Monroe Anderson

Mother's Day is everyday

    My mother, Norma Jean Anderson, was still alive when I wrote this Mother’s Day piece about her three years ago. At the time, I was editor of the briefly resurrected Savoy Magazine and also wrote a column, "Monroe’s Doctrine," for each issue.  This ran in the April/May 2005 issue.

MOTHER’S DAY MEMORIES
BY MONROE ANDERSON

    The first time I gave my mother one of those humorous Mother’s Day cards, I quickly got the message: Mother’s Day is not funny. She quietly laid the card aside, smelled the flowers I’d given her and thanked me for the pretty floral house robe she’d tried on and was admiring as she looked in the mirror.
    From that Mother’s Day on, I made it a practice of giving her one of those sweet and sentiment Hallmark cards. After opening it, she’d beam, “That’s so beautiful.” Then she’d show off the card and read the worlds aloud for everyone in the family.
    This past Mother’s Day was not the same. For my mother, it was just another day. Her days all slip one into the next with her not knowing if it’s Sunday or Wednesday or Friday. She’s not even sure if it is spring or fall.

MY MOTHER HAS ALZHEIMER’S
    Not that she is alone. By all accounts being reported in the media, so does Rosa Parks. Alzheimer’s has become a silent epidemic in the black community. A study released earlier this year estimates that the prevalence of the disease rangers from 14 percent to almost 100 percent higher among blacks than whites.
    For my mother, it’s hereditary. As a preschooler, I remember watching my grandmother caring for her “senile” mother, Nana, who was 89. A generation later, I watched my mother care for my “senile” grandmother, Elizabeth, who died at 96. For my mother, my sister Liz has been doing the caretaking.
    My mother’s Alzheimer’s has progressed to the point where the past and the present easily entangle. She sometimes confuses me with two other men who she’s loved and are important in her life. Sometimes I’m her brother, Scott, who’s been dead for more than a decade. Sometimes I’m my father, Monroe, who has been dead for nearly a quarter of a century. In those cases, I’m called on to remember an incident that occurred or relatives who died before I was born.
    When I visit with her, we still talk as we always have. But these days our talks no longer connect. A couple of months ago, she proudly told me, “I’m going to give the valedictorian speech at my high school graduation tomorrow.”
    Several of her teachers complimented her, she matter-of-factly reported, for being such a good student. I nodded in agreement, fully knowing that Norma Jean Anderson graduated from Roosevelt High School in 1943—six months after she secretly eloped and married my father, Monroe.
    Before I could say anything she was back in the moment. Back to being the loving, caring mother whose memory I cherish. She wanted to know if I was hungry. Should she cook something for me to eat?
    I told her I was fine as we sat in the cafeteria of the nursing home. She was eating mystery meant with mashed potatoes. It may have been nutritious but it was definitely not appetizing.
    There was a time when she knew that the nursing home was not the place she wanted to be. She begged my sister and me to never send her to one. We tried to honor her wishes. But after years of watching in horror as our mother descended into the valley of stripped memory and dense dementia, we could no longer keep her in the home she’d raised us in. She had begun to wander out of the house into the streets looking for great-grandchildren she imagined were crying out for help.
    So my sister put our mother in the same nursing home, in the same Alzheimer’s ward, where our mother’s sister was housed.
    I periodically tell myself that it may be a good thing that my mother’s memory is failing. There is so much tragedy that she’d rather not remember.
    Her father died when she was just 11 years old. Six of her eight brothers and sisters died, almost all from tuberculosis, before she was grown. After my father died, at age 61, from a sudden heart attack, she went into a depression. Then her mother died, followed shortly afterwards with the death of her only surviving brother. Her youngest child, my brother, was beaten senseless. After three months in a coma, he died at age 39. I watched as each of these losses took their toll on her.
    I think about Mother’s Days of many years past. When my father, brother and grandmother were all there at the dining room table, trying to get her to relax and let others serve her on her day. She had on interest in going out to some fancy restaurant to celebrate her day. Of course, she wouldn’t think of it. She was just happy to have all of us in her life and to be in all of our lives.
    I look back on those days with sweet memories and bitter regrets. There was so much I took for granted back then. There were so many things I should have said that I didn’t. And now, as I try to say those things to my mother, she usually does not hear nor understand them.
    So I come away from each visit depressed at seeing her in her illness and comforted in the realization that, for me, thanks to my loving memories, every day is Mother’s Day.

Right-wing smear machine revving up to see how low it can go

 

    Now that Hillary Clinton has become a dead woman walking, the radical right is revving up its fear and smear machine for double duty in targeting Barack Obama.
    One of its early volleys was the Rev. Wright attack ad during the North Carolina primary. Another one that’s now being blasted through the creepiest corners of the far right reaches of cyberspace is a truth-challenged video entitled “A Viral Portrait of Barack Hussein Obama.”
    This little missile of misinformation is a sickly mix of swift-boat-and-Willie Horton-style bad, old-fashioned Republican mudslinging.
    “Let’s connect the dots. With the assistance of Dr. Cone, Rev. Wright and other divisive figures Barack Obama has been discipled in a racist, Marxist, quasi-Christian, anti-Semitic ideology for over 20 years,” says creator/narrator Lome Baxter as he begins his summation of why America shouldn’t even consider Obama as its leader. “After that much indoctrination, is it surprising that he won’t wear an American flag?  Is it surprising that he won’t put his hand over his heart during the national anthem? Is it surprising that his wife has never been proud of America until it looked like her husband had a shot at beating Hillary?”
    This is a just a sneak preview.  Compared to what's coming, the Bhillary tactics were mere spit balls.  So put on your hip boots, raincoats and caps and protective eye-gear folks because not only will stuff happen, it’s about to hit the fan.

    Warning: do not watch Baxter's video on a full stomach--unless you are bulimic.

 

Can Obama disprove his guilt by association?

    Barack Obama burst on the national scene four years ago during the Democratic National Convention. His personal history and vision on race was fresh and appealing to millions in America.
    That’s pretty much where he’s been and what he’s represented until six weeks or so ago when viral videos of Rev. Jeremiah Wright themselves burst on the national scene. Obama responded to the “shocking, stunning” words of his former pastor by giving one of the most profound speeches ever given on race in America. Even most of the detractors of the Democratic Party frontrunner praised the brilliance of his speech but then….they argued, he needed to do more.
    Obama needed to not only denounce what the man said, he needed to denounce the man. A few days ago, after Rev. Wright came out of his self-imposed public exile and elaborated on his “stunning and shocking” words, Obama did just that.
    Well, as it turns out, that’s still not enough for Obama’s detractors. They want him to explain why he stayed in Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ for so long. Why Rev. Wright remained his pastor for so long. In effect, they want him to prove the unneccesary.
    When my post, Wright Here, Wright Now, went up on the ebonyjet.com website, there were plenty of comments. One from a reader who identified himself as Andy Shep—after several exchanges between him and me—concludes, “Mainstream America is not going to embrace the anger that Wright has made visible. If they feel that in his heart Obama resents them, or would appoint people to higher office who resent them, they will not vote for him.”
    Our ebonyjet back and forth is below.  But first, I’d like to present a Vimeo video entitled, White People, Get Over Yourselves. In the viral video, Dan Charnas, a young white man, says, “In America, black people have always endured white peoples’ negative, prejudiced opinions about them.”
    Charnas later says, “America is run by an undereducated, white majority. Black people have just had to deal with it.”
    Check out the video, and then read the prevailing mainstream America opinion as it appeared on ebonyjet.com.

White People, Get Over Yourselves from Dantrification on Vimeo.

Andy Shep says:
anyone who believes that AIDS was invented by the government to kill black men hates people who look like me. It is not in my best interests to vote for someone who hates me. There are those of you who know better and have stayed silent, because of that men like Wright don't even know how inflammatory they are. You can believe all white men to be racists and murderers and you can become president, I don't think you can do both. Obama has not denounced Wright enough.
05.01.08 at 10:20 PM

Monroe Anderson says:
AndyShep: The bar seems to keep moving on Obama's denunciation of Rev. Wright. What would be enough? Have you any suggestions? Or, would God Damn Rev. Wright satisfy you?
05.02.08 at 3:03 PM

Any Shep says:
Obama's problem is the timing of his comments distancing himself from Wright seem to coincide with bad polling data. White people see it as a political move. An eloquent speech that addressed what Wright said, why Wright may have said it, and why he was wrong could turn the negative into a positive. There is White resentment over Black anger if he addresses it he can win by a landslide. Many still believe he privately agrees with Wright, including Wright, and he's known him for 20 years.
05.02.08 at 7:43 PM

Monroe Anderson says:
Any Shep, let me see if I understand this correctly. Whites resent it that blacks are angry because, after all these years, there is still racial discrimination, economic inequity and white privilege in America?
05.02.08 at 8:27 PM

Andy Shep says:
Wright is just a product of anger, and because of his anger he can't move forward and won't let anyone else move forward either. Wright was not angry alone. Mainstream America is not going to embrace the anger that Wright has made visible. If they feel that in his heart Obama resents them, or would appoint people to higher office who resent them, they will not vote for him. You can live in the problem or live in the solution.

    I invite you to comment on what Dan Charnas, Andy Shep or I had to say right here on this blog or comment on the ebonyjet.website on my exchange with Shep.

Obama may become America's seventh black president

 


        Now that Bill Clinton has forever demolished the curious notion that he was the first black president, it may be that there actually were six black commander-in-chiefs before him.
    Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Dwight Eisenhower may have all had black ancestors, according to a report in the North Star News.
    The newspaper quotes black historians who researched the ancestry of our presidents. Early on in American history, the “one-drop rule” was instituted. That meant if one drop of Negro blood could be traced back in a person’s ancestry, then no matter how white they looked, no matter how white they had been raised, no matter what, they were black.
    Of course, the reality was just the opposition. Enslaved African women were getting equal doses of white blood for their offspring when their white slave masters and overseers routinely raped them. Those half-white children were born into slavery and were in turn impregnated by white masters and overseers. The offspring of the mulattoes and their white masters were called quadroons. Another white master dip in that genetic pool a generation later produced octoroons.  Somewhere along that racial recession, those kind of black people started becoming white. They escaped the plantation, moved elsewhere and blended into the dominant white society.
    Following that historical racial development, according to the North Star News, one historian says Dwight Eisenhower's mother, Ida Elizabeth Stover Eisenhower, was black.
    The painting above by my wife, artist Joyce Owens, is of Louise Evans, a former slave from North Carolina who was interviewed and photographed during the WPA era. You wouldn’t know the woman was black to look at her. There are many more of you out there. Applying the one-drop rule, a fourth of all Americans who think they are white may, in fact, be black.
    Now back to our white/black presidents. Here’s how the April-May 2008 North Star News begins:

Barack Obama May Become The Seventh
Not The First, Black President

If Sen. Barack Obama wins the Democratic nomination for preside nt and goes on to win the White House, he would be the seventh, not the first black man to occupy the oval office, according to three black historians whose work to uncover the racial backgrounds of U.S. presidents has been largely ignored until now.
          Black male historians have written extensively that Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Dwight Eisenhower had black ancestors. These historians are Joel A. Rodgers, Dr. Leroy Vaughn, and Dr. Auset Bakhufu.
          Black historians, however, were not the first to write about the five presidents' racially mixed families. White historians and political opponents also wrote about the men's black ancestors, but the books were either destroyed, went out of print or are hard to find.
          A common theme associated with the earlier black presidents is that they all passed for white, sometimes destroying family photographs and letters, to hide their racial backgrounds.
          Sen. Obama cannot obviously pass for white because of his dark skin color. Obama makes it clear he is the son of a Kenyan economist and white female anthropologist.
          Interracial relationships between black women and white men explain the racial backgrounds of some of the presidents, but not all.
          Sexual relationships between black men and white women have produced offspring. Andrew Jackson, the nation's seventh's president, was the son of a black man and an Irish woman, according to historians.
          Interracial relationships between black men and Native American women also produced racially mixed offspring.
          Rodgers, who died in 1966, wrote the book The Five Black Presidents, and Dr. Vaughn devotes a chapter to the five black presidents in his Black People and Their Place in World History. Rogers and Vaughn agree Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Harding and Coolidge had black ancestors.
          Dr. Auset Bakhufu, author of The Six Black Presidents' Black Blood: White Masks includes Eisenhower.
          Despite author Toni Morrison's 1998 New Yorker magazine article that claims Bill Clinton is the nation's first black president because of his womanizing and frequenting McDonald's restaurants, Clinton is not listed.

    To read the rest of the article at northstarnews.com, click here.

Wright's soundtrack, Nina Simone's and Sam Cooke's songs

    No doubt about it, Barack Obama was forced to kick his former pastor under the bus. I understand. You can't run for Cheerleader-in-Chief of America while your spiritual mentor is out front and center badmouthing the nation.
     Then there's this reality: the world of American politics, where bumper sticker wisdom and sound bite dialog reign supreme, is not a comfortable place for the truth to reside.
    And make no mistake about it: there was a bunch of truth telling in what Rev. Jeremiah Wright has been saying. I saw it and heard it during his speech and Q and A Monday. But the vast majority of Americans and my fellow journalists saw a train wreck.  I didn't. I saw a Soul Train of a lecture and sermon with a payload of truth, intelligence and common sense.       
    I ended up into a back and forth e-mail debate about Wright's performance at the National Press Club with CNN's Roland Martin on the NABJForum. In the middle of our e-mail discussion, I noted that it was generational; Roland is about 20 years younger than I am. He insisted it was not.
    Later in the day, I heard from Daniel St. Albin Greene. Dan took me under his wings when I was a cub reporter at the National Observer back in the early '70s. I hadn't talked to him in more than 25 years. He happened to see one of my commentaries on line about Rev. Wright and tracked me down.
    After a bit of catching up, we took up the Wright controversy. Dan admitted to being thoroughly confused about Barack Obama's former minister until he saw the Bill Moyer's interview.
    Then he got mad.
    Back in the late '60s, Dan, who is an exotic mixture of Native and Euro-American, spent much of his time covering riots and racial protests for the Observer. He developed an in-depth understanding and an abiding appreciation for what was going on in the black liberation struggle.
    When he got his first beyond the looped snippets look at Rev. Wright, he understood the man instantly. Wright, Dan surmised, was an old-fashioned black nationalist who had disappeared into the faith but still holds the liberation movement close to his heart and deep in his soul.
    Dan's anger was sparked by the realization that there is an entire generation of journalists; editors and reporters that have no connection or understanding of the black liberation movements of the 1960s. Nor do they understand that while there are the Oprahs, Bob Johnsons and Bill Cosbys, blacks with plenty of wealth and influence, far too many African Americans are no better off, no more embedded in the American dream than their parents were a generation ago.
    In watching yesterday's news and the response of regular black Americans, then Obama's angry divorce from his former pastor, I began to wonder if Roland hadn't gotten it completely right and if I had missed the boat.
    I called Rev. Frank Watkins for a reality check. Frank was an idealistic young white man when he joined the civil rights movement back in the '60s. For the longest time, he was the Rev. Jesse Jackson's right-hand man. He later went on to work as Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr.'s press secretary and was the campaign manager when the Rev. Al Sharpton ran for president four years ago.
    Frank viewed Rev. Wright Press Club performance much like I did. As we talked and analyzed our response versus the vast majority, we concluded that it WAS generational for sure.  We were looking at Wright's performance through the lens of the '60s.  We were listening to his words to the tune of a time when Nina Simone's protest song, "Mississippi Goddamn," summed it all up.
    Rev. Wright's God damns America echoed that sentiment. 
    As Frank and I talked, he pointed out that Rev. Wright was an analyst and that as an analyst he had been brilliant. Unfortunately, Wright's politics are as bad as his comprehension of this nation's problems is good.  Beyond that, times have changed. It's no longer good enough to understand America's failures and to strongly express your frustrations with them.
    The time has come to seriously seek out solutions. That's what Obama's candidacy symbolizes: a chance to put somebody in command that understands the shortcomings and will vigorously act to correct them.
    This is why Obama's campaign themes of hope and change resonate so well with young people. With all respect to Rev. Wright and the late Nina Simone, a new day is on the horizon and Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come" tells that tale.

Let's have all Wright all the time

    After being caricatured into a racist, hate-filled, anti-American nut job, Rev. Jeremiah Wright is emerging from his self-imposed public exile.
    Barack Obama’s former pastor appeared on Bill Moyer’s Journal on Friday, was the keynote speaker at the Detroit Branch NAACP's 53rd annual Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner on Sunday and  continued his message that different is not divisive in a speech and Q and A  at the National Press Club in D.C. this morning.
    Great. In this 24/7 news cycle world, we need all Wright all the time.
    I know this is counterintuitive, but I think it will serve the Democratic Party’s presidential frontrunner well if we see more Wright—much, much more Wright. 
    The conventional wisdom is that Wright’s return to the national scene is not doing Obama any favors. You hear that the Protestant pastor should have remained MIA until shortly before Thanksgiving—if not for eternity. You read that any time Wright speaks he only serves to stoke the passions of righteous Americans who have taken to heart the hard knock words they’ve heard out of context. You know that the running rap has Rev. Wright as a big-time blight hampering the Obama campaign from closing the deal.
    I say it ain’t necessarily so.   
    Since the manufactured controversy erupted last month, Wright gives certain American voters, as Chris Matthews describes it, a “permission slip” to not vote for Obama. The former Trinity United Church of Christ pastor gives them cover to continue voting whites only.
    Wright, however, doesn’t have to remain the blunt instrument the rightwing clinches to beat Obama down from here to November. With the exception of the conservative whites that aren’t going to vote for what could be America’s first black president for any reason at any time, a Wright P.R. blitz can shrink the mountain back to a molehill.
     Let’s begin with the obvious: Rev. Wright disappeared after misleading snippets began endlessly looping because a fair amount of his life’s work has been dedicated to social justice. Witnessing the very real possibility that this great nation may finally break its bad habit of electing one white man after the next to its highest office has to be as exhilarating to him as it is to me and millions of other Americans.
    But then, the situation got way out of hand. Rev. Wright’s four-decade legacy went to hell.  He had to flesh out the cartoon villain the viral videos have transformed him into. He needed to explain and defend his church’s black liberation theology, which has been so unfairly misrepresented. He’ll have to do it some more and then some more again.
    “I’m distressed by white people, out of a very different religious, cultural, racial, theological/ecclesiastical experience, presuming to judge African American faith practices and religious expression and preaching,” Rev. John Buchanan, who is white, said last month to his congregation.
    I found no evidence that Rev. Buchanan is related to that other Buchanan, Pat, a member of Sons of Confederate Veterans and rightwing agent provocateur who plays a political analyst on TV.  John Buchanan is the pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. His Gothic-architecture church was the setting where Carmen Diaz got married in “My Best Friend’s Wedding.” In real-life, Fourth’s flock is just like in the movie. Its congregation is largely white and rich and powerful.
     “Senator Obama’s critics wonder how the senator could have remained in Wright’s congregation and under his leadership for twenty years,” Rev. Buchanan said in his week-after-Easter sermon. “The answer is that Wright didn’t say ‘God damn America’ every Sunday. In fact, Wright’s sermons were biblically based, relevant, literate, and eloquent, week after week. When the preachers of the land decide whose sermons and lectures or preaching they want to hear, Jeremiah Wright’s are near the top of the list.”
    Of course, you’d never imagine that by watching Fox Cable News or from any of the other ongoing outlets for the rightwing propaganda machine. Last week, the North Carolina Republican Party unveiled an ad using Rev. Wright to attack Obama as “too extreme.”
    Without question, that’s just an early cheap shot the rightwing is preparing to sling. The Republicans believes Wright will be their WMD. And that’s why he should saturate the media with his intelligence, conviction and reason. He should religiously make the media rounds from “Meet the Press” to “This Week” to “20/20” to “Countdown” to “The O’Reilly Factor” to “The Colbert Report” to “Nightline” to “Saturday Night Live.” He should go on Oprah, Ellen and "The View," too.
    Should he make those rounds, before long, the fickle American media with its attention-deficit audience will decide that what was once “shocking and stunning” is really basic and boring. Old news is no news.
    And for Wright, Obama and the nation at large, no news will be good news.

(You can also see this post on ebonyjet.com. It ran on Tuesday under the headline, "Wright Here, Wright Now."  Check it out to see the comments. There are a lot more there than here. Also there are many other interesting posts on the website.)

A Name Game

 

 

    There are 38 of me. When I was much younger, I thought there were only two: my father and me. He thought so too. Although my birth certificate reads Monroe Anderson, III, my father, Monroe Anderson, Jr., was orphaned when he was one, so we knew of no other living Monroe Anderson.
    Back in the middle of the last century, it wasn’t easy discovering how many of you there were. Of course, with the Internet, it’s a cinch. I’ve long known that the Texas cancer center, M.D. Anderson, was named after the late businessman, Monroe Anderson, whose middle name was Dunaway. And a couple of years back, a fictional teenager in the novel, Maybe a Miracle, started showing up on Google’s search engine.
    But, it wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that I discovered how many Monroe Andersons there actually are in the United States—38.  I also discovered that Anderson is no longer the 8th most common name in America as it was when I was a child, now it’s 10th. Out of the 303,944,807 people in the U.S there are 945,268 Andersons and 12,158 Monroes.
    But enough about me. Let’s see, there are 431 Americans named Joyce Owens but only one who is a nationally known artist and is married to me. Anyway, Shakespeare comes to mind here. His immortal rose by any name line.

    But I digress. There are 449 John McCains. There are 510 people named George Bush, including his daddy, president number 41 and 261 who share William Clinton’s name. There’s only one Hillary Clinton.
    Here’s the puzzler. According to the website, HowManyofMe.com, that does the U.S. Census search and provides the numbers, there are zero Oprah Winfreys. Ditto for Barack Obamas.
    You may want to wait for the 2.0 version, after they've worked out the glitches. If you want to check it out right now, go to the left column of this blog where you’ll find HowManyOfMe listed under Research In. One click and you too can discover if there are many of you—or none at all.

Our presidential race race

    What's just now being reported should have been reported beginning with the Mississippi primary: the racism of routine white Americans. Back then, race was discussed only along the lines of blacks voting in high percentages for Barack Obama--as if there was something unusual in an American ethnic group voting for one of its own. But race is different. It continues one of America's nastiest habits. It's a reflect that's against something rather than for something. It's the only reason Obama's "electability" is in question.
    It's time for the United States to set up its own Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

    Here's my ebonyjet.com commentary, posted Thursday morning.

Pennsylvania
the state of "virtue, liberty and independence" showed us the issue behind the issues
04/24/2008
By Monroe Anderson

It’s race, stupid. Not the economy, although even 90 percent of those who voted in the Pennsylvania primary said we’re in a recession. Not the war in Iraq, although 60 percent of America knows it was a mistake.  Not the national healthcare, although there are 45 million Americans without any insurance coverage at all.

It’s a matter of race: Hillary Clinton and John McCain are white. Barack Obama is not.

An exit poll conducted by Edison/Mitofsky during Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary found race mattered for 16 percent of those who cast their ballot and that just 54 percent of those Democratic voters said they would support Obama in a general election. Twenty-seven percent said they’d vote for McCain if the first black to become a competitive presidential contender was the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer; 16 percent said they would not vote at all.

These disheartening confessions came from the white voters who were speaking candidly.

When it comes to the members of this special interest group, who in the past have been called the Silent Majority and then later, the Reagan Democrats, it’s whites only for the exalted position of leader of the free world. They’re not going to vote for a black man, period—no matter how well educated, well-spoken and well-meaning he may be.

He can’t confuse them with the facts on how qualified and competent he is. He can’t overcome the recalcitrant racism, no matter how he approaches them, if even on bended knees. He can’t convince them to vote their economic interests, no matter how economically threatened they are.  He can’t be the president of their America.

More than two months ago in a fleeting moment of public candor, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Clinton supporter, said as much: "You've got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate.”

Unfortunately for Obama, conservative whites are here, there and anywhere in America.  They’re the ones that moved away to segregated suburbs, opposed busing and are against affirmative action. They’re particularly Republican but unfortunately too many of them are Democratic as well. They’re in Mississippi, where Obama’s inability to garner the white male vote was reported as if good old fashioned racism was his fault. They’re in Ohio where Obama failed to draw a substantial number of the working class vote wherever it happened to be white. And, trust me, I’m from Indiana—they’re definitely there.

But rather than calling a snowflake a snowflake, the ingrained racism in the American electorate is now spoken in tongues and reported in code.  Rather than examining the glass ceiling Obama is being introduced to, manufactured controversies run rampant in the presidential news coverage and, in the last presidential debate on ABC, the first 45 minutes of moderator questioning.

Obama is judged guilty by association for his truth-telling minister, his radically-left neighbor or his documentable statement that bitter lunch bucket whites cling to their religion and their guns rather than boldly confront the politicians that are engineering their economic decline.

"Considering his financial advantage, the question ought to be, why can't he close the deal?" Clinton said  on the day of her barely double-digit win, outside a polling place in a northern suburb of Philadelphia. "Why can't he win in a state like this?"

Why can’t he close the deal? Is there something wrong with his electability? Why can’t this black man deliver the knockout punch?

These are the questions the superdelegates are going to have to ask themselves, before deciding if they’re willing to throw the black man, with the most dedicated delegates, state victories and popular vote, under the bus and give the white woman a ride. To do that would guarantee the party’s trip to nowhere.

Monroe Anderson is an award-winning journalist who penned op-ed columns for both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. He is a regular contributor to Ebonyjet.com.

Michael Moore previews something better than bitter in Pennsylvania

    Filmmaker Michael Moore lives in Michigan, so he didn't get an opportunity to vote for the candidate of his choice in the primary there. But just like in his documentaries, Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11 and Sicko, in an open letter to Pennsylvania voters, Moore cuts right to the chase: Hillary Clinton has blown a lifetime of good deeds with her bad behavior in her bid to become the nation's first woman president.

    "...the actions and words of Hillary Clinton have gone from being merely disappointing to downright disgusting. I guess the debate last week was the final straw. I've watched Senator Clinton and her husband play this game of appealing to the worst side of white people, but last Wednesday, when she hurled the name 'Farrakhan' out of nowhere, well that's when the silly season came to an early end for me. She said the 'F' word to scare white people, pure and simple. Of course, Obama has no connection to Farrakhan. But, according to Senator Clinton, Obama's pastor does -- AND the 'church bulletin' once included a Los Angeles Times op-ed from some guy with Hamas! No, not the church bulletin!

"This sleazy attempt to smear Obama was brilliantly explained the following night by Stephen Colbert. He pointed out that if Obama is supported by Ted Kennedy, who is Catholic, and the Catholic Church is led by a Pope who was in the Hitler Youth, that can mean only one thing: OBAMA LOVES HITLER!

"Yes, Senator Clinton, that's how you sounded. Like you were nuts. Like you were a bigot stoking the fires of stupidity. How sad that I would ever have to write those words about you. You have devoted your life to good causes and good deeds. And now to throw it all away for an office you can't win unless you smear the black man so much that the superdelegates cry 'Uncle (Tom)' and give it all to you."

    I hate to spoil the ending for you, but Moore goes on to encourage Pennsylvania Democrats to vote for Obama since he could not.

    Starting with the South Carolina primary, I have heard one Democrat after the next say that they have become disenchanted with the Clintons because of their campaign tactics. Who knew? The whining Republicans were whining for good cause.

    To read all of Moore's open letter, go to MichaelMoore.com

AIDS epidemic still chalking up young black men

    For young black men, the AIDS epidemic hasn't gone anywhere. In fact, it's coming on strong. The cover story of this week's Gay City News reports that for black gays 24 and under, there has been a 60 percent rise in the disease in a four-year period.

    Here's the beginning of the Gay City News article:

An Epidemic Unabated

By: DUNCAN OSBORNE

04/17/2008

 

For Black Gays 24 and Under, 60 Percent Rise in Four Years

Leaning back in a chair, his arms crossed above his head, Justin D. Walker spoke easily about his life. The 24-year-old paused to sip some water and occasionally stood to look at a computer screen displaying slides from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Using data from 33 states, one slide showed that new HIV or AIDS diagnoses among African-American gay and bisexual men aged 13 to 24 went from just under 1,000 cases in 2001 to more than 1,600 in 2005. Walker is one of those statistics. He learned he was positive at 20.

"I know that my future is altered," he said toward the end of a 90-minute interview. "One of the things that I've always wanted to do was have a family. I know that is not impossible, but it will be hard to do."

New HIV or AIDS diagnoses among white or Latino men who have sex with men in that age group also increased over that time, but the cases among whites hit roughly 600 in 2005 and there were about 500 cases among Latinos in that year.

During that same period, new diagnoses among gay and bisexual men aged 35 to 44 went from over 6,000 to roughly 6,500, cases among 25- to 34-year-olds went from 5,000 to 5,500, and cases among 45- to 54-year-olds went from roughly 2,500 to more than 3,000.

The 13- to 24-year-olds account for just four percent of all male AIDS cases, according to one CDC estimate, but that anyone in that age group is getting infected is shocking.

"It's a very serious problem when the very young are becoming infected and it's increasingly so," said Dr. M. Monica Sweeney, assistant commissioner for the Bureau of HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control in the New York City health department.

City data show that 3,596 13- to 24-year-olds first received an HIV diagnosis from 2001 to 2006. Sixty-six percent, or 2,388 cases, of those diagnoses were in men and, among the men, 68 percent, or 1,633 cases, were gay or bisexual men. Fifty-two percent of all the young men were African-American and 34 percent were Latino.

    To read the rest of the Gay City News article click here.

    One reason for AIDS not abating among young Africa Americans may be that while the face of AIDS is now black, the funding to fight disease still goes to white organizations. Here's the op-ed page Chicago Sun-Times column I wrote about it nearly two years ago.

Those most affected by AIDS don't control research dollars

Chicago Sun-Times
By Monroe Anderson
June 11, 2006

When AIDS was first diagnosed 25 years ago, it wore a gay, white male face. Today that face is black and poor. Africa, which has slightly more than one-tenth of the world's population, accounts for nearly two-thirds of those living with HIV/AIDS worldwide.

In the United States, the numbers for African Americans are devastating just the same. Blacks make up slightly more than 12 percent of the population, but account for more than 70 percent of all new HIV infections and more than half of all AIDS diagnoses.

In Illinois, African Americans are affected by HIV/AIDS more than any other group. Though African Americans make up 15 percent of the state's population, in 2004 they accounted for more than half of the reported HIV cases. Among all women who reported HIV infection last year, 70 percent were African American, and between both sexes, 46 percent were African American. Chicago's South and West Sides are home to most of the state's blacks who are living with the virus.

This being the case, logic might dictate that the money follow the numbers. But life isn't logical or fair, and that's not how the funding fared. Those who command the lion's share of the money, and dictate how the disease will be treated, prevented and fought, are reflecting the old face of AIDS -- not the new.

Over the years, AIDS has become big business. Treatment costs $1,200 to $3,600 a month per person. The old heads fight for funds so they can continue to do what they do and maybe more. Take Howard Brown Health Center. Boasting an annual budget of $12,420,000, the Midwest's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender organization is so flush with funding that it has set up an HIV testing program in China. Across town, the Let's Talk, Let's Test Foundation, a black AIDS awareness organization on the South Side, scrapes by on an annual budget that is exactly $12 million less.

"Funding doesn't traditionally go to black organizations in the same amount it does to other communities," asserts Lloyd M. Kelly, executive director of the foundation. "We have got to be included in the decision-making process."

With the potent combination of a voice and a multimillion-dollar budget at stake, do-gooding is a habit that's hard to kick. But no matter how good-willed, white organizations don't do as well on Chicago's South or West sides as they do on the North because they aren't as familiar with the black community. A while back, the Howard Brown center considered coming to the South Side before meeting resistance from black organizations suspicious that it was setting up stakes not as missionaries but as mercenaries.

The health center's services might have been useful because many African Americans still won't face the facts about the AIDS epidemic. "The black community is socially conservative," explains Rae Lewis-Thornton, who says AIDS still has a negative connotation among African Americans that "leaves us paralyzed."

You get AIDS "because of your behavior," she said. And, that behavior -- intravenous drug use, gay sex, unprotected sex -- is not acceptable to middle-class, morally right African Americans. "The stigma that's attached to the disease is killing us."

For the past 13 years, Lewis-Thornton, who was diagnosed with AIDS in 1986, has been speaking out against that stigma. At the peak in 1993, she was speaking three to five times a week. Those engagements are now three to five a month. But after years of basically ignoring the problem, the mainstream black organizations are now beginning to make an about-face. Next month she keynotes at the NAACP's 97th Annual Convention.

This latter-day move by the venerable civil rights organization just might be the saving grace. An in-your-face approach will address the AIDS epidemic in the black community much more effectively than playing peek-a-boo.