FOOD FOR THOUGHT

 

Black Men: Missing
By Salim Muwakkil

     As we limp into the 21st century, a gender gap is rending the fabric of the entire African-American community.

     The overwhelming absence of Black men has always been one of the most distressing facts about life in America's public housing developments. In Chicago, for example, black women are the vast majority of lease holders in the Chicago Housing Authority; men are like ghosts in the projects.

     Besieged by poverty, disease, violence and mass incarceration, African-American men are conspicuously missing in action. At one time, this gender imbalance afflicted mostly lower-income neighborhoods. But as we limp into the 21st century, that gender gap is rending the fabric of the entire African-American community.

     "Where have all the Black men gone?" asked the headline on a story by Jonathan Tilove for The Star Ledger in Newark, N.J. The article examined the New Jersey city of East Orange, where there are 37 percent more adult women than men. Tilove wrote that most of the missing men are dead, and many others are locked up or in the military.

     "Worst yet," he wrote, "the gender imbalance in East Orange is not some grotesque anomaly. It's a vivid snapshot of a very troubling reality in black America." Tilove noted that nationwide adult black women outnumber black men by 2 million. With nearly another million black men in prison or the military, the reality in most black communities across the country is an even greater imbalance - a gap of 2.8 million, or 26 percent, according to Census Bureau figures for 2002. The comparable disparity for whites was 8 percent.

     In some cities the gap is even higher. There are more than 30 percent more black women than men in Baltimore, New Orleans, Chicago and Cleveland. In New York City the number is 36 percent and in Philadelphia, 37 percent. As the black population ages, the gap widens. "By the time people reach their 60s in East Orange, there are 47 percent more black women than men," Tilove wrote.

     This growing gender gap has enormously negative implications for the future of black America. And there are nuances in the statistics that make the prognosis even bleaker. For example, among well-educated, professional black women--a group that is growing rapidly--the gap is a chasm. Surely, that progress for black women is good news that shouldn't be overlooked. However, as black women advance, black men are falling even further behind.

     In fact, the more successful a black woman becomes, the more likely she will end up alone, Walter Farrell, a University of North Carolina professor, said in a March 2002 Washington Monthly article. As a result, professional black women are having fewer
children, meaning that a growing percentage of black children are being born into less educated, less affluent families.

     The recent edition of the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education warns that "a large and growing gender gap in African-American higher education has become a troublesome trend casting a shadow on overall black education progress." The Journal reports that in 2001, there were 1,095,000 black women enrolled in institutions of higher education and only 604,000 black men. The gap, which is even wider at professional schools, has increased since 2001.

     It's also important to note that despite unprecedented gains, black women are the fastest growing group of inmates in the nation's prisons. And they still bear the brunt of urban poverty as single parents in the commercial wastelands that too often are their
neighborhoods.

     Unless we make some dramatic changes in the way our society tracks black men, all of these conditions will worsen, with increasingly nightmarish consequences. The primary culprit is the tracking of black men into a criminal justice system that a growing
number of critics have dubbed the "prison-industrial complex." Many are there because of the so-called war on drugs and its accompanying mandatory minimum sentences.

     The tracking process begins in elementary school, where African-American males routinely are assumed to be academically deficient and then demonized for their angry reactions to those biased assumptions. Resentful of a system that blithely dismisses their potential, many black boys eventually become alienated from scholastic activity. A recent study found that only 38 percent of Chicago's black males have graduated from high school since 1995.

     These uneducated youth are the raw material of the prison-industrial complex. Lacking marketable skills, they flock to the ruthless underground economy of drug commerce where they are easily siphoned into the "injustice" system--victims of the drug war. Some also become victims of lethal gun violence--homicide remains the leading cause of death for young black men.

     Unless we strenuously intervene to better the prospects of African-American men, who incidentally comprise about one-eighth of the earth's entire population of prison inmates, we may just be accomplices to a process of genocide in our own country.

Eternal,

The Aleems

 

 

THE FRONT ROW

 

Life is a theater - invite your audience carefully.

Not everyone is holy enough and healthy enough to have a front row seat in our lives.

There are some people in your life that need to be loved from a distance. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you let go, or at least minimize your time with draining, negative, incompatible, not-going-anywhere relationships/friendships/fellowships!

Observe the relationships around you. Pay attention to: Which ones lift and which ones lean? Which ones encourage and which ones discourage? Which ones are on a path of growth uphill and which ones are going downhill? When you leave certain people, do you feel better or feel worse? Which ones always have drama or don't really understand, know and appreciate you and the gift that lies within you?

The more you seek God and the things of God -- the more you seek quality, the more you seek not just the hand of God but the face of God -- the more you seek things honorable -- the more you seek growth, peace of mind, love and truth around you, the easier it will become for you to decide who gets to sit in the FRONT ROW and who should be moved to the balcony of your life.  You cannot change the people around you...but you can change the people you are around!

Ask God for wisdom and discernment and choose wisely the people who sit in the front row of your life.

- Author Unknown

 

An Overview of Black History

Compiled & Edited by Phillip True, Jr.

 

1. Origin of Man: "Human Beginnings"

     Dr. Albert Chuchward, distinguished scholar, anthropologist, and archeologist theorizes that the earliest member of the human species appeared about two million years ago in the Great Lakes region of Central Africa. This early human species eventually spread over the entire continent. Many individuals in Dr. Churchward's field generally agree with his theory, including Dr. L.S.B. Leakey. In 1963, Leakey found primitive human fossils, 1.2 million years old in East Africa.

     Further discussion on this theory was published in Newsweek Magazine, January 11, 1988, in an article called "The Search for Adam & Eve." The subject was about the collection and testing of a global assortment of genes. A trail of DNA was
found that led them to a single woman from whom we all descended. The evidence indicates that Eve lived in Sub-Saharan Africa, between 80,000 and 200,000 years ago. These descendants began migrating from their original homeland, inhabiting the whole world.

     The African ancestry of the human race is now generally accepted as a fact. Dr. Eric Higgs, of Cambridge University has made a study of the migration of ancient men, and claims that the first man of Europe came to the continent from central and east Africa about 200,000 years ago. Professor Chester Chard, of the University of
Wisconsin, has studied the routes of early men who left Africa to colonize the rest of the
world, and he has concluded that there were four prehistoric migration routes from Africa to Europe.

     Professor Leakey was asked if any of these early Africans reached the New World, and his answer was as follows: "It is inconceivable that man, the most curious and mobile of all animals, would not have come to America when the elephants, the tapirs and the deer came from Asia. . Man spread out from Africa to Asia to Europe. It is
inconceivable that he would stay out of America."

     In 1988, the findings of anthropologists Christopher B. Stringer and Peter Andrews, of the British Museum of Natural History further confirmed the single-origin theory, that Homo Sapiens had evolved from an African Homo Erectus group, 200,000 years ago who had later migrated to Asia and Europe about 100,000 later. Both
scientists contend that fossil evidence supports their single-origin theory. They also note that the oldest modern looking human fossils, from Western Europe, are only 35,000 years old.

     Human skull remains, 2.4 million years old were found in Kenya in 1965. This new date places the origin of human beings within the period of major climate change, a global cooling is already believed to have caused other mammals to undergo
dramatic evolutionary change. Geologist, John Martyn discovered the fossils while working in the Chemeron Beds in Kenya's Great Rift Valley. The date of the skulls was determined using a new scientific method called Agron.

     These discoveries help to validate the fact that mankind originated in Africa. Humans born around the Great Lakes region, so very close to the equator, would have been very heavily pigmented. Gloger's Law states that warm-blooded animals
born in such an equatorial region as the Great Lakes and Kenya will secrete a dark pigment called eumelanin (melanin).

http://www.africawithin.com/black_history/overview_chapter1.htm

 

2. First Woman and Man: "Mother-Right"

     The concept of a family with a father, mother, and child (or patriarchy), is unfortunately not a true picture of the original family. The first type of family was matriarchal since the role of the father in procreation was unknown. Even
today, among tribes in Central Australia and the Trobriand Islands, we find people possessing no knowledge of the nature of paternity. In such a society, even if the father lives with the mother, he is not considered the head of the family.

     Available evidence concludes that the earliest human groups or families consisted not of father, mother, and their descendants, but of mother and her descendants in the female line, since no other line of descent was recognized at that time. The system of female descent was known as "Mother-Right."

     The role of gender in the evolution of man is very important. Most of all of the existing evidence opposes the theory of male superiority. In nearly all animal species, the female is the superior and dominant type. Even in the human race, before the rise of civilization, female rule was practically universal. Prior to the vertebrate level, the male sex is relatively unimportant.

     In primitive society humans lived in groups or clans each of which was based on common descent in the female line, and the members were joined together for mutual protection, and marriage within the group was forbidden. Members of one
group would have to pick a mate from another group. This type of matrimony is known as exogamy, this promiscuity was an evolution that led successively to group-marriage, loose monogamy, and finally the patriarchal family of today.

     In primitive society, exogamy is closely connected with another system called totemism. Totems of kindred groups were first formed for food supply purposes. A plentiful food supply and improved tools permitted people to settle permanently in villages. Land ownership became a part of a cooperative family venture, after which is when the structure began to change from matriarchal (mother) to patriarchal (father), or
the "Father-Right" family of today.

http://www.africawithin.com/black_history/overview_chapter2.html

 

3. Human Migration

     The first humans came from the region of the Great Lakes in East Africa, approximately 200,000 years ago. These small people were known as the Twa people (or Pygmies). These earliest humans migrated following the Nile River, north, south, east, and west, creating the first civilization. A noted German scholar, Herr Enger Georg states:

"A splendid era of blacks seems to have preceded all later races.  There must once have been a tremendous Negro expansion, since the original masters of all the lands between Liberia and the Cape of Good Hope and East India were primitive and probably dwarfed black men."

     Blacks were the dark skinned, curly haired Kushites. Blacks inhabited Sumeria and Babylon prior to Christianity and Islam. In India, the kingdom of the Dravidian monarchs existed until the period of written history. Many thousands of years before Christ, great, great cultures bloomed in the bark rich valleys of the Yang-tse-kiang, the Ho, Indus, Euphrates, Nile, and Congo rivers, while Oceania, Central America, and the highlands of the Andes were centers of human settlements.

     A number of scientists and scholars in ancient and modern times have concluded that the world's first civilization was the creation of a people known as the Ethiopians. The name "Ethiopian" we owe to the Greeks. When they encountered the Africans, they called them "burnt faces."

     In Greek, the word for burnt was ethios, and the word for face was opa. Together they became Ethiopian. We learn from the work of Homer and Herodotus that all of the people of the following areas were considered Ethiopians: the Sudan, Egypt, Arabia, Palestine, Western Asia, and India.

     These black civilizations have been traced back to ancient Egypt, and have spread from the Nile to Crete and Western Asia, traveling through South Asia to Indonesia, and the islands of the Pacific and on to South and Central America, i.e., the Mayas, Incas, and Aztecs.

http://www.africawithin.com/black_history/overview_chapter3.html

 

4. Nile Valley Civilization

     The Nile Valley has been called the cradle of civilization. The first inhabitants of this area were the Ethiopians, a black skinned people whose descendants entered the valley through Nubia following the Nile River. Thebes and Moroe were among the first cities established and became the religious centers of Upper Egypt. The practice of Ammonism or the worship of the God Ammon was the major religion (Ammon being the God of Gods).

     It is said that the ancient Egyptians were a colony sent from Ethiopia by the god Osiris who was regarded as the leader of the colony. The Edfu text, an ancient scroll text, is another important source document on the origin of the Nile Valley. The inscription found at the temple of Horus at Edfu tells us that the origin of Egyptian civilization was taken from the south by a band of invaders led by King Horus.

     This ancient culture has been traced back to the area of Somaliland, and quite possibly had its origin on the shores of the Great Lakes in Central Africa. Ruins have been found in Somaliland similar to the buildings in early Egypt.

     Professor Arthur G. Brodeur asserts that the ancestors of the southern Egyptians came originally from Nubia. These earliest tribes of Egyptians were Hamites and Kushites (of Ethiopian ancestry).

     Approximately 6000 years ago, the ancient Egyptians became conquerors and rulers of Upper and Lower Egypt. The first Pharaoh of Egypt was Aha Mena or Menes, whose reign, according to various Egyptologist began anywhere from 5776 B.C.E., to 3300 B.C.E. In 1914 A.D., Sir Wallis Budge, late Keeper of the British Museum, stated that the earliest dates proposed by any Egyptologist are most likely correct.

     The dynastic period lasted from about 6000 B.C. until 300 B.C. These dynastic periods were divided into four main groups. The Old Kingdom (Dynasties 1-4), The Middle Kingdom (Dynasties 11-14), The Empire Dynasties 18-20), and The Saite Age (Dynasty 26). In the 27th Dynasty, the country was overrun by the Persians and since
that time Egypt has rarely been free of foreign rule.

     Prior to the invasion of the Greeks in 325 B.C., Egypt was called Chem (kmt) or Ta-Merry. A very high level of civilization existed in Chem, the foundation of all of the arts and sciences of today were perfected at that time: astronomy, music, medicine, chemistry, geometry, calculus, art, rhetoric, etc. All of the aforementioned areas of learning reached their zenith in the ancient Mystery School of the Egyptians. Also, the origin of all the world's religions along with their spiritual, moral, and ethical codes all had their beginnings in the Egyptian mystery system schools (universities, temples, and lodges).

 

5. African Civilizations in Europe

     The Caucasoid type of humanity is believed to have resulted from an original Afrocoid stock. Around 40,000 B.C., the Grimaldian Africoids inhabited Southwestern Eurasia (Russia). The Caucasoid type is said to have resulted from a phenomenon associated with Vitamin D metabolism.

     One of the most vital functions of the skin is the production of Vitamin D from the biochemical substance called 7-dehydrocholesterol, through interaction with the ultraviolet light of the sun. This is a critical process for Vitamin D, since it is the vitamin that is absolutely necessary for the proper mineralization of the bones.

     In the ice-age environment, whitened skin out of an original Africoid stock was better adapted to Vitamin D production. The development of this new human stock was made possible by prolonged isolation from other human groups, leading to inbreeding within the albinoid group, which continually heightened the albinoid characteristics.

     Melanized skin (skin with dark pigmentation) in a tropical climate is necessary to protect the cells from the ultraviolet rays of the sun, and from the deadly effects of skin cancer. This also means that most of the ultraviolet light that would normally go into producing Vitamin D, is screened out. However, because of the intensity of the tropical sun, enough ultraviolet light penetrates the melanin barrier to produce a sufficient amount of Vitamin D for the bones.

     In a frigid northern climate, with many sunless days, and shorter hours of daylight, melanized (dark or black) skin becomes a liability. In a colder climate, the amount of sunlight penetrating melanized skin for the production of Vitamin D is drastically reduced.

     The fossil remains of these ancient Grimaldi Africans were discovered in a cave near Mentone, France, layers below the Cro-Magnon man, in an area called Eurasia. These were the same small Africans known as the Twa (also called Pygmies), whose descendants are in Southern Africa today, best known as the Hottentot. Other African fossil remains of a similar age have been found in Brittany, Switzerland, Central Europe, and Bulgaria.

http://www.africawithin.com/black_history/overview_chapter5.html

 

6. African Civilization in Western Asia

     The earliest civilization in Western Asia were the Sumerians, followed by the Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians, all of them preceding the Chaldeans. The Sumerians have been described as a black faced people, pictured on monuments as
beardless with shaven heads. There has been much confusion as to where the Sumerians original homeland was. However, through much research, anthropologists have proven that they are of African heritage.

     According to author, Drusilla D. Houston, Arabia was originally settled by two distinct races, an earlier Cushite Ethiopian race and a later Semitic race. In an article on Arabian states, written in Encyclopedia Britannica, the institutions of Yemen, Hadrabut, Oman, and adjoining districts point to an African origin.

     Arabia, Egypt, Sumer, and India were all colonies of the Cushite Empire. Ethiopia was the mother of them all, and her rulers under various titles were great rulers. Researchers have found traces of wealthy nations, great buildings, and accomplishment in the areas of astronomy and other sciences. The Sumerians, however, achieved a level of excellence in various arts and sciences that none of the other cultures of Mesopotamia ever rose to.

     The Sumerian civilization can only be attributed to the arrival of black migrants from Africa's Nile Valley. According to writer Runoko Rashidi, Sumer flourished during the third millennium. In their own literature, the Sumerians referred to themselves as "blackheads." Sumer was only one of numerous Nilotic Cushite colonies implanted in the early Asia. This empire consisted of a major urban center surrounded by smaller satellite
towns and villages, mostly independent states. The Sumerian city-states merge to form a powerful unified kingdom led by provincial leaders granted divine status.

     Ur was the most powerful Sumerian city. This great Sumerian city lasted for nearly a century. The Sumerians architectural practice can be traced back to their ancestors of the Nile. The Sumerian Empire was quite prosperous. However, the Sumerian foundation was quite fragile. The coalition of the empire was erratic and unstable, which would imply that the Sumerians weren't concerned with the future, or long-term establishment. The Sumerian Empire downfall was due to northern invasions. The Indo-European and
Semites invaded and destroyed the Sumerian civilization. Additionally, the agrarian
resources had been severely limited which contributed to the destruction.

     Although it may seem that the Sumerians vanished from history, the factual reality of the archaeological and anthropological data strongly supports the Sumerians presence in eastern civilization. The Sumerians (of African heritage) planted the seeds for Mesopotamia and Babylonia, and were the pioneers and settlers of the Asian frontier. The Sumerians established the groundwork and set the guidelines for kingdoms and empires to follow.

http://www.africawithin.com/black_history/overview_chapter6.htm

 

July 26, 2005

EUR News

 

 THE HUTCHINSON REPORT: Bush's Black Vote Court Shakes Democrats by: Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Republican National Committee chair Ken Mehlman told the recent NAACP convention that he'd pull out all stops to woo black voters to the GOP tent. A few hundred miles away his boss was busy touting his program for jobs, minority business, and homeownership at the Indianapolis Black Expo. Bush and Mehlman got a listen at both places, and they should have.

Read more: http://www.eurweb.com/story.cfm?id=21495

 

THE BRIDGE: Reparations or Repair? by: Darryl James

I can't seem to get away from the unending arguments for Reparations. Some people are alarmed that a Black activist would be repulsed by such a movement, but I consider the movement to be without motion and a complete waste of time and energy.

Read more: http://www.eurweb.com/story.cfm?id=21488

THE MO'KELLY REPORT: The Ignorance Named Ebonics by: Morris O'Kelly

Sometimes, readers of my columns take me to task for having too many complaints, being too negative or not taking enough time to enlighten people about the joyful facets of the African-American experience.

Read more: http://www.eurweb.com/story.cfm?id=21489

 

The State Of Black Los Angeles In 2005: 'A Ladder Of Hope,' Or A Slide Of Regression? (Part 2 of a two-part series) by: Anthony Asadullah Samad

The State of Black Equality in Los Angeles (SBELA), as chronicled in the United Way/Los Angeles Urban League study, is not a reflection of how bad Blacks are doing, but how well others are doing in pursuit of a better quality of life. African Americans can't blame others for leaving them behind.

They can blame themselves for allowing it to happen,in not being vigilant about black issues, in not being watchful of emerging trends, including the return of "Negrophobia" (my topic next week), in not being strategic in developing communities that prosper and growth, and in not being willing to offer critique, and enact punishment on those who betray our interest.

Read More: http://www.eurweb.com/story.cfm?id=21491

 

Motivational Note

The Motivation Secret That's Right Under Your Nose:The Motivation123 Newsletter by Jason M. Gracia http://www.motivation123.com

ghYou might not realize now, but something you experienced in the past is the key to getting what you want in the future. But what does that really mean? 'Get what you want' has been used so many times that it has lost its effect. So let me be a little more specific.

You have a particular piece of information that, when used in the right way, will drive you to do the things you've always wanted to do with your life. It will literally make you feel like taking action - right now. That's a very useful piece of information. What is it and how do you use it? Let's find out.

The Five Percent Rule

The truth is, everyone has this information in their heads, but less than five percent of the population knows about it. They waste precious years and spend thousands of dollars looking for the answer to happiness without ever realizing the one thing they needed was right in front of them the entire time. And it's right in front of you, too. This happens all the time. People look 'out there' for the answers that are actually already inside them.

It reminds me of the famous story, Acres of Diamonds. An old farmer, hearing countless stories of people finding diamond mines all around him, sells his farm and spends the rest of his life covering the African continent looking for the valuable stones. Never finding any, he throws himself into a river out of depression and desperation. One day, the man who purchased the land from the old farmer walked across a creek on the property and noticed a shiny, glimmering rock. He brought it home and placed it on his fireplace mantle thinking it was an interesting piece of crystal.

Several weeks later, a friend visited the farm and was immediately drawn to the rock; he nearly fainted from what he held in his hands. Not a crystal at all, it turned out to be one of the largest diamonds ever discovered. The farm that was first sold so the owner could find diamonds 'out there' was in fact the most productive diamond mine on the entire African continent.

In a sense, the same thing is happening to people today. They are looking everywhere for the answers that are already inside them. And the answer you have inside you right now is sure to make an enormous impact in your life. 

Something to Ask Yourself

It all starts with a simple question: Have you ever felt driven in the past? I'm not only talking about the drive to win Olympic medals or achieve larger-than-life dreams (although they're included). I'm talking about any time that you've felt motivated to do something and followed through with action. I know you have. Whether it's getting up for work every morning or taking care of the kids, you've felt driven to do thousands of things in the past. And because of that fact I can guarantee that you'll be able to create that feeling again and again whenever you need it.

Before moving on, I want to mention something to all the readers who want to change and improve but don't feel confident enough to go for it. Confidence is not only a major part of success, but it's easy to build and develop when you know how to do it. The Motivated Mind, our latest release, gives you the keys to feeling confident in every area of your life. It's quick, it's easy, and it works. For more information, visit this address:

http://www.motivation123.com/tmm-ez02.html

 

JULY 28, 2005

 

THE HUTCHINSON REPORT: Watts ... Forty Years After The Flames/Pt. 1 by: Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The young Nationa l Guard officer curtly and sternly ordered my high school buddies and me to keep moving down the street. He waved his bayoneted rifle menacingly at us as he barked out his orders. Behind him, a small army of white helmeted LAPD officers and battle fatigued dressed National Guardsman stood tensely with their rifles poised. I kept a wary eye on them as we nervously walked past the three deep barricades that ringed the streets around my house.

My friends and I were on our way home from summer school classes that hot August day forty years ago. The smoke from burning stores a few blocks away choked our eyes, and seared our lungs. In the distance we could hear the crackle of gunfire. The streets were strewn with empty liquor and cigarette cartons that had been hastily discarded by the horde of looters that for nearly four days roamed the streets near my house.

 

TECHNOLOGY BREAKDOWN: Denial Is Not A River In Egypt by: Russell de Pina

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that terrorism is no joke, and the threat of terrorism is something to be taken seriously. Which is why I got so frustrated when the New York Police began random searching of passengers' bags on July 22, 2005, a week after the second London subway bombing.

 

A Hip Hop Clothing Store Called 'Nigger'
by Playahata.com

 

Hi Black Folks!

My name is David Sylvester and I recently completed a charitable bicycle trip in Africa, riding over 7000 miles from Cairo, Egypt to Cape Town, South Africa . The trip made me the first and only African American to cross two continents on a bicycle. I have plenty of great and fascinating stories. Many are funny, others bittersweet, some are poignant, but all are entertaining. Surprisingly one story has stood out and if it was not for the fact that I have a picture of it, many would never believe it. and it is for that reason that I am sharing it with you.

Jackson Invites Cosby

I had never seen the Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson cry in public. And he's
seldom upstaged. Until, Bill Cosby came to town.

Last week Jackson invited Cosby to the annual Rainbow/PUSH conference for a
conversation about controversial remarks the entertainer offered May 17 at
an NAACP dinner in Washington, D.C. That's when America's Jell-O Man shook
things up by arguing that African Americans were betraying the legacy of
civil rights victories.

"The lower economic people," he said, "are not holding up their end in this
deal. These people are not parenting. They are buying things for their kids
-- $500 sneakers for what?  And won't spend $200 for "Hooked on Phonics!"

Thursday morning, Cosby showed no signs of repenting as he strode across the
stage at the Sheraton Hotel ballroom before a standing-room-only crowd.
Sporting a natty gold sports coat and dark glasses, he proceeded to unload a
laundry list of black America's self-imposed ills. The iconic actor and
comedian kidded that he couldn't compete with the oratory of the Reverend
but he preached circles around Jackson in their nearly hour-long
conversation, delivering brutally frank one-liners and the toughest of love.

The enemy, he argues, is us:

"There is a time, ladies and gentlemen, when we have to turn the mirror
around." Cosby acknowledged he wasn't critiquing all blacks - just "the 50
percent of African Americans in the lower economic neighborhood who drop out
of school," and the alarming proportions of black men in prison and black
teenage mothers. The mostly black crowd seconded him with choruses of
"Amens."

To critics who pose, it's unproductive to air our dirty laundry in public,
he responds, "Your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 every day.
It's cursing on the way home, on the bus, train, in the candy store.
They are cursing and grabbing each other and going nowhere.
And, the book bag is very, very thin because there's nothing in it."

"Don't worry about the white man," he adds. "I could care less about what
white people think about me . . . let 'em talk. What are they saying that is
different from what their grandfathers said and did to us? What is different
is what we are doing to ourselves."

For those who say Cosby is just an elitist who's "got his" but doesn't
understand the plight of the black poor, he reminds us that, "We're going to
turn that mirror around. It's not just the poor-everybody's guilty."
Cosby and Jackson lamented that in the 50th year of Brown vs. Board of
Education, our failings betray our legacy. Jackson dabbed away tears as he
recalled the financial struggles at Fisk University, a historically black
college and Jackson's alma mater.

When Cosby was done, the 1,000 people in the room all jumped to their feet
in ovation. Long after Cosby had departed, I could not find a dissenter in
the crowd. But in the hotel corridor I encountered a vintage poster for sale
that said volumes. The poster, which advertised the Million Man March, was
"discounted" to $5 Remember the Million Man March? In 1995 Nation of Islam
Minister Louis Farrakhan exhorted "a million sober, disciplined, committed,
dedicated, inspired black men to meet in Washington on a day of atonement."

Perhaps all that' s left of that call is a $5 poster. We have shed tears too
many times, at too many watershed moments before, while the hopes they
inspired have fallen by the wayside. Not this time. Cosby's plea to
parents: "Before you get to the point where you say 'I can't do nothing with
them' - do something with them."

Like:

o Teach our children to speak English.
o When the teacher calls, show up at the school.
o When the idiot box starts spewing profane rap videos, turn it off.
o Refrain from cursing around the kids.
o Teach our boys that women should be cherished, not raped and demeaned.
o Tell them that education is a prize we won with blood and tears, not a
dishonor.
o Stop making excuses for the agents and abettors of black-on-black crime.
o It costs us nothing to do these things. But if we don't, it will cost us
infinitely more tears.

NOTE FROM JUICE: I can't disagree with one word that Bill said! The time for excuses & burying our heads in the sand is over. The time to get it together has been long overdue. The question is, WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT???

This was forwarded by thesledgegroup@aol.com

 

August 1, 2005

 

ATKINS DEATH SENTENCE WOULD VIOLATE SPIRIT AND INTENT OF SUPREME COURT DECISION:
Executing The Mentally Retarded Is Cruel And Unusual Punishment

Angela Ciccolo, NAACP Interim General Counsel, today called on Virginia to spare the life of Daryl Atkins, a mentally retarded man convicted of murder, because the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that executing the mentally retarded is "cruel and unusual punishment."

SUNDAY MORNING NEWS SHOWS LACK COLOR:
New study finds black experts rarely invited to the party.

*A new study by the National Urban League reveals that only eight percent of the guests booked on major Sunday-morning talk shows over the past 18 months were African American - and three people accounted for the majority of those appearances.

 

August 2, 2005

EUR News

THE HUTCHINSON REPORT: Menezes Killing Casts Ugly Shadow on Racial Profiling In Britian by: Earl Ofari Hutchinson
The slaying of Brazilian legal émigré Jean Charles de Menezes by the Lond on police again cast an ugly glare on racial profiling in Britain. And race profiling there has nothing to do with stopping terrorism. During the past decade, London police have stopped, patted down, and detained legions of black, Asian, and Muslim British home office officials, doctors, lawyers, athletes, and business professionals.
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JESSE WARNS AGAINST BUSH 'RHETORIC' IN VOTING ACT:
Jackson says President's words 'cannot be trusted.'

*Although the Bush administration has vowed to support reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which guaranteed blacks the right to vote, Rev. Jesse Jackson said Wednesday that Bush and the U.S. Justice Department "cannot be trusted until hearings are conducted by the Congress" on specific provisions of the law, which will expire in 2007 unless reauthorized by Congress.
Read more: http://www.eurweb.com/story.cfm?id=21691

STEVEN IVORY: The Coming of Colleen by: Steven Ivory
Any woman leaving a bad marriage that lasted 10 years or more is technically as close to virginity as one can get. Think about it: The last few years of that marriage probably didn't include much sex. If she was faithful, then here is a woman emotionally and physically starved.
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Motivational Note Even though it may not look like it or feel like it, you are making progres...
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THE BRIDGE: In Search Of The Metaphysical Father by: Darryl James
We've all witnessed a young Black boy gone bad, shaking our heads, wondering where the child's father could be and whether the father's absence could be the cause of the child's difficulties. However, we should give that same focus to the difficulties experienced by young Black girls as well.
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THE MO'KELLY REPORT: Racist Sign...And Your Point? by: Morris O'Kelly

Stop it. Stop it. I don't want to hear it. Y'all have been blowin' up my email box asking what I thought about the 'situation' involving the 'n-word' and Michael Jackson. Honestly, I don't care. I don't care because it's out of turn for us to be collectively "disgusted" at the prospect of an overt racist doing what comes natural to him...given our relative indifference at what goes on in our own community. One sign outside one bar pales in comparison to every magazine periodical, musical and cinematic 'n-word' reference we use indefatigably.
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BETWEEN THE LINES: The Return Of 'Negrophobia': A 21st Century Version Of A Two Century Old Vestige by: Anthony Asadullah Samad

U.S. Secretary of State Condi Rice gets mad because her entourage is not shown the diplomatic courtesies by a third world nation normally afforded to "superpowers." Billionaire Oprah Winfrey denied a late night shopping trip often afforded superstar celebrities. The pastor of 10,000 member Chicago church, and State Senator, Rev. James Meeks, stopped by an Illinois State Trooper, only to have a gun draw n and put to his head...An interesting number of occurrences that are solely coincidental?
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SEKOU WRITES: Black Men on Black Love ... What Makes A Woman Marriage Material? by: SékouWrites
Better stop trying to find the magic formula; there isn't one. What makes a woman "marriage material" is very specific to each different man. What Pookie can't do without is p robably going to be very different from what Braxton needs (and vice versa), so don't try to fit into a specific mold. Be you. There are plenty of men who will like you for who you are. You want some concrete suggestions?
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August 5, 2005

Racial Profiling in Missing Persons Coverage

 Why do we care about Natalee, Laci, Jennifer?
Is there gender and racial profiling in missing persons coverage?Why some
stories, like Tamika Huston's, are never told

By Josh Mankiewicz
Correspondent
Dateline NBC
Updated: 7:54 p.m. ET Aug. 5, 2005

Missing American girls are often the lead story: The networks and the
cable news channels can't seem to get enough of Laci, of Chandra, of Lori,
of Jennifer, of Elizabeth, of Natalee.

Their disappearances have brought heartbreak and anguish to their
families. But if all you did was watch the TV news in this country, you
might think that these are the only people who are missing  or that their
fate in particular is incredibly important. News channels tell the story
of their disappearances not once, but again and again.

But in a country of almost 300 million, many other Americans are missing
too.

Tamika Huston, bright and beautiful with an angel's voice, is one of the
other missing Americans.

Tamika Huston's untold story
Aunt Rebkah Howard calls Huston "an amazing young woman."

"She's very bubbly, very bright," says Howard. "She has an amazing singing
voice."

Huston's dream of becoming a singer led her to try out for the TV show
"American Idol." She didn't make the cut, but the experience seemed to
inspire her to set her sights beyond the life she was living in
Spartanburg, South Carolina.

"I think she really realized, 'It's time for me to like figure out what I
really want to do with the rest of my life,'" says her aunt.

And then, one day in late May of 2004, Huston vanishes. At 24, Tamika had
quit her waitressing job and was going out on interviews. Since she was
living alone, it took a couple of weeks for her family to notice they
hadn't heard from her in awhile.

"I spent Saturday and Sunday trying to find her," says Howard. By Monday
morning, Howard called police in Spartanburg and told them something was
terribly wrong.

Police went to Tamika's home. She wasn't there and there was no sign of a
struggle. And yet, what police did find was reason for her family to worry
even more: Huston's abandoned dog.

"Her dog, Macy, who Tamika treated like her child, was there and had given
birth to a litter of puppies," says Howard. "It had obviously been left
alone for some time in distress. So, at that point, I knew, without
question, that something had gone horribly wrong," says Howard.

And the police's report got worse. Inside Tamika's home, police found her
driver's license, her cell phone, and some uncashed paychecks. It didn't
appear that Huston had just gone on vacation.

Six days later, officers found Tamika's car on the other side of town.
Inside the car, they found a set of keys that led them to apartments that
seemingly had no connection to the missing woman.

Spartanburg Police Lieutenant Steve Lamb, who led the investigation, says
he walked around that apartment complex asking if anybody had seen Huston.

Police were at work and so was Rebkah Howard, a public-relations executive
in Miami.

PR blitz in Spartanburg
Howard did what she does best: She drafted press releases and started
making phone calls.

In Spartanburg, her public relations skills paid off. The local media
picked up on Tamika's story pretty quickly.

But Howard knew she had to spread the word outside Spartanburg. "Tamika
could be anywhere from California to New York," she says. "I had no idea,
so I wanted to cast as wide a net as I could possibly cast."

Broadcast networks initially don't respond
So Howard starting calling the broadcast networks. But nothing happened.

"I couldn't understand why I wasn't even getting, you know, 'Thank you
very much, but we're not interested in this story at this time,'" says
Howard.

Howard says no one responded: Not at NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, or MSNBC.

It was crushing news for Howard. Her family had done everything they could
think of from prayer vigils and a $30,000 reward to Web sites devoted to
news about Huston. And this was a family with some connections  an uncle
works for U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, while Howards husband is former NFL
star Desmond Howard (a Heisman trophy winner and later Superbowl MVP).

But those connections didn't help enough and this family found the
disinterest in Tamika's story frustrating. To them, Tamika's story was so
similar to those of other women like Chandra Levy and Lori Hacking.

"Lori Hacking went missing about three weeks after my niece did and her
family was getting round-the-clock coverage on that case," recalls Howard.
"And I had just spent the preceding three weeks trying to get the
attention of those same reporters, of those same programs, of those same
networks, to pay attention to what I was saying about Tamika. I was
flabbergasted."

But Howard wouldn't take no for an answer: Seeing the steady drumbeat of
the Laci Peterson coverage, she says she called the "Today" show directly
and got nowhere. The same was true at "Good Morning America," at the
"Early Show" on CBS, at "20/20" and "Dateline."

"I never got past  I was directed to send an e-mail, which I did," says
Howard. But nobody ever messaged her back.

No one is claiming that every missing-persons story should get a place on
the news  there are almost 50,000 people in the FBI's database of missing
persons cases. But consider this: most of those missing adults are men.
Almost 30 percent of those abducted or kidnapped are black.

So why is it that we in the news media, seem to focus so much on stories
that involve victims who are young, attractive, female, and white?

"Tamika's young, she's attractive, middle class," says her aunt. "The only
thing that she's isn't is white. You know, I don't know what else it could
be."

Before one can dismiss that criticism, there are numbers gathered by Media
Analyst Andrew Tyndall, who regularly monitors network news: In the year
Tamika's relatives were begging for airtime, the morning news broadcasts
on NBC, ABC, and CBS aired a combined 941 minutes on the Laci Peterson
story, 135 minutes on Lori Hacking (killed by her husband in Salt Lake
City), and 98 minutes of coverage on Audrey Seiler (a University of
Wisconsin student who faked her own abduction).

There was even more coverage on cable. At "Dateline," we did almost six
hours just on the Laci Peterson story.

For this story, "Dateline" contacted the presidents of all three network
news divisions, as well as the heads of the cable-news channels. Only one
of them agreed to sit down for an interview: NBC News President Neal
Shapiro (MSNBC.com is a joint-venture between Microsoft and NBC).

Josh Mankiewicz: Why is there such a huge disparity in stories about white
victims as opposed to all other kinds?Neal Shapiro, NBC News president:
Well let me say, I don't like hearing that that's true. Our mission is to
try to cover America. And that means all facets of America. And when our
coverage doesn't reflect that, it distresses me. That said, I think it's
important that people in the industry talk about it.

I think the fact that I'm talking about it, I think the fact that "Dateline NBC" is devoting
airtime to it, means we take it seriously. And we have to do better. Shapiro says the wall-to-wall coverage often starts not with the networks, but with cable, which has 24 hours to fill each day and can follow a developing story in an effort to hold an audience.

But that doesn't explain all those network hours devoted to stories like
Laci Peterson.

Mankiewicz: I can only conclude that the reason we do those kinds of
stories again and again and again is because they work with the audience.
Because they get a rating.Shapiro: I think we do stories that people care
about. And there's no doubt that when a story gets, has, and reaches such
talkability that everybody's talking about, that it's on Talk Radio, that
it's on cable  that if we as a network news division feel like we can
weigh in, we can advance the story  we should. I think we shouldn't be
above the news.
Shapiro says that in NBC, there are no rules, written or unwritten, about
who should or shouldn't be covered.

Shapiro: I think when the Peterson story first started, I remember hearing
it on the radio. And I had no idea who the Petersons were or what they
looked like.  So I think, certainly, when we start to chase stories, I'm
not sure we even know.Mankiewicz: But is the fact that the victim in those
cases turned out to be an attractive white woman  is that why we covered
it so many times and devoted so much air time to it? Shapiro: I hope not.
And I don't think so.  Mankiewicz: To what extent is the race of the
people involved a factor in making editorial decisions?Shapiro: Let me
make this clear. Race is not a factor in who we cover or how we cover it.
Not everyone is convinced.

"If you're covering the nation, cover the entire nation. If you're
covering the American people, cover all the people," says Deborah Mathis,
a newspaper columnist who also teaches journalism at Northwestern
University.

"I'm not accusing news executives of racism, not per se. I am accusing
them of ignorance," says Mathis, a former anchor, reporter, producer, and
newsroom manager.

Finally, and ironically, getting some media attention
Months after Huston vanished, Howard finally made some headway. Tamika
Huston's story got a 15-second mention on Fox news channel, "America's
Most Wanted" aired a show about the case, and "Headline News" also did the
story.

Meanwhile, police have made progress. Through a key found in Tamika's car,
they discovered what might be a crime scene in a nearby apartment. Blood
evidence on a carpet matched Tamika's DNA. And police now have a suspect,
but no proof whether or not Tamika is dead or alive.

After "Dateline" interviewed Howard, USA Today picked up the story. And
recently, news programs have been discussing not the story of Tamika, but
why the story of her disappearance received so little attention.

Broadcast networks and cable-news channels did give more coverage than
usual to the story of three missing Hispanic boys in Camden, New Jersey.

And in the midst of the Natalee Holloway coverage, some national attention
was given to the story of Latoyia Figueroa, a 24-year-old pregnant mother
of one, who has been missing from Philadelphia since July 18th.

Despite the best efforts of her family, Tamika Huston is still missing
from her home and from the lives of her relatives. She's missing from
those hours of network and cable news coverage as well.

But she is finally in the headlines, ironically, as a symbol of how
missing Americans who look like her, are almost never on the nation's
electronic front page.

2005 MSNBC Interactive
2005 MSNBC.com

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8667821/

 

Assessing King Tut Exhibition
By Kwaku Person-Lynn, Ph.D.

Got a call from a friend saying she had two tickets to the Pharaoh Tutankhamen (King Tut) Exhibit, but could not use them.  My youngest son, a Howard University Law Student, and I went to the exhibit.  We entered a huge tent, where zig zap roped off paths led us to the entrance on the museum where instructions and earphones with a digital device were rented to follow the exhibit.

At 4:00pm, our appointed time, we entered the main museum. The lights were dimmed with large sheets of canvass of ancient Kemetic (Egyptian) figures were beautifully displayed. Immediately upon entering, you had the feeling of entering a special ancient experience. We were led to a darkened room where another attendant pulled a curtain after so many entered. There was a large screen with King Tut illuminated. We saw a short generic film on his life. Afterwards, we were left to explore the exhibit on our own.

We went through about ten or twelve large to medium sized halls with various artifacts, images, statues and other items of the 18th dynasty; the dynastic period of King Tut. The first impression is that all the artistic expressions on the various items were functional, beautiful and spiritual. The spiritual element of this ancient civilization was prevalent throughout every room. The ankh, the world's first spiritual symbol, shaped like a cross with an upside down teardrop at the top, was everywhere.

Being one somewhat familiar with ancient Kemetic (Egyptian) religion and Christianity, the thought of the similarities could not be missed. Seeing the Kemetic holy trinity, described as the triad, along with virgin birth, resurrection, and other symbolisms could only give credence to those scholars who profess that Christianity is an outgrowth of ancient Kemetic religion.

The detail and preciseness in some of the works showed how exact and perfection conscious Kemetic civilization must have been. Discussing this with my son, we concluded that seeing the massive temples, tombs, structures and pyramids in Kemet (Egypt) have to be a consciousness expanding experience. Though the exhibit is just a thumbnail of the majesty of ancient Kemetic objects and King Tut's underworld possessions, all of it became almost meaningless with the last graphic of the exhibition.

After feeling exalted of what our ancient ancestors accomplished, the reality of the blatant denial of Afrikan people smacks you right square in the face on seeing this figure of a white Tutankhamun. It is the last thing one sees when leaving the exhibition. We have Dr. Zahi Hawass to thank for this, the head of antiquities in Kemet (Egypt), who categorically states that the ancient Kamites (Egyptians) were not Black. We also have National Geographic to thank for this, which has never been kind to Black people, and personally feel is a major propaganda venue for white dominance. Seeing this white King Tut was a real downer and negates the magnificent work of Attorney Legrand Clegg and many others who have fought tirelessly to expose this cultural fraud.

On exiting the exhibition, handing our earphones to two attendants of Afrikan descent, it was said, "That phony white picture of King Tut destroys the whole exhibition" Their response in agreement, "I know, I know." Saying the same thing to a guard of Afrikan descent at the exit door, his response was, "Man did you see that?' as in disgust.

There is no possible way we can allow this cultural genocide to continue. At least in the Black History 4 Young People Class, those students know the truth. If you are an aware parent, guardian or adult, it is your responsibility and obligation to let the next generation know the indisputable truth, that King Tut and the ancients Kamites (Egyptians), up to the Roman era, were undeniably Black, and yes, they did create civilization. Not to do so is criminal on your part.

Kwaku Person-Lynn is the author of On My Journey Now - The Narrative And Works Of Dr. John Henrik Clarke, The Knowledge Revolutionary. E-mail address: DrKwaku@hotmail.com. Web: www.drkwaku.com.

  

August 06, 2005

Racial Terror in the Friendly Skies

PHILADELPHIA-August 2, 2005 - Action News has an exclusive report about a
different kind of terrorism at 30,000 feet in the air. An African-American couple was terrified by a passenger and what he made them endure.

It happened on a US Airways flight from LA to Philly. police say what the couple had to endure during their 5 & 1/2 hour flight is what you might have expected back in the days of the segregated South, not in the First Class section of a major airline in 2005.

Lisa Collins and her husband, radio executive E.Steven Collins were returning from the wedding of actress Sheryl Lee Ralph to Senator Vincent Hughes on Flight 46 from LA to PA. They were sitting in the First Class section when a man who was seated directly behind them, identified as 47-year-old Robert Baldwin began an unrelenting litany of racial epithets.

"He was saying that the reason US Air is going out of business is because of the Ni**ers in the First Class section" stated E. Steven Collins, "I couldn't believe that I heard him say that but there were other people sitting around us who heard it".

But the Collins' say it was only the beginning of what turned out to be a nightmarish 5 & 1/2 hour flight. Baldwin kept kicking the seat and even placed his bare feet on Lisa Collins' head rest right above her head. The flight attendant had to be called 10 to 15 times repeatedly told him to put his feet down. However, the Collins' say that Baldwin continued to spew racial slurs even after being admonished.

When the airplane landed in Philadelphia the Collins were surprised that US Air had not called the police. Fortunately Collins called Commissioner Sylvester Johnson and police soon arrived to arrest Robert Baldwin.

"You know this guy was sitting in First Class but if you ask me, he had no class, whatsoever," said Inspector Bill Colarulo of the Philadelphia Police, "If you read what this guy did to these people, it's just unconscionable in the year 2005 that we have people who still act like this." Baldwin, a 47-year-old white male has been charged with simple assault. harassment, and ethnic intimidation, which is a felony. The Collins also believe that the airline should have done more to address the terrible ordeal while they were going through it.

 

August 08, 2005

T.D. JAKES MAKES PUBLIC STATEMENT REGARDING THE MARCH TO COMMEMORATE THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT

Atlanta, GA (BlackNews.com) - On behalf of The Potter's House of Dallas, I want to state my deep commitment to the freedom of African Americans to vote, and to ensuring that those rights are protected. I spoke recently with the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson and U.S. Representative Melvin L. Watt, Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, regarding this issue.

Together, we recognize the sacrifice of the thousands of African American soldiers currently fighting in Iraq for the establishment of that countrys democracy. We therefore urge Congress to do everything in its power to guarantee that young men and women of color return home to a nation that practices what it preaches around the world.

Unfortunately, the Pro-Democracy March and Rally was scheduled concurrent to MegaFest, which has been planned for more than a year, and for which our registered delegates have traveled extensively to attend.

We are committed to fulfill our obligation to them. Still, it is important to those of us in attendance from the U.S. that our voice is lifted in support of this vital issue.

It is absolutely critical that fair practices for all Americans are guaranteed. The power of our vote must not be weakened by systemic malfunctions that hamper our ability to galvanize strong statewide and community districts. I agree that in order to protect our rights, the various nuances of this issue must be carefully scrutinized.

Motivational Note

There's one thing I really crave in my life and really work at maintaining....
Read More: http://www.eurweb.com/information/factoids.cfm

 

INTRODUCING THE NATIONAL BLACK BOYCOTT INFORMATION BUREAU (NBBIB)

A new web-based information center dedicated to enhancing awareness and support for boycotts organized by African Americans.

Denver, CO (BlackNews.com) - The National Black Boycott Information Bureau (NBBIB) serves as an online resource center designed to provide information regarding boycotts by Black Americans. Found online at www.nbbib.com, the main function of this website is to improve the effectiveness of boycotting as a strategy for social change by providing the key elements of communication and information!

Additionally, for statistical purposes, the website also allows a person to report offensive encounters with businesses or organizations that are believed to be racially motivated. This data is then organized and assembled into geographical reports made available at the site. The reports will highlight which areas of the nation, based on zip code, are experiencing ongoing patterns of racism directed at Black Americans which may warrant further action such as a boycott.

The NBBIB (www.nbbib.com) provides relevant news and information regarding past, present, and future boycotts as well as information in the following subject areas:

* Resource information and publicity
* Easy access to centralized information
* Instructional guide for organizing an effective boycott
* A listing of current boycott websites
* Contact information for the boycott organizers
* Updated information on the status of boycotts and their outcomes
* Statistics and geographical reports of reported offensive incidents

The NBBIB is a newly created organization developed by volunteers to support the best interest of conscious people who believe in the principles of justice and equality. The NBBIB fosters cultural revitalization through education and economic development.

For more details, visit:
www.nbbib.com

 

 Tuesday, August 09, 2005

WATTS: FORTY YEARS AFTER THE FLAMES/PT. 2

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, BlackNews.com Columnist 

My friend and I watched looters gleefully make mad dashes into the corner grocery store; their arms bulged with liquor bottles and cigarette cartons. Suddenly, my friend shouted out as if he was speaking to an audience, "Maybe now they'll see how rotten they treat us." The "they" was the white man.

His words were, angry, and bitter. Yet underneath there was a subtext of hope that the mass orgy of death and destruction that engulfed the block we lived on and the surrounding blocks during the harrowing five days and nights of the Watts riot in August 1965 might improve things for blacks. Over the years, as I returned to the block we lived on during the riot, I often thought of his bitter yet hopeful words.

Forty years after the riots, his hope remains a hope still unfulfilled. The streets that my friend and I were shooed down by the police and the National Guard forty years ago looks as if time has literally stood still. They are dotted with fast food restaurants, beauty shops, and liquor stores, and mom and pop grocery stores. The main street near my block is just as unkempt, pothole ridden, and trash littered.

All the homes and stores in the area are all hermetically sealed with iron bars, security gates, and burglar alarms. Forty years ago, many of us were poor and trapped in a segregated neighborhood, but we knew, trusted, and looked out for our neighbors. We could walk the streets at night, and felt secure in our homes. That day is long past.

In the decades after the Watts riots, Watts and other inner city neighborhoods were written off as vast wastelands of violence and despair. That became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Many banks, and corporations, as well as government officials, reneged on their promises to fund and build top-notch stores, make more home and business loans, and provide massive funding for job and social service programs in ghettoes such as Watts. Business leaders had horrific visions of their banks and stores going up in smoke or being hopelessly plagued by criminal violence.

Meanwhile, L.A.'s politicians naively buried their head in the sand and pretended that all was well in the city. That was glaringly and embarrassingly evident in the rash prediction that then Mayor Tom Bradley made on the 25th anniversary of the 1965-Watts riots in 1990. When Bradley was asked whether L.A. could be racked by another riot, he confidently said that it couldn't happen again.

A scant two years later, L.A. was torn by nightmarish urban violence following the acquittal in the Simi Valley trial of the four LAPD officers that beat black motorist Rodney King. When the smoke cleared the death toll and property damage far exceeded the damage and destruction of the Watts riots.

That should have been yet another wake-up call that things were still bad, and could get worse. Since then they have. Last April, the National Urban League in its annual state of Black America report grimly noted that blacks have lost ground in income education, health care, and their treatment in the criminal justice system in relation to whites. They are more likely than any other group in America to be victimized by crime and violence. In L.A., things are worse still.

In July, the L.A. chapter of the National Urban League and the United Way issued an unprecedented report on the State of Black L.A. The report called the conditions in Watts and South L.A., dismal. Blacks have higher school drop out rates, greater homelessness, die younger and in greater numbers, are more likely to be jailed and serve longer sentences, and are far and away more likely to be victims of racial hate crimes than any other group in L.A. County. King hospital, once the shining symbol of change and progress in the area, is mired in bitter controversy over mismanagement, medical incompetence, and patient neglect. The threat of closure perennially hangs over the hospital.

The only significant social change in Watts is the ethnic demographic shift. Forty years ago, the area was predominantly black; it is now predominantly Latino, with growing numbers of Cambodian, Vietnamese, and Filipino residents.

The fast changing demographics have at times imploded in inter-ethnic battles between blacks and-Latinos over jobs, housing, schools, and deadly clashes within the L.A. county jails. Black flight has also drastically diminished black political strength in L.A. and statewide. In the past decade, the number of blacks in the California legislature has shrunk to half the number, and there is the real possibility that blacks could lose one, possibly two, of their three city council seats in the next few years.

Watts is no longer the national and world symbol of American urban racial destruction, neglect and despair. But the poverty, violence and neglect that made it that symbol is still very much there. Forty years later that hasn't changed.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a columnist for BlackNews.com, an author and political analyst.

For part one of this column, visit:
www.blacknews.com/pr/watts101.html

 

August 12, 2005

ANOTHER WHITE WOMAN HAS GONE MISSING

By Sikivu Hutchinson

When the news broke earlier this summer about the disappearance of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway in Aruba, I braced myself for yet another tide of hysterical media coverage about the uncertain fate of a young suburban white woman. I was not disappointed. Consumers of network, cable, and Internet news were treated to a steady stream of obsessive details about Holloway's life, the last hours she was seen, her family and home community, echoing a pattern that has increasingly come to resemble a by the numbers formula for conferring national heft to the lives of formerly obscure white women.

Last week, mounting criticism from media watchdogs and families of abduction victims of color resulted in an NBC Dateline segment on racial disparities in network news treatment of missing persons' stories. The bias charges elicited the usual head-scratching deflection and outright denial from news executives. Some of those who were willing to go on the record countered that abduction stories that become national news are generated by momentum from local affiliates.

Naturally most network execs see little bias in their coverage because whiteness represents the norm in American culture. White lives, white families, white communities, and the world views of white pundits are sold and reproduced in the mainstream media as the normative "unraced" ideal that underlies "our" sense of national identity.

Disproportionate coverage of whites in a society that pimps a colorblind, democratic ideal on the global stage not only naturalizes the invisibility of people of color, but implies that white suburban lives are the ones that are ultimately most worth caring about. Largely confined to stories on crime, entertainment, sports and immigration, people of color are rarely depicted in contexts that don't pertain to race and/or the travails of urban communities.

The role that femininity plays in the portrayal of these two Americas is critical. It's no surprise that white female victimhood is all the rage in the 24-7 news media for images of imperiled white femininity have historically been the currency of cultural narratives of ethnic and racial hysteria, manifest destiny, and national identity. One of the most influential early examples of media and cinematic propaganda to exploit this theme was D.W. Griffith's 1915 film Birth of a Nation.

The moral compass of Griffith's film was the threat that the rape of white women by black men posed to the racial purity, national stability, and socioeconomic development of post- Civil War America. Rape and miscegenation were portrayed as the endgame of Reconstruction, a mortal threat to white control of the Union and justification for the lynching of black men. While the savage racial terrorism of Birth may seem primitive to twenty first century eyes, it provided a media template for the association of white femininity with purity, innocence, and victimhood.

The underside of the idealization of white femininity is the projection of immoral hypersexuality onto black women in particular and women of color in general. Stereotypes of sexually loose, "ghetto" black women, hot-blooded Latinas, and Lotus Blossom Asian fetish objects cast women of color as the antithesis of normative white femininity. It is little wonder then that female victims of color never score on the national radar. Stories on missing women such as LaToyia Figueroa and Ardena Carter don't generate tabloid heat because there is no corresponding association of feminine innocence or normative cultural values with the lives of urban black or Latino women.

Narratives of the imperiled white female highlight the suburban virtues of white Middle America and not so subtlely evoke the social pathologies of the so-called inner city. Indeed, the increasingly intimate spectacles of grief, mourning, and community outrage that we see on CNN and FOX not only program viewers to identify with the injustice that has been done to the victim and her family, but to her community. In the world of 24-7 tabloid media these victims become our girls, our daughters; and if this horror could happen in these ostensibly crime-free normal white suburban communities it could very well happen to us.

Yet the white "us" will never make a connection between the massive expenditure of media time and resources on the investigation of say, the sham abduction of disgraced "runaway bride" Jennifer Wilbanks (who was savvy enough to finger a Latino man as one of her alleged abductors), and the fact that fifty one years after Brown vs. Board and forty years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act America is even more segregated, polarized and steeped in a culture of white entitlement that calls itself colorblind.

Sikivu Hutchinson teaches cultural studies at the California Institute of the Arts. She can be reached at shutch2396@aol.com

 

AUGUST 16, 2005

EUR NEWS

BETWEEN THE LINES: Remembering 'Burn, Baby, Burn' by: Anthony Asadullah Samad
Forty years ago, this week, the City of Los Angeles, was recovering from six days of mayhem that the nation had never witnessed before. August 11th through the 17th, 1965 signaled the start of urban riots nationwide that would occur for the next four years. But there was something different about the "Watts" riots. It wasn't the South, where the Birmingham movement and sight of hoses and dogs turned on children (the Birmingham protests were mostly youth engaged protests) were images freshly etched in the nation's minds.
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STEVEN IVORY: Always Something There to Remind Me by: Steven Ivory
The last time I spoke to my mother, I was saying bye. She was sitting on the couch in our living room in good health, so it seemed, enjoying the company of her children as I headed out to attend an evening high school basketball game.
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THE BRIDGE: Why We Can't Talk by: Darryl James
I have to make an admission. I use curse words. Like many adults in America, I use curse words and I don't care what anyone thinks. I've heard the old adage that says people use curse words when they have small vocabularies, but with a nickname like "The Funky Wordsmith," that is far from my situation.
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THE MO'KELLY REPORT: Our Unhealthy Love Affair With Guns by: Morris O'Kelly
In closing, I'm willing to make everyone a bet. A sad, pitiful bet, I might add. I'm willing to bet anyone, any amount of money that at least FIVE more prominent rappers will be arrested and/or sent to jail before the end of 2005. - Mo'Kelly 7.12.05 Well, THAT sure didn't take long.
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REAL LYFE: Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places by: Pastor Rich
During this season of transition where do I find love? I wonder if I am adequate. Am I sufficient? Am I satisfactory? I can't help but wonder, with everything that I've been through, if there is something that may be wrong with me? I have to be honest because I know I can be my own worst enemy some days! It makes me think, what is a young m an like me doing alone? Is it God's timing? Am I on God's schedule to be single right now or have I gotten out of His will for my life?
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SEKOU WRITES: Black Men On Black Love: He's Never Been Exposed To Happy Marriages by: SekouWrites
Q: How do you have a relationship with a man who has not been exposed to happy, successful marriages? SekouWrites: Hold up, now. Don't assume that just because a man has not "been exposed to" a happy marriage that he'll mess up a relationship. Some people walk onto a baseball field for the first time and knock the ball out of the park. Okay, maybe that wasn't the best analogy but you get me, right? Often, men (or women) who come from broken families have an even greater desire to commit to a long term relationship to experience what they missed, or to do things better than their parents did.
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FARRAKHAN BACKS MEXICAN PREZ'S STATEMENT: Blacks don't want those jobs because they already 'picked enough cotton.'
*Louis Farrakhan agrees with the incendiary statement from Mexican President Vicente Fox - that Mexican immigrants take jobs "that not even blacks want." The Nation of Islam leader said Sunday that blacks aren't trying to go to fa rms and pick fruit because they already "picked enough cotton."
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SUPREME COURT NOM HATED ON MIJAC AND PRINCE: John Roberts advised Reagan not to support Presidential letters to artists.
*Michael Jackson may have Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts, Jr. to thank for never having received a formal Presidential letter praising his efforts against drunk driving and generosity toward disadvantaged youth.
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August 31, 2005

 

LOOTING NEW ORLEANS AND AMERICA'S POVERTY CRISIS

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, BlackNews.com Columnist

Two things happened in one day that tell much about the abysmal failure of the Bush administration to get a handle on poverty in America. The first was the tragic and disgraceful shots of hordes of New Orleans residents scurrying down the city's Hurricane ravaged streets with their arms loaded with food, clothes, appliances, and in some cases guns, that they looted from stores and shops.

That same day, the Census Bureau released a report that found that the number of poor Americans has leaped even higher since Bush took office in 2000. While criminal gangs who always take advantage of chaos and misery to snatch and grab whatever they can, did much of the looting, many desperately poor, mostly black residents, saw a chance to grab items that they can't afford. They also did their share of the looting. That makes it no less reprehensible, but it's no surprise.

New Orleans has one of the highest poverty rates of any of America's big cities. According to a report by Total Community Action, a New Orleans public advocacy group, nearly one out of three New Orleans residents live below the poverty level, the majority of who are black. A spokesperson for the United Negro College Fund noted that the city's poor live in some of the most dilapidated, and deteriorated housing in the nation.

But New Orleans is not an aberration. Nationally, according to Census figures, blacks remain at the bottom of the economic totem pole. They have the lowest media income of any group. Bush's war and economic policies don't help matters. His tax cuts redistributed billions to the rich and corporations. The Iraq war has drained billions from cash starved job training, health and education programs. Increased American dependence on Saudi Oil has driven gas and oil prices skyward. Corporate downsizing, outsourcing, and industrial flight have further fueled America's poverty crisis. All of this happened on Bush's watch.

The 2 million new jobs in 2004 Bush touts as proof that his economic policies work have been mostly smoke and mirrors number counting. The bulk of these jobs are low pay jobs, with minimum benefits, and little job security in retail and service industries. A big portion of the nearly 40 million Americans that live below the official poverty line fill these jobs. They're the lucky ones. They have jobs. Many young blacks, such as those that ransacked stores in New Orleans, don't.

The poverty crisis has slammed them the hardest of all. Even during the Clinton era economic boom, the unemployment rate for young black males was double, and in some parts of the country, triple that of white males. During the past couple of years, state and federal cutbacks in job training and skills programs, the brutal competition for low and semi skilled service and retail jobs from immigrants, and the refusal of many employers to hire those with criminal records have further hammered black communities and added to the Great Depression era high unemployment numbers among young blacks.

The tale of poverty is more evident in the nearly one million blacks behind bars, the HIV/AIDS rampage in black communities, the sea of black homeless persons, and the raging drug and gang violence that rips apart many black communities.

Then there are the children. One third of America's poor are children. Worse, the Children's Defense Fund found that nearly 1 million black children live not in poverty, but in extreme poverty. That's the greatest number of black children trapped in dire poverty in nearly a quarter century.

Bush officials claim the poverty numbers do not surprise them. They contend that past trends show that poverty peaks and then declines a year after the jump in new job growth. But the poverty numbers have steadily risen for not one, but all five years of his administration. There has been no sign of a turnaround. For that to happen, Bush would have to reverse his tax and war spending policies, and commit massive funds to job, training and education programs, and provide tax incentives for businesses to train and hire the poor. That would take an active national lobbying effort by Congressional Democrats, civil rights, and anti-poverty groups. That's not likely either. The poor are too nameless, faceless, and vast in numbers to target with a sustained lobbying campaign.

While the NAACP hammers Bush on the war, and his domestic policies, poverty has not been their top priority. The fight for affirmative action, economic parity, professional advancement and busing replaced battling poverty, reducing unemployment, securing quality education, promoting self-help and gaining greater political empowerment as the goals of all African-Americans.

That effectively left the one out of four blacks that wallow below the official poverty level out in the cold. The looting in New Orleans, though deplorable, put an ugly public face on a crisis that Bush administration policies have made worse. The millions in America that grow poorer, more desperate, and greater in number, are bitter testament to that.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a columnist for BlackNews.com, an author and political analyst.

 

September 1, 2005

BLACK LOOTERS, WHITE FINDERS - IS THE MEDIA RACIALLY-BIASED ABOUT HURRICANE KATRINA?

 

Long Beach, CA (BlackNews.com) - It's no question that there is massive looting going on in the gulf coast area by white and black Americans. People of all colors are doing what they can to survive.

But why is the mainstream media saying that the Black people are looting supplies, and that the white people are finding supplies?

A recent report from DiversityInc.com found one picture by an AFP/Getty Images photographer and another by The Associated Press (AP) - and each had a different caption when published.

The AFP/Getty photo shows two white people with food, with the caption that they were "finding" bread and soda from a grocery store. However, the AP photo shows a black person with some food, with the caption saying he had just finished "looting" a grocery store.

[Click Here To See]

Dante Lee of BlackNews.com, comments, "I've seen this variation several times, and it certainly reveals that the mainstream media is indeed racially-biased."

Pat Means of Turning Point Magazine, says, "The media must be careful in its labeling of people who are simply trying to survive. The media can not practice racism, when everyone is doing the same thing."

Others agree that the media is definitely targeting African-Americans to make them look worse than they already do.

Here's an interesting comic strip by Keith Knight that brings truth to the situation:

Comic Courtesy of BlackNews.com  

 

 

September 2, 2005 

 

PLAYING THE KATRINA RACE CARD

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, BlackNews.com Columnist

 

 

Five days before Hurricane Katrina struck, 100 persons gathered at a local Catholic Church in Eastern New Orleans. They were there to talk about the city's astronomically high rate of poverty that had increasingly become a national embarrassment. This was not a gathering of academics, local and state officials, and business leaders. They were community residents, welfare recipients, ex-offenders, and anti-poverty activists. Most of them were black.

Many of them did not have cars and had to take buses to get to the meeting. That wasn't unusual. Nearly one out of three New Orleans residents don't have cars. The participants had a deep sense that they were in a race against time to do something to combat the looming poverty crisis. The poverty rate for young and old in New Orleans was double and triple the national average. Nearly 100,000 households were eligible for federal Earned Income Tax Credit but had failed to take advantage of it. Nearly 60, 000 children were eligible for a health care program for low-income families but were not enrolled in. The city's poor had grown more numerous and desperate than ever.

The times over the years that I have visited friends that live in neighborhoods away from the glitter of Bourbon Street, the French Quarter and other tourist spots, I was struck by the dire poverty, the legions of panhandlers, and homeless persons on the streets, the large number of abandoned, run down buildings, and the pock marked, unkempt streets and sidewalks in poorer neighborhoods. New Orleans was indeed the classic tale of two cities, one showy, middle-class and white, and the other poor, downtrodden, and largely low-income blacks. It was a city that didn't wait for a disaster to happen. The city's grinding poverty and neglect had already wreaked that disaster on thousands.

Katrina only added to the misery. What happened next was predictable. Federal bumbling, bungling, and cash shortages turned relief efforts into a nightmare. That virtually guaranteed that some blacks out of criminal greed and others out of sheer desperation and panic would take to the streets in an orgy of looting and mayhem. It was equally predictable how some state and federal officials, and some in the media would respond. They instantly branded the looters, animals, thugs, and even less charitably cockroaches.

Though it wasn't said directly, some state officials inferred that soldiers should shoot to kill to restore order. That would turn New Orleans into a war zone, and the ones that as often happens in any war that are hurt the most are innocents who have nothing to do with the criminal violence. And that is the overwhelming majority of New Orleans poor. It would further embed the image of New Orleans blacks as lawless, out of control, and undeserving of any sympathy and support.

It was even more predictable that some black leaders would wag the blame finger at Bush and city officials and accuse them of racism in not responding fast enough to the crisis. Certainly city and state officials must take some heat for the chronic neglect of the New Orleans poor. And Bush must take heat for the severe cutbacks that crippled FEMA's ability to speedily manage, coordinate and fully fund disaster efforts. Bush's singular obsession with the war on terrorism has also resulted in the radical shift of millions in money and personnel from disaster relief to Homeland Security. That shift in priorities further hampers federal efforts to deal with disaster relief.

The heavy handed rush to openly or subtly to paint the tragedy of New Orleans as yet another terrible example of the black-white divide in America does a horrible disservice to the poor and needy that are suffering. Admittedly a majority of them are black, but many of the victims are white too. This stirs fear, anger, and latent racism in many whites. It stirs the same fear anger, and racial antipathies among many blacks.

The comments on some black web sites pulse with wild speculation that the continual TV shots of blacks running wild in the streets are orchestrated to insure that as little as possible will be done to aid New Orleans blacks. That kind of talk smacks of defeatism. If one screams racism and deliberate neglect, and when it happens scream even louder, I told you so, it becomes a grim self-fulfilling prophecy.

The poor of New Orleans need massive aid, long term relief, and the continued goodwill and sympathy of the nation to put their lives back together. They also need a sustained public effort to lobby the Bush administration to drastically up the ante on the paltry and embarrassingly low $10 billion that he's pledged for Katrina disaster relief. That's less than it costs to bankroll two months of the Iraq war. Sadly, turning the monumental tragedy in New Orleans into racial one-upmanship, piles one tragedy on top of another.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a columnist for BlackNews.com, an author and political analyst.

 

 THIS CANNON FIRES A TIMELY SHOT

By Alvin Williams

"I love my mother for giving me life; we all need to appreciate life". These words are from the song, Can I Live by rapper/actor Nick Cannon. Mr. Cannon, who starred in the movie Drumline and is featured in two upcoming films, uses the medium of rap to express his appreciation to his mother who at the age of 17 faced a decision of whether or not to have an abortion. In the song, Cannon speaks from the perspective of the baby growing within his mother's womb gently encouraging her not to end his life prematurely. In the span of four minutes, Cannon delivers a message to young people of personal responsibility and has placed the promotion of the sanctity of human life in a new context.

A quick glance of abortion statistics among African American women particularly underscores the need for the pro-life message conveyed in the song's lyrics. On a daily basis, thousands of African American women face a similar quandary to the one faced by Ms. Cannon as a pregnant teenager wondering whether or not to bear the child. Sadly, many expectant mothers in her situation choose to terminate their pregnancies at an alarming rate. African American women comprise slightly more than 6% of the total U.S. population but account for more than 36% of women who obtain abortions. According to the Centers for Disease Control, African American women are three times more likely to have an abortion than white women.

Juxtaposed against the backdrop of these statistics, the song's message is even more timely. As mentioned before, the song is delivered from the perspective of the child residing within the mother's womb, thereby giving a voice to the previously voiceless and most forgotten group in the pro-choice lexicon --- the unborn children. Cannon's mother mentioned to him that when she was pregnant there were times when she would hear a voice from inside saying "let this child live" and such was the catalyst for her making the decision not to terminate her pregnancy. Unfortunately, in most cases, the cries of the unborn children are drowned out by the overriding messages of abortion advocates who present the option of abortion in a manner that does not reflect the true severity and tragedy of the process which ends the life of a child in a matter of moments.

In fact, the inspiration for Cannon's song came from his finding out that several people had advised his mother to seek an abortion, attempting to convince her that it was the best option for you in light of her age (17) and marital status (single). As was the case when Mr. Cannon's mother was pregnant, scores of African American young women are receiving the same type of advice from a number of sources. Through the efforts of the powerful pro-choice lobby and organizations like Planned Parenthood, abortion is widely considered a more favorable alternative to adoption and other options for expectant mothers who are facing tough choices.

While one song can't single handedly change the minds of all young women considering having abortions it is definitely a step in the right direction. Since the release of CAN I LIVE, Cannon has been approached by several women whose decision to not terminate their pregnancies was greatly influenced by the lyrics of the song.

Perhaps this creative approach can be the guide for our future efforts to educate young women and young men on the consequences of pre-marital sex. While the importance of personal responsibility and pre-marital abstinence remain timeless, we need to explore ways to present this message to our children and young adults in a manner in which it will be heard. For example, a current commercial airing prominently on network television features a young African American couple at their wedding with a tagline promoting marriage. This ad extols the virtues of marriage in a way that young people can appreciate and ponder and is a striking alternative to the images of promiscuity and blatant immorality that is rampant in music videos and other forms of entertainment.

In telling the story of his mother's personal struggle with the decision of whether or not to terminate her pregnancy and her eventual decision to bring him into the world, Nick Cannon has set a precedent that we hope is followed by other hip hop artists. We are hopeful that other artists realize that the same genre that can promote and sell commercial products can also be a catalyst to saving lives.

Alvin Williams is the President and CEO of Black America's Political Action Committee (BAMPAC). More information on BAMPAC is available at www.bampac.org. Mr. Williams can be reached at bampac@bampac.org 

  

 

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