Articles/Commentary/Editorials - Topic Powered by eve community

thanks for prompting/reminding me to read some Tim Rice... someone suggested him to me once before.

Fab: my apologies, Firefly I didn't mean to edit your message, somehow I did so in error. sorry.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Fabulous,

"We look forward to working with the Prime Minister and the Government on working out the terms of the compensataion package if that's what his words mean." Michael Mansell, National Aboriginal Alliance

Posts: 4540 | Registered: April 29, 2005

Ignored post by FireFly posted

Posted

Firefly, this is what I was trying to post when I edited your message by mistake. . .

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You're welcome, Firefly, and here's a link to another article by Tim Wise. I really like what this man has to say.

Check it out:

http://www.counterpunch.org/wise02032006.html

Posts: 4721 | Registered: April 01, 2006

Ignored post by Fabulous posted

Posted

Here's the article from the link I posted for Firefly. . . .

Rebels Without a Clue, Revisited
Racism, Neo-Confederacy and the Raising of Historical Illiterates
By TIM WISE

Here's a little experiment, in two parts.

First, pick a white person, pretty much any white person; then go up to them and mention the subject of slavery, and its consequences for blacks in the United States. Then pull out a stopwatch and time how long it takes for them to say something to the effect of, "All that was a long time ago. Why can't we leave the past in the past and move on?"

And here's the second part: come and spend a little time in my neck of the woods -- the American South -- and watch how long it takes for you to spot someone waving, wearing, or otherwise displaying (perhaps on their car) a confederate flag.** Now, having seen several, go up to their respective owners and tell them, "All that was a long time ago. Why can't you leave the past in the past and move on?"

And as they look at you blankly, or even angrily, and perhaps call you a Yankee or some such thing that they consider the vilest of slurs, ask them about slavery, and watch how quickly they turn to the very same "all that was in the past" line you just used on them--not realizing the irony, which was, after all, the point of this experiment in the first place.

You see, white Southerners (and, truth be told, whites generally in the U.S.) love to live in the past, so long as it's a past that makes us feel good and venerates us as heroes. So whether its waxing emotional about the greatness of our founding fathers, or waving an American flag on Independence Day, or prattling on about some ancestor who died in battle at Gettysburg, the point is the same: to lift up the past and to remain stuck there, at least for a while. But let anyone suggest the less noble side of that same past and watch how quickly history gets relegated to the ashbin of the irrelevant.

Those who wave the Confederate flag, for example, insist they are merely trying to fondly remember part of their history. Yet if blacks (including, to be sure, more than a few Southerners) broach the subject of their ancestors' enslavement and its lingering effects on black America today, they are viewed as wallowing in pity. But what, other than wallowing, and most certainly pitiable, can we call those who insist on waving the standard of a defeated government, some one hundred and forty one years after it fell? Really now, let us move on indeed!

Case in point: the recent flap in Burleson, Texas, involving two young women who were brought to their high school principal's office for displaying Confederate flags on their purses: a symbol that has been deemed disruptive and potentially racist by school officials. When Ashley Thomas and Aubrie McAllum were chastised by their principal for carrying the co-called "Rebel Purses" to school -- gifts they had received for Christmas (and who says there's no Santa Claus?) -- they decided to leave campus altogether, rather than submit to turning the purses over to school officials until the end of the day. Their respective parents, one of whom is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, have threatened to sue, claiming that the girls' free speech is being violated. Aubrie's dad -- the SCV member -- goes further, insisting that a "heritage violation" has been committed. Yes of course, because you know how hostile those liberal North Texas principals can be towards anything Southern.

The school, which is ninety percent white, is now having to contend with legions of white students who have taken up the girls' cause: by plastering "censored" signs over their purses (be they rebel or not) and book bags, all the while caring quite little as to how the whole thing might feel for the statistical handful of blacks in the school.

Though the young women in question can be excused for their ignorance as to what the flag they chose to display means, the same cannot be said of their parents, who either should know, or do know the truth, but (especially in the case of Rick McAllum) choose to lie about it and push a sanitized, kinder and gentler version of the Confederacy than history itself affords us.

Oh sure, neo-Confederates yelp at such a suggestion, insisting that the Confederate Battle Flag -- the St. Andrew's Cross as it is technically known -- has nothing to do with slavery or racism. In fact, they argue, since the flag was really only a battle standard, and not an official flag of the Confederate States of America, it can't even be seen as representative of the government itself. So, even if one accepts that the Confederacy was founded on the basis of racism and for the purpose of maintaining slavery -- and indeed this was the position of their leaders, to a person, as will be seen below -- the modern day confederates insist that the battle flag only represents the noble and gallant efforts of their ancestors in warfare, and holds no deeper ideological or practical meaning than this. To hear the neo-confederates tell it, the brave boys who fell on the fields of battle were not interested in slavery, as very few of them owned any, but rather were fighting in defense of home and hearth, for regional pride and the heritage of their people, which they saw as threatened by an overzealous federal government.

But even as neo-confederates try valiantly to duck the meaning of their iconography, their efforts founder on the shoals of both common sense and history. After all, the idea that the motives of soldiers themselves -- even if they do differ from the government for which they fight -- somehow alter the underlying meaning of the battles in which they engage, is fanciful in this or any other war. Soldiers, after all, are not the ones who determine either when they fight, or for what purpose they do so. As such, the notion that the Confederate Army fought for such noble principles as defense of homeland, or regional pride, or other similarly abstract notions amounts to little more than wishful thinking at best, and a deceptive fraud at worst. Armies fight for their respective governments, and for whatever purposes the elected officials of those governments choose to send them.

If the Confederate leadership said (and it did, with disturbing clarity and a complete lack of misgiving) that its reasons for secession had to do with the desire to maintain and extend slavery, and that white supremacy was its "cornerstone" (in the words of CSA Vice-President Alexander Stephens), then that is the purpose for which the soldiers were fighting. They could have thought they were fighting for mommy, teddy bears and cornbread, but it wouldn't have made it so. Likewise, in the present, soldiers may think (and apparently some still do) that they are in Iraq to avenge September 11, but if so, this speaks only to their own self-delusion, and that instilled by their Commander-in-Chief. It says nothing whatsoever about why they are actually there, and why they may ultimately die. That soldiers find themselves the victims of a monstrous con, whether in the 1860s, or nearly a century and a half later, is regrettable to be sure, but it does not allow us to reinterpret the purposes to which their sacrifices were put, merely so that we may feel better about them--about us.

This may be unsettling to those Southerners who feel compelled to honor "Ol' great, great grandpappy Beauregard," or some such wretch of a patriarch, but their discomfort in having to confront the truth of the matter hardly makes it any less true. Fact is, great, great grandpappy died for a lie: the lie of white supremacy, whether or not he believed in it (and of course, truth be told, he did, to the letter, so let us not kid ourselves). There is no honor in that, and nothing at all worth commemorating, except insofar as we may use the sacrificing of our kinfolk on the alter of such evil, as an opportunity to resolve that we will do whatever it takes to smash that alter entirely.

No matter, the neo-Confederate will insist, now changing gears: the Confederacy itself was established not because of slavery, but rather, for the purpose of defending "state's rights." And this is true, so far as it goes. But to claim that the war and secession were about state's rights in the abstract is to ignore precisely which right the South believed was being violated by their Northern neighbors. It was not, to be sure, the right to decide the proper recipe for a mint julep, nor to make sour mash whiskey in a backyard shed. Rather (and not a single historian worthy of the title denies it) the right they saw as imperiled was the right to maintain and extend slavery.

Since the rebel purse controversy has erupted in Texas, perhaps we would do best to reflect on what the leaders of that fair state had to say about their own decision to depart the Union to which they had only recently been accepted. Doing so leaves very little room for speculation as to their motives.

When Texas announced its secession from the United States, its leaders issued a "Declaration of Causes." Therein it was noted that Texas had been admitted to the Union, "as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery -- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits -- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time." The problem, or so the declaration claimed, was that the Federal Government had sought to exclude slavery from the newly expanding national territories to the West, in effect choking off the economic vitality of the region and "destroying the institutions of Texas and their sister slaveholding states."

The declaration continued:

"In all the non-slave-holding states...the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party...based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern states and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color--a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of Negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and Negro races, and avow their determination to press their crusade against us..."

The Texas secession delegates went even further than those in most other Southern states, by declaring:

"We hold as undeniable truths that the government of the various states and of the (federal) confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable."

As if this were not all quite putrid enough, they pressed on:

"...In this free government, all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil rights...the servitude of the African race, as existing in these states, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator; as recognized by all Christian nations..."

Of course, this was not merely the view of those in Texas who sought secession, but rather, was representative of the views of all the Southern states that broke from the United States. Each and every state made clear the motivations behind leaving the Union, and in each and every instance the reasons given -- and indeed the only reasons given -- concerned the South's perception that the North was trying to undercut and eventually eliminate slavery. They specifically mentioned incitements to insurrection on the part of abolitionists, the refusal to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act and thereby return runaway slaves to their masters, and most prominently the concept that came to be known as "free soil," which would prevent newly acquired territories and new states from practicing slavery. This, it was claimed, would encircle the slaveholding South and devastate the region's economy by preventing slavery's expansion.

In the case of Texas, their brief ordinance of secession specified that their decision to secede had been made necessary by the hostility of the federal government to the property interests of she and her fellow slaveholding states: in other words, hostility to those states maintenance of slaves as property--the only property in contention at the time.

To criticize the flag and the Confederacy in this way is simply a matter of historical accuracy, not, as the Sons of Confederate Veterans would have it, a "heritage violation." In fact, to suggest that critiquing the confederacy amounts to a slur against Southern heritage is itself a slur against the Southland, in that it has the effect of linking the South and the Confederacy as if they were synonymous, when in fact they are not. After all, it is absurd to suggest that hundreds of years of the American South and its history can be represented by a symbol, representing an army, representing a government that lasted a mere four years of that history.

Neither the flag in question, nor the government for which its soldiers fought are representative of the South. To suggest otherwise is to write black people out of Southern history, since, to be sure, it is not their flag, even though blacks have been in the American South for at least as long, if not longer, than the vast majority of European sub-groups. It is also to write out of that history the many white Southerners who opposed secession, so mightily in many cases that the Georgia secession vote had to be rigged, and troops had to be sent to East Tennessee so as to force white folks there to go along with breaking from the Union. West Virginia, indeed, broke away from Virginia over the secession issue, led by men and women who saw the cause of a Southern slaveholding confederacy as illegitimate.

To choose the Confederate battle flag as one's proxy for Southern heritage is to make a choice that is inherently ideological and fraught with baggage. After all, one could choose to celebrate any number of other things about the South. As a proud Southerner, I do, by celebrating the civil rights movement, which grew from the soil of the South and was led by brave black Southerners; or by celebrating the educational tradition of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, which symbolize the striving for knowledge on the part of persons denied access to higher education by the white majority; or by honoring white abolitionists, who actually numbered more, per capita, in the South than in the North. Or for that matter by celebrating the gastronomic traditions of the region, though indeed such indulgences are probably best if limited, for the sake of oneself and one's arteries.

In other words, Southern heritage means a good deal more than the Confederacy, and indeed, a good deal that is better that that: a tradition of struggle and triumph on the road to liberty; a tradition of music and literature, and artwork, and any number of things one could venerate without having to honor a government that openly proclaimed its belief in racial supremacy and sought to hold millions of other human beings in bondage. It says something, and not something flattering, that so many people would prefer to celebrate the machinations of those who desired black servitude, than the struggles of those blacks and their white allies, who struggled for freedom.

None of this is to deny that the young women in Burleson have the right to display a racist and offensive symbol, such as the Confederate battle flag. They probably do, under any fair reading of the First Amendment. But this truth is hardly the point. After all, just because one has a right to do something, doesn't mean that it is right to actually then do it, nor that we must call the thing good, once it is actually done. I have the right, after all, to stand in the middle of Central Park and shout racial slurs, but if I do so, it makes me an asshole, plain and simple. And I would certainly hope that someone would tell me so, and not allow my rights -- which, in this case would include the freedom to be an asshole -- to somehow cow them into not exercising theirs, including, in this case, the right to tell me off.

So for the two young women in Burleson, the same is true: they most assuredly are free, one supposes, to don a rebel flag, be it on their purse, on a shirt, or on a bumper sticker located on their cars--right between the one that says "W: The President," and the other one, which reads: "Back off or I'll flick a booger on your windshield." But that's not the point. The point, or rather the question, is this: If you know that a symbol you intend to display is deeply hurtful to a group of people -- is viewed, for understandable reasons, even if you disagree with them, as perhaps even terroristic -- then what kind of insensitive slug must you be to decide to display that symbol anyway?

Liberty is not, in the final analysis, an argument for engaging in obnoxious or offensive behavior, just because one can. And the fact that one is free to be both obnoxious and offensive hardly suggests that when one chooses to do so, they should then be seen as martyrs to a noble cause, or that others should join them in the act for which they are being criticized, or that still others should refrain from shunning them as the ethical reprobates they are, simply because, after all, they have a right to be just that.

And as my friend and fellow educator, Paul Gallegos, of Evergreen State College puts it best: "Just because speech is free, doesn't mean that it has to be worthless."

* I originally penned an essay by this name in June of 2000, in reference to the decision by the Governor of South Carolina to remove the Confederate flag from the capitol building in Columbia, and the backlash against his decision by neo-confederates.

** Sadly, one can now see confederate flags cropping up in all parts of the nation, either because of the migration of Southerners out of the South to other regions, or because of the ideological agreement of non-Southerners with the political and ideological views of the Confederacy.

Tim Wise is the author of two new books: White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (Soft Skull Press, 2005), and Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White (Routledge: 2005).

Posts: 4721 | Registered: April 01, 2006

Ignored post by Fabulous posted

FireFly

Posted

quote:
Tim Wise is the author of two new books: White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (Soft Skull Press, 2005), and Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White (Routledge: 2005).

thanks for the post gurl!
and for yet another book to track down... this time at the library... I'm book-poor this month

Posts: 4540 | Registered: April 29, 2005

Ignored post by FireFly posted

Posted

thanks for the post gurl!
and for yet another book to track down... this time at the library... I'm book-poor this month.
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You're welcome, Firefly. :-) I've always enjoyed reading Tim Wise--I have yet to read one of his books, though.

Hmmmm....perhaps when I'm done reading "The Covenant of.....," I will.

"White Like Me..." sounds like a good choice.

Posts: 4721 | Registered: April 01, 2006

Ignored post by Fabulous posted

Posted

Here's another article I found interesting (then, I'm going to bed FOR REAL..lol)...This one is by Darryl James. . .another brother I find. . .well. . .cool.

OK, OK--CUTE!!!
Check it out.

Class and Classism

By Darryl James

Lately, I have been hearing derisive talk about impoverished Blacks that is hateful, elitist and downright classist. I can not call the comments racist, because ironically, they are coming from other Blacks.

Yes, there are difficulties among the poor blacks in America and there has been a moral and political disconnect but it is elitist and classist to pretend that any of these issues are solely the issues of the poor and Black.

Those who wish to rail against the poor without activism are no different from armchair quarterbacks who criticize football games on their fat lazy behinds, without ever having stepped onto the gridiron.

Armchair activists view themselves as socially active because they support programs targeted at our best and brightest even as they ignore the second best and the not as bright.

Any of us can point to the problems. What I would like to hear discussed are the reasons why the working class and underclass have worsened, because at that point we can begin to identify solutions.

For example, Blacks once enjoyed jobs that were easily obtained with very little education. Those jobs were adequate to support a family, even if on the verge of poverty. Changes in the economy have erased many blue-collar jobs, and todayâ€™s minimum wage jobs are barely enough to raise an individual. Add that to the growing difficulty in obtaining higher education, and young Black men find themselves on the path to prison more often than on the path to success. Many of the females left are raising children alone.

Simple realities of this nationâ€™s legacy of racism are still in place, even as people choose to place blame on the heirs of racism. Blacks are still the last to be hired and the first to be fired. The glass ceiling is still in place for those on the rise and there are sadly too many of us circling the financial drain, including the very poor as well as some of the so-called middle class.

Bill Cosbyâ€™s rage against the poor Black machine outlines symptoms of an illness. Part of the illness is abandonment by the so-called middle class, as well as civic and social organizations and the church.

Entities such as the NAACP and the National Urban League are like Black unicorns to the community. Ask many of todayâ€™s poor and they have no idea where to find these organizations or what they actually do.

Some of our â€œbenevolentâ€ organizations, including Black fraternities and sororities are more concerned with promulgating their own legacy than providing community service to those in greatest need.

For example, what of those who have â€œCâ€ or â€œDâ€ average grades? Where are the programs designed to streamline them into colleges or trade schools? Where are the elitist classists to give them choices when the Armed Forces recruiters or the drug dealers or the gangsters come a-knockinâ€™? Where were the elitists in the 1990â€™s when urban schools began to fall apart and programs designed to give poor people choices evaporated?

I know where they were.

Absent.

But they will show up to a rubber-chicken dinner all bathed and greased to honor those in the community who are already equipped with skills to make their way to the top of the heap.

Integration opened the floodgates for our best and brightest to flee our communities. Black entrepreneurs closed or abandoned businesses and so-called middle class families evaporated from the â€˜hood as dreams of â€œmovinâ€™ on upâ€ were pursued vigorously.

Currently, the most impoverished of Blacks huddle in ghettos filled with the unemployed and the underemployed. A strong disconnect between they and the rest of Black society is growing each day, along with a strong distrust. Yet, many so-called â€œprogressiveâ€ Blacks now rail against impoverished Blacks without attempting to understand their conditions.

It took the Black church well into the 1990â€™s to begin to address community redevelopment. Sadly, for many churches, this means little more than erecting huge structures the homeless would be bounced out of if security catches them seeking shelter.

In many cities, the poor of color are left without intrinsic government assistance and without assistance from other Blacks, sending them into a whirlpool of devastation from which there is little sanctuary. Crime is now the basic economy.

Before Cosby and other elitists decide that todayâ€™s poor are defective, let them be mindful that they are made of the same material as the impoverished Blacks they disparage. They are made of the same stuff but came through different conditions.

That is all that makes us different.

The issue is class and classism. Those who are well-off criticize the poor for behavior that is hardly endemic to poverty.

Dr. Cosby should know. It is still a mystery whether Autumn Jackson is Cosbyâ€™s child, but no mystery that he was sending her mother support money and reportedly sleeping with her. And hey-be man-be, did-be you-be think-be we-be forgot-be Fat-be Albert-be? There was clearly a language problem.

Sean â€œPuffyâ€ Combs has been pushing abject materialism for years and Russell Simmons is famous for calling other Blacks â€œNigga.â€ And, oh yes, the gaudy wheels that spin around were made famous by Latrel Sprewell. Materialism works from the top down, not the bottom up.

Fifty years ago, the Supreme Courtâ€™s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education stated that separating Blacks based on race, brings on feelings of "inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone."

The oppression of a people leaves emotional scars, which run deep into the self-esteem of the oppressed, grows within the community and perpetuates itself as efficiently as folk tales, songs and disease. It can only get worse with other Blacks now dogging us out.
While the sons and daughters of former slaves rail against their own brothers and sisters who are poor and of â€œquestionable moral standards,â€ the worst of us are getting worse.

We donâ€™t need anyone to pontificate on how bad things are, because as bad as the situation is, the badness is overly apparent. What we need now is action.

Unfortunately, many of the people weighing in are selfish, elitists who deep down inside must hate themselves and manifest that hatred in the hypercriticism of poor Blacks. They will criticize, but take little, if any action.

These people are classists. And they have no class.

Posts: 4721 | Registered: April 01, 2006

Ignored post by Fabulous posted

Posted

Forest Whitaker Narrates Story of One of the Most Talked About Figures

NBA TV Presents Kermit Washington Documentary

NEW YORK, April 11, 2006 â€“ NBA TV, the leagueâ€™s 24-hour television network, examines the life of one of the most controversial and most misunderstood athletes in all of sports in the one-hour special, Searching for Redemption: The Kermit Washington Story, on Sunday, April 16, at 9 p.m. ET.

An All-America, a scholar and a humanitarian, Washington was on the threshold of NBA greatness when as a member of the Los Angeles Lakers he hit Houston Rockets star Rudy Tomjanovich in a game with a devastating blow that not only shattered Tomjanovichâ€™s face, but also damaged Washingtonâ€™s reputation forever.

â€œTo this day it changed everyoneâ€™s life, the mistake I made -- a mistake in judgment,â€ says Washington reflecting on that night during a return trip to the Forum. â€œGive me a time machine and I think I would just go back, duck and never start the fight.â€ {snip}

http://aol.nba.com/news/washington_060412.html

Posts: 4721 | Registered: April 01, 2006

Ignored post by Fabulous posted

Posted

Independent Women

By Darryl James

â€œOnly call your celly when Iâ€™m feeling lonely/when itâ€™s all over please get up and leave.â€
--from Independent Woman by Destinyâ€™s Child

I was already confused over the phrase â€œBlack Woman of The â€˜90â€™s,â€ when the new century opened with the label â€œIndependent Woman.â€

There are many problems with women referring to themselves as â€œIndependent women,â€ but the most glaring difficulty is that out of any ten women asked to define the phrase, as many answers will emerge.

Perhaps it once had meaning, or could potentially have meaning for strong women who are truly independent, but the fact that there is no singular meaning or movement, makes it an empty label.

Any conversation containing the phrase â€œIndependent womanâ€ fails at the onset, particularly because there are no men defining themselves as independent men.

Women who talk about being â€œindependentâ€ need to also talk about how the label has gone way too far, to the point where it is now inconsistent and in many ways cartoonish, mannish and just plain unattractive. In fact, I often cringe when I hear women talk about being "independent" because it usually means that they are not.

In the quest for so-called â€œindependence,â€ some women have given up substantial portions of their womanhoodâ€”the very things that many men look for in a woman. Most of what remains in â€œ womenâ€ is aggressiveness and negativity.

It is not a problem for a woman to be assertive and ambitious, but it is not very attractive when a woman is aggressive.

Women can say what they want about their liberation, but we have not evolved to the point where an aggressive woman is desirable and we never will.

The overwhelming response by some women to menâ€™s repulsion to aggressiveness and negativity is that a â€œstrong womanâ€ is hard to handle. It may make you feel good to declare that men canâ€™t handle a strong woman, but you have to ask yourself what it is that is really repelling them.

My mother was a strong woman, but she never spoke in a derisive manner to my father or to her children and men were never repelled or repulsed by her. When a woman speaks to me in an overly critical and negative manner, I am neither impressed nor repulsed by her strength, I am repulsed by her poor communication skills and distasteful attitude.

The â€œIndependent Womanâ€ phenomenon appears to be rooted in a groupthink program, as opposed to each individual woman defining herself. As a groupthink pursuit, so-called â€œ womenâ€ are more worried about looking weak to other so-called â€œ women.â€ Many of them have completely abandoned the concept of building a team, because they already have their relationship defined before the man shows up, relegating his task to â€œrising to her level.â€

One of the most repulsive aspects of the groupthink program is the frequent advice to quickly exit relationships that appear to be problematic. A man can exhibit signs of negative behavior, but without taking a closer look, â€œ womenâ€ are advising each other to abandon everything without trying to work it outâ€”â€œYou donâ€™t need a man,â€ and now, â€œitâ€™s just me, myself and I. Iâ€™m my own best friendâ€

Ladies, other so-called â€œ womenâ€ may respect you and support you for your ability to give up and run away quickly, however, at the end of the day, you may find yourself childless, without any prospects of marriage and thirties with nothing but unresolved issues and loneliness. After all, relationships with spouses and children are based on dependence.

Many women who refer to themselves as â€œindependent,â€ also label themselves as feminists, but those politics are polluted, because many of the things they say have little to do with feminism or an intrinsic movement towards our true purposes together.

When you already have a plan together that has nothing to do with the person you meet, it will more than likely fail.

What we create has to be based on a merger of what we both need and what we both have dreamed of. On both sides, we have to begin to focus on what will bring us together, and what will keep us together. Those things have to be based on what we need in order to survive into the future.

There is too much confusion between the sexes for anyone to make assumptions or hold expectations. What has to happen is two people coming together, communicating wants and needs. When both parties are communicating, intrinsic movement can be made towards building something solid.

I believe it starts with a real conversation.

We need to talk to each other.

Just as it makes no sense for women to sit around in all female groups defining men, it also makes no sense for them to sit around and talk about what we want.

If Black women want to know what Black men want, questions should be directed to Black men.

Itâ€™s really not that complicated. For the decent, grounded Black men, raised by and around strong Black women, we want someone who will support our daily struggle. We need most of what you need, which is to have someone help to make us feel good by partnering with us while we go through our daily stress.

Thatâ€™s dependence.

Being our equal is not the same as being like us. God made us differently, which means that you can be a strong woman without being a man. If you never speak softly and never interact with us in a soft manner, you are less valuable. Our male friends offer us manly interaction. We want feminine interaction from you. Your â€œsister/girl/friendsâ€ may give you accolades for being strong, but we will give you space for being too much like us. Just think about the men who are too much like you.

In closing, there is nothing wrong with being independent. There is something very wrong with declaring independence without the responsibilities that come along with it.

Be strong, be assertive ambitious and focused.

But if you want to be in a relationship, just donâ€™t claim to be independent.

Posts: 4721 | Registered: April 01, 2006

Ignored post by Fabulous posted

Posted

Racism then
and now

Racism first arose out of the white desire to exploit black people economically - and it is maintained today for much the same reasons.

We cannot understand racism without looking back into history.

Paul Gordon and Chris Brazier are our guides.

http://www.newint.org/issue145/racism.htm

Posts: 4721 | Registered: April 01, 2006

Ignored post by Fabulous posted

Posted

COMMENTARY

This is a State of the Hood's Address...
URGENT!

DEAR ALL YOUNG RIDERS, HOODSTA'S, GANGSTA'S, HUSTLERS AND SELF-MADE SCHOLARS,

This is an important message for you who are willing to listen. We are now at the final hour of our time concerning the unification of our people and the stopping of the senseless killings of Black and Brown blood. As you can now see my young nation that you are truly the future for Black America. Don't just sit back and play those stupid games while you waste away your life in that slave camp called prison.

Here is one thing that you can start right now to free yourself from a lifetime of pain and more suffering. Drink plenty of water and walk slowly. Then look around you and ask yourself what is it that I would do to free my mind from this level of oppression? Young homies find a real old timer in the prison that will give you some wisdom, not game. Because you first got to get some instruction before you head for self-destruction. Then find a group of real Black men from your tribe and learn as a unit how to speak SWAHILI. After that learn sign language as fast as you can. Because it is now the hour of silence and freedom for those who want it.

If you really love your hood then try and prevent your young relatives or cuzzzin's from becoming a victim of this heavy oppression. Which by the way they are handing it out wholesale at any police station. You all are dealing with being oppressed by the very same system that lied to you and told you to kill your relative cuzz and spill his blood. It is only right for me to tell all of my young folks doing life in the penal system---THE HIDDEN UNIVERSITIES OF THE WORLD---to keep their chin straps on. Because, one day God will free you from your pain.

The hood is *&#@$%^ up for the little kids who are seeing this carnage first hand in this life. Our people are scared to death of us because we don't care about our race like we should, not to mention the fact that the KLU KLUX KLAN is celebrating it's new chapter of Black folk killers called the Crips and the Bloods! According to the former governor, The Klan is complaining about not finding work. None of these hate groups are finding work at killing the poor slaves, because the gangs and the L.A.P.D. are getting all of the action. Did you hear what happened to the baby LATIN girl who was shot down by several police while being held in her dad's arms? Wow and you still want to Bang?

Youngsters, you cannot keep up with all of the enemies that you are making in this life and you definitely can't kill all of them so you may have to take another course of action. My mom used to say to me when I was a smart mouth boy, "Malik no matter where you go you take yourself with you."

In other words no matter where you go your own character will follow you. Here is a prayer for all those who want to be free from jail and oppression: Dear GOD, please free my mind, body and soul from the clutches of those who don't serve you and do what you feel is right. Oh GOD please in the name of all my deceased ancestors guide me threw this madness that has been placed on my shoulders because I am Black, Brown or even a poor White oppressed by our same system. And oh dear GOD please teach me to Bang on the system and not on my own people.....

And if you do this for me I will exchange my bad deeds for some good ones. So please hear the supplement of my prayers...BLACK POWER, BROWN PRIDE. FREE BRIAN MUSTAFALONG.

By Malik Spellman

Posts: 4721 | Registered: April 01, 2006

Ignored post by Fabulous posted

Posted

If race refers to groups of peoples with different histories and cultures, what is racism?

Racism is based on prejudice toward so-called racial groups. But racism goes beyond simple prejudice. What makes racism so powerful and destructive is that the negative prejudice is the basis for discrimination against "racial groups." The discrimination can take place in the job market, housing market, educational system, health care service system, or some other arena.

What this definition of racism implies is that one group has the power to discriminate against another. For example, in the housing market, discrimination against African Americans leads to greater difficulty renting apartments, taking out mortgages, and buying houses in certain areas.

In most instances, White people have not sat down and agreed upon a plan about how to exert power and discriminate against African Americans (although this has happened, for example, in some White neighborhoods where there is fear of African Americans moving in).

Instead, it is the biases of individual Whites (who are reluctant to rent apartments or sell houses or loan money to African Americans) that lead to individual acts of discrimination.

These individual acts of discrimination, however, add up and become larger patterns, resulting, for example, in racial segregation in housing. And this racial segregation at the neighborhood level prevents people from different groups from getting to know each other. The lack of contact among groups makes it easy for stereotypes to continue, and, thus, prejudice at the individual level is maintained.

This view of racism as emerging from the actions of many individuals is a view of bottom-up racism. But racism can also result from top-down processes, for example, from institutional or corporate policies.

Decisions within media corporations about the portrayal of minorities in advertising, television, newspapers, and movies, for example, are top-down decisions that can result in racial stereotypes persisting at the cultural level.

Informal corporate policies and procedures that interfere with minority hiring and promotion can lead to racist employment patterns. It is important to note that it is the power of White individuals, both through individual and institutional decisions, that results in the racism that makes it hard for African Americans and other people of color, for example, to obtain equal housing opportunities.

The power of White individuals in this respect is not complete power, but relative power. That is, it is Whites rather than African Americans who are more likely to make decisions about mortgages as loan officers in banks; or Whites rather than African Americans who are more likely to own rental property in higher socioeconomic areas.

The relative power of Whites is based, in part, on racial differences in educational systems, job markets, and wealth, which result in Whites' being more likely to attain positions which allow them to have higher incomes and to control corporate and public resources. And, like the housing market, the educational and employment arenas embody their own complex webs of racism: Individual prejudice and acts of discrimination add up to form larger, institutional patterns of racism, which then reinforce the individual level of prejudice.

The point is that racism is a complex, interlocking mechanism at many levels of society. Racism in the different spheres of societyÃ‘work, home, education, government, media, religionÃ‘is interwoven.

Racism in one area cannot be understood without understanding the racist patterns in other areas. In addition, in each area, racism at the individual or micro-level cannot be understood without taking into account the racism at the institutional or macro-level. And, to make it more complex, the specific forms and assumptions of prejudice and bias will vary for different ethnic minority groups based on the history of contact between minority and majority groups. As a result, different ethnic minority groups will vary in their positions of marginality in society.

http://www.apa.org/pi/oema/racism/q14.html

Posts: 4721 | Registered: April 01, 2006

Ignored post by Fabulous posted

Posted