each other: Nicholas and Liam.

At my church, Abyssinian Baptist, in Harlem, we have a tradition of taking responsibility for our youngsters. The second Sunday of each month children are brought forth to the congregation and we, in essence, pledge our allegeiance and our responsibility as part of the village needed to raise a child.

How about making that a national pledge?

Hello, babies!!!

The World Is Watching Us

2007-01-27T02:56:00.000-05:00

President Bush's "I like you" ratings are at an all-time low, but so is the US ranking in the world's sight. As I suggest to my journalism students, check out this website to get a sense of what the rest of the world beyond the standard US media is saying. It's quite sobering.

http://www.watchingamerica.com/index.shtml

Get Over It?

2007-01-26T03:24:00.000-05:00

A Virginia troglodyte of a legislator recently said that Blacks should “get over” the slavery thing and its aftermath. But how can one do so when just this week – finally - a man with the blood of a 1964 Mississippi lynching on his hands was arrested? In so many ways, the past is still too much the present.

James Ford Seale is 71. He’s lived 43 years longer than he allowed two Black teenagers, Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, to live. They were kidnapped, strapped to a tree, beaten, driven to Louisiana, then tossed into the Mississippi River to drown.

This incident caught my attention not only because of the issue of justice but because I am a Moore, maybe or maybe not connected genetically to Charles Eddie Moore given how Blacks took names after slavery. My folks and his folks were from the same neck of the woods.

This from the Associated Press: "Forty years ago, the system failed," FBI Director Robert Mueller said in Washington. "We in the FBI have a responsibility to investigate these cold-case, civil rights-era murders where evidence still exists to bring both closure and justice to these cases that for many, remain unhealed wounds to this day."

For me, this is not a cold case. I’m on it.

You can hear more about this from Michelle Martin's interview with Charles Eddie Moore's brother on News and Notes: www.npr.org.

What Exactly Is Isaiah Washington Being "Treated" For??

2007-01-25T06:57:00.000-05:00

This actor has checked himself into some program after making homophobic remarks about his Grey's Anatomy co-star. Is there a Betty Ford Clinic-style Stars-R-Us place for homophobes? This seems like a stupid public relations move that diminishes the seriousness of seeking treatment for the abuses of alcohol and drugs and such. Through Halle Berry's disastrous marriage to Eric Benet, we learned about the "need" for treatment for sexual addiction to women other than his wife. Mama would have a name for that -- and the Scriptures to back her up! Not to mention something to knock him in the head or whip his butt! There are legitimate reasons to seek treatment, but too often these folks in the public eye seem to equate "I'm going into therapy" with cleaning up their public images. Give us a break!

Homophobia exists in America and very much so in Black America. Washington needs to clean up his act but not pretend that going into therapy is the way ahead. Whatever this "therapy" is is merely the way to hold on to his acting gig on Grey's Anatomy.

She Didn't Wear Red

2007-01-24T03:21:00.000-05:00

Did you notice how many women wore red, the color of conformity since the days of Nancy Reagan as First Lady, for the State of the Union address Tuesday?

But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not wear red, a sign, it seems to me, that she wants to break out of that old political mold during the two years she will be in control, leading a Democratic agenda.

President Bush, the leader of a fractured Republican Party, played nice-nice in his State of the Union address while still stubbornly hewing to his Iraq policy. But he says he wants to seriously address immigration reform, health insurance for more of the 40 million Americans who have none, better public schools for our children and tax breaks for regular folks. "Our citizens don't much care which side of the aisle we sit on, as long as we are willing to cross that aisle when there is work to be done," President Bush said.

So you go, Madame Speaker! And I mean: Go to work.

State of the Union: What Can the President Say?

2007-01-23T10:59:00.000-05:00

When 88 people -- or more -- were killed in a single place on a single day, Iraqis vs. Iraqis?

When other Iraqis were killed on that same day -- Monday -- by other Iraqis?

When he's still stubbornly demanding that 21,000 or more of our men and women go to replace all those who are dying in Baghdad?

Mr. President, the state of the Union is NOT good -- and that's just on the foreign affairs side!

We have to let him know that in more ways than answering to pollsters that his favorability is low.

Academy Award Nominees

2007-01-23T09:41:00.000-05:00

Congratulations!:

Dreamgirls for eight nominations
Will Smith for best actor in a leading role in The Pursuit of Happyness
Forest Whitaker for best actor in a leading role in The Last King of Scotland
Jennifer Hudson for best actress in a supporting role in Dreamgirls
Eddie Murphy for best actor in a supporting role in Dreamgirls
Djimon Hounsou for best actor in a supporting role in Blood Diamond

What would Hattie McDaniel think! She, after all, was the first Black person to be nominated and to win the award for Best Supporting Actress for playing the role of Mammy in 1939's Gone With The Wind. A dignified woman, she had a retort to those who criticized her for playing so many roles as domestics. "I'd rather play a maid than be one."

Yet, even in honoring her, Hollywood dissed her: When the awards were presented, she was relegated to the back of the Coconut Grove, where the ceremonies took place. Bursting through racial barriers had its limits even among this artistic and self-congratulatory community.

Ruth Brown: "A Very Special Lady"

2007-01-23T02:49:00.000-05:00

Why does it often happen that we learn about the contributions and sacrifices people have made only after their deaths? I found myself asking that question yet again at a memorial service for the late Ruth Brown, the woman once credited with putting Atlantic Records on the map. That company, which will soon celebrate its 60th anniversary, was known in the 1950s as “The House That Ruth Built.”

At her memorial service at Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church on Jan. 22d were performers ranging from Little Jimmy Scott to Bonnie Raitt to Chuck Jackson to Paul Shaffer – and Ruth Brown’s band. The Rev. Dr. Calvin O. Butts 3d described her as "a very special lady" and "one of the greatest entertainers of the last century."

John Sayles, the director, was there to show a preliminary recording session for a movie he’s making called Honeydripper, starring Danny Glover and Charles Dutton. She died shortly before scheduled to star as a kind of Ma Rainey character down on her luck in Alabama in the 1950s.

“She lived the songs that she sung,” her longtime musical director, Rodney Jones, said. That meant lots of blues amid the joy. For a time she worked as a domestic, too ashamed to tell her employers that some of the music they were listening to was her performing. She drove a school bus for a while. But after a fallow period as a singer, she made a comeback in the 1970s. She won a Tony for her performance in Black and Blue on Broadway. Find out more about her at this website: http://www.ruthbrown.net

What she was best appreciated for among her friends in the music industry was her fight for royalty reform so that all those pioneers of R & B and Rock & Roll stood a chance to be paid the money they were due. She eventually received money from Atlantic after a valiant fight. She was a founder of the Rhythm and Blues Foundation (www.rhythmblues.org) that continues as an advocate for not just the music but also the musicians. Sadly, she died within days of two others involved with the foundation, Ed Bradley of CBS News and the singer Gerald Levert.

Thanks Voza Rivers and thanks Chuck Jackson for putting together a great show – that memorial service – that did justice to the pioneer that Ruth Brown was. In the summer, Harlem will pay tribute to her and to James Brown during the Harlem Week festivities.

And more of us will learn more about what they went through to make their records, to gain airtime -- and to be reasonably compensated by the record companies that exploited them. May the current generation of entertainers not have to go through what they did because of WHAT they did.

Something's Happening Out There!

2007-01-21T22:26:00.000-05:00

The SuperBowl game is usually a yawner. But as of today, this year's game has got me ready to throw down with a big ol' party on Feb. 4. The two opposing teams, the Colts and the Bears, both victors today in their conference championships, are led by Black head coaches. I don't care which team ultimately wins SuperBowl XLI. We've all advanced.

For more info: http://www.superbowl.com/features/general_info

Hillary: She's In It To Win It

2007-01-20T10:20:00.000-05:00

Let's take her for her word. She wants to hear from us.

"I want you to join me not just for the campaign but for a conversation about the future of our country -- about the bold but practical changes we need to overcome six years of Bush administration failures.

"I am going to take this conversation directly to the people of America, and I'm starting by inviting all of you to join me in a series of Web chats over the next few days."

Chat. Scream. Speak out. Whatever.

http://www.hillaryclinton.com

Dreamgirls

2007-01-19T11:37:00.000-05:00

Why is Dreamgirls only NOW being widely released? What was Paramount thinking in only releasing it – pre-Golden Globes – to a few hundred theaters? Why didn’t Paramount execs have confidence that such a stellar cast could WOW! the nation?' They obviously saw this as a Black film with no appeal to people who are not Black or are not interested in films involving Blacks.

Three Golden Globes awards later, Paramount is distributing the film to 2,000 theaters.

Hollywood should "Listen" to the film’s soundtrack. It is still “Steppin’ to the Bad Side” when it needs to “Move”.

First Black President? Hah!

2007-01-18T08:55:00.000-05:00

In fiction and in fact, we have already had several. I'll start with the fiction because if you don't already know this, you're perhaps not ready for the "facts."

"The most famous Black President of this century is one Douglass Dilman: he is the hero of The Man, a 1964 best-selling novel by Irving Wallace, which was later made into a movie starring James Earl Jones. Thrust into the Oval Office after a crisis of succession, President Dilman swiftly finds himself the target of popular animosity and Beltway intrigue," the Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote in a fascinating article in the New Yorker magazine some years ago, while profiling Colin Powell. At the time Powell was the Barack Obama of the 1996 presidential season.

On the currently popular Fox series, 24, we have our second Black president within the span of a few years: The current president, Wayne Palmer, is the brother of President David Palmer, who was assassinated. Now, how much of a stretch is this? A kind of Bush dynasty.

But let me get more serious. I am a fan of the late J. A. Rogers, a Black man who devoted his life to shredding myths about Blacks in the U.S. and in Africa. Not long before his death in 1966, Rogers, a former Pullman porter, published a pamphlet called The Five Negro Presidents. It's available in many Afro-centric bookstores, on eBay and on other web sites.

This is my thumbnail sketch: When it has been convenient in the US to label people as Colored or Negro or Black to deny them the rights and privileges of American citizenship, this has been done. If anyone could identify even the most minute Black lineage, then that could be held against you. Rogers wanted to turn this "even itty-bitty blackness makes you Black" into a positive. Thus, using public documents and published works, he "outed" Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln and Warren Harding. He did not name "Soul Brother President No. 5," but a journalist who produced a program about this for PBS told me that he was Dwight Eisenhower. Another historian has added Calvin Coolidge to this list.

Because of racial head trips, some people I've come across can imagine that Jefferson's father and uncles could have fathered children with their Black slaves, but cannot imagine that Jefferson could be the father of Sally Hemings' children. Or that President Jefferson himself could have had at least a little dab of blackness in him.

Maybe we are moving towards a place and time where these notions about race are irrelevant. After all, Obama is a White man as much as he is a Black man. His mother: a White woman from Kansas; his father: a Black man from Kenya; his stepfather: an Indonesian. He grew up in Hawaii and in Indonesia.

J. A. Rogers would have a field day with this!

Obama Makes A Move Towards The Presidency

2007-01-16T12:16:00.000-05:00

Today Sen. Barack Obama announced plans to form an exploratory committee for a presidential candidacy. That's a step saying he seriously believes he has the chops to become President of the United States. I'm not yet convinced, based on his sparse track record. But I had a spirited debate with a friend yesterday who said that the very freshness that Obama brings to the political table makes him formidable. Obama himself says the U.S. is hungering for "a different kind of politics."

Here's how you can see what Obama said today on his own website: http://www.barackobama.com

Lost MLK Speech

2007-01-15T09:51:00.000-05:00

If you go to the following, you can hear a speech that Dr. King gave at a synagogue, the Temple Israel of Hollywood, in 1965.

http://historynews.wordpress.com/2007/01/06/audio-of-mlk-1965-temple-israel-sermon/

"Violence cannot solve the problems of the world. Violence is both impractical and immoral," he said in a sermon that might well be made today.

If you haven't heard, many of his papers will go on exhibit today at the Atlanta History Center. They will remain on exhibit until May 13.

In Honor of MLK, A Young Woman's Reflection on Nonviolence

2007-01-14T23:59:00.000-05:00

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is upon us once again. In light of the Iraq war, the United States' continued presence in Afghanistan, the carnage in the Darfur region of Sudan and the long, seemingly permanent pall cast by 9/11, let us reconsider Dr. King's most important tool: nonviolence. Today, the very idea of employing nonviolence as a political end to resolve conflict has been delegitimized and defiled. Nonviolence is dismissed as antiquated and effete, its proponents naïve and anti-intellectual. However, nonviolence and its twin, nonparticipation, are still powerful.

In launching an ill-conceived war, President George W. Bush refused to allow diplomatic discourse to be diplomatic. Instead, the bluster and hubris that have hallmarked his administration browbeat the coalition of the so-called willing into joining the United States in a preemptive war. The drumbeat to war was amplified by vengeance paraded in jingoistic rhetoric. To meet out exceptional violence to our enemy was endorsed by our president and substantiated by our country's short, bloody history. War and the rumors of war were the only articulations allowed to emerge on the political and social landscapes. Fear of being labeled unpatriotic silenced politicians, clergy, media and individuals. In such an atmosphere, to espouse nonviolence would be to commit political, social and professional suicide.

Four and a half years into the Iraq debacle, the country is no longer divided, but solidly opposed to the war; and its critics have been unleashed. Now, as President Bush stumps among conservatives for support for his newly unveiled escalation plan, those in the public eye who support withdrawal from Iraq must be careful to introduce their ideas with the caveat that they have no wish "to cut and run." To lay down arms in the face of violence is decried as cowardly. The untenable situation in Iraq has the U.S. in what my Aunt Ruth would call a trick-bag: We have fallen easily into a simple contraption but cannot find our way out. The answer, according to our president, is to ratchet-up our military presence in order to combat increasing Iraqi violence. In short, violence begets violence.

How then is the bloody cycle to be broken? If we are to learn and somehow heal from our national experience in Iraq, there must be those of us who, in times of national crisis, do not fail to offer the legitimate nonviolent examples of the Gandhi-led British resistance movement in India, the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and yes, the United States during the oppressive days of the civil rights movement. If we find it too burdensome to research history, we may look to the more recent demonstration of people power in the Orange Revolution that took the Ukraine by storm. We must reintroduce nonviolence as a legitimate, practical concept. We must divest our commercial and personal interests, thereby denying fodder to the war machine. Most important, we must love our neighbor regardless of any divisional constructs. There can be no violence in love.

--Suzette K. Shipp

"A Great Day in Harlem...A Great Day in the United States"

2007-01-14T20:57:00.000-05:00

Hundreds of people made those kinds of declarations Sunday afternoon in a lavish Harlem inaugural celebration of Rep. Charlie Rangel’s elevation to what former President Clinton declared to be “the most powerful committee in the United States Congress.” He is now “Mr. Chairman” of the House Ways and Means Committee.

“It’s a new day,” Rangel himself declared, while describing a far-reaching agenda that includes addressing not just the war in Iraq, but also the rebuilding of the states devastated by Hurricane Katrina, poverty in general and education.

The Great Hall at the City College of New York could hardly contain people who came out to honor the chairman – and to eat all that great food supplied by Upper Manhattan restaurants.

Pioneering politicians were there, starting with the emcee, the new Lieutenant Govenor, David Paterson; his father, Basil; former Mayor David Dinkins; former Manhattan Borough President and masterful entrepreneur, Percy Sutton; former Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields and on and on and on. Entertainers present included Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover and Tony Bennett, who belted out an a capella version of “America the Beautiful.”

Basil Paterson, who with Dinkins, Sutton and Rangel have been powerhouses in the New York Democratic Party for decades, said he never doubted that Rangel would become chair of Ways and Means. “It took longer than I thought,” he told me.

Rangel said he often thought of leaving Congress, especially these last 12 or so years when Republicans ruled. But, as Assemblyman Keith Wright, who now literally sits in the seat once occupied by Rangel in the New York Legislature, told me: “He stayed the course.”

Now the question is what will he really be able to accomplish not only for Harlem, not only for Black Americans, but for all Americans. He is still a vigorous septuagenarian – and a wily politician.

Hail to Mr. Chairman! For now.

Has the Black church world come to this?

2007-01-14T02:58:00.000-05:00

Black churches, apparently affected by bling-bling, materialism and the decline in music education in our public schools, are finding it difficult to attract musicians who are also into the spiritual side of the church. Check out this article that appeared over the weekend in The New York Times by Samuel Freedman: "Black Churches Hungering for Musical Talent".

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/13/us/13religion.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5070&en=5b2fd5781a068214&ex=1169442000

Here's an excerpt:

"Mr. [Eli] Wilson started playing piano at age 6 in the church his father pastored in New Orleans. Now, at 58, he embodies a breed that is rapidly vanishing.

'When I was coming up, the emphasis was on using music to develop and grow people, spiritually,' he said. 'Right now, it’s all about the tightness of the band and spotlighting the best voices. So instead of looking for people who have a heart for ministry, you look for the best musicians. And for them, it’s just another gig.'"

God Grew Tired Of Us: I saw it!

2007-01-13T04:46:00.000-05:00

Run, don’t walk, to see this film!. You know the drill: A film about black people comes along that is not a comedy. There is poor publicity. Attendance in the first few days and weeks is spotty; the film disappears.

I spent hours trying to discover where the film could be seen in New York City – and I’m hardly the dullest bulb in the pack. Information should be available at this web site: http://www.godgrewtiredofus.com/. Screenings are scheduled from New York to Nashville through early February.

As important as this awarding-winning film by Christopher Quinn is, however, is the message that much remains to be done to heal the world. The thousands of “lost boys” were casualties of war in the south of Sudan. In the western Sudan, Darfur is one of the latest horror stories, with more than 2 million people driven from their homes and forced into refugee camps in neighboring countries. Women and children are being raped and maimed in what is generally considered to be a genocidal campaign. George Clooney, the actor and activist, has made a documentary that will be aired on television in some markets in coming days. Look for A Journey to Darfur on the AmericanLife TV Network (http://www.americanlifetv.com/)

God Grew Tired Of Us

2007-01-12T11:46:00.000-05:00

The film is apparently opening around the country this weekend, but as is typical of matters of a serious note related to Black people, it's hard to figure out where to find it.

It will open in New York City today at the Sunshine Cinema, 143 E. Houston St. between 1st and 2d Avenues (777-FILM, #687).

There's a screening in Washington on Jan. 17; see information below about that and for a further description of the film. One of my earlier postings also deals with this film.

Let's talk.
------------

God Grew Tired of Us -
Special Preview Screening
Wednesday, January 17, 2007 at 7:30 p.m. (in Washington)

In 2001, John Bul Dau arrived in the United States, ending one incredible journey and beginning another. One of Sudan's "Lost Boys," displaced by a civil war that made refugees of thousands of children, Dau had walked over a thousand miles at the age of 14 to reach a refugee camp in Kenya, dodging ambushes, massacres, and attacks by wild animals along the way. "I have seen the hyenas come at dusk to feed on the bodies of my friends," Dau has written. "I have crossed a crocodile-infested river while being shelled and shot at. I have walked until I thought I could walk no more...Those were the times I thought God had grown tired of us."

In the refugee camp, Dau began his first formal schooling at the age of 18, eventually earning a secondary education degree and becoming a leader in the camp, mentoring and teaching younger refugee children and instilling in them the values of his Dinka culture. He was selected along with a group of Lost Boys to emigrate to the United States, where he began a whole new cultural journey, encountering such things as telephones, appliances, snow, and grocery stores for the first time. Meeting difficulties with the same refusal to despair that had enabled him to survive his escape from war, Dau worked his way through community college, became a human rights activist on behalf of Sudanese refugees, and has established foundations to help other Lost Boys pay for education and other necessities in America. In recognition of his efforts as an aspiring adventurer and visionary, Dau has been selected as a National Geographic Emerging Explorer and has recently been named Director of the Sudan Project at Direct Change.

The experiences of Dau and his fellow Lost Boys, Panther Bior and Daniel Abul Pach, in Sudan, and their later immigration to the United States are recounted in an inspiring new film. God Grew Tired of Us, directed by Christopher Quinn and co-directed by Tommy Walker, is a Newmarket Films presentation of a National Geographic Films and Lost Boys of Sudan Inc. production. Dau has also told his story in a new National Geographic book of the same name. In this special event to mark the release of the book and film, National Geographic Live! will present a screening of the film, followed by a discussion with John Dau and Christopher Quinn. In addition, copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing. Don't miss this chance to meet a truly inspiring hero for our time, and see a powerful cinematic meditation on the durability of the human spirit.

A profile of Dau appears in the January 2007 issue of National Geographic magazine.
Location Tickets
The Grosvenor Auditorium
National Geographic Society Headquarters
1600 M Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20036
+1 202 857 7700
order tickets

Pricing: (See Ticket Info)
All Tickets $5

Mayor Nagin is not New Orleans' worst problem

2007-01-12T05:46:00.000-05:00

It was not the mayor or the police or the judges who committed all those murders in New Orleans. The people in New Orleans need to recognize that and do something themselves. The march on City Hall was a start this week, but come on! If a man kills his woman or vice versa, how can the mayor or the "system" prevent that? If a sociopath decides to shoot a man, woman and child, how can that be forseen and prevented -- unless, of course, said sociopath was already known to the "system." It seems to me that whether we are talking New Orleans or Newark, we are ignoring the power that individuals can have in monitoring what is happening in their own families, on their blocks, in their broader communities. If you see something, say something. DO SOMETHING.

Congressman Rangel and Iraq

2007-01-11T13:27:00.000-05:00

I just spoke with the congressman from Harlem who is now in the powerful position as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. In Washington, he had re-floated his idea to bring back the draft. That's right. Young people of a certain age and, more importantly, from all classes and economic status, would be called up to carry the burden of the war that President Bush now realizes is a mistake.

About Bush's speech to the nation Wednesday night, Rangel said: "I was embarrassed for the President." Rangel, a veteran of the war in Korea, said of this commander-in-chief who ducked out of doing time in Vietnam, "He looked like a deer caught in the headlights of a car." Gone, Rangel sensed, was the "swagger" of the Top Gun-Mission Accomplshed days.

The President has said he'll send at least 21,000 more troops. But Rangel, like retired Gen. Colin Powell and others in the military, say there aren't enough fresh troops out there to fill that request. Those 21,000 will be currently serving men and women who are nearing the ends of their tours but will be told they have to remain. That number will also include people who have served and are now at home and will be told that they have to go back.

Where are the sons and daughters and nieces and nephews of the privileged, including President Bush's and Vice President Cheney's and so on and so on?

This is so irrational -- and so unfair!