Monroe Anderson

It's must-be TV for Blacks in Hollywood

For the past Century, Hollywood and African Americans have had a star-crossed relationship with the movie industry waging an image war against Blacks. Here's my Chicago Defender column on this sad situation.

Selma boycotted but Hollywood still got Glory

 

Monroe Anderson

Defender Columnist

 

 

    Hollywood’s snub of the very important Black film, Selma, about the extremely important march to demand voting rights for African Americans 50 years ago, was so absurd, so ironic, that it was joke worthy.

    On cue, Host Neil Patrick Harris literally opened Sunday night’s 87th Academy Awards show with this pale one-liner: “The best and the whitest...sorry brightest.”

    It was a feeble attempt to sugar coat the bitter truth. Although the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, is a Black woman, the actors nominated for best performances this year were all white.

    The Blacks-are not-worthy judgement was determined by the Academy voters who are 94 percent white. Last month’s Golden Globe Awards paid a little homage at least. David Oyelowo’s brilliant performance as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Ava DuVernay inspired direction at least garnered two nominations.

    “Why are we still begging white people for approval?” asks Sergio Mims, who writes for a Black film website, Shadow and Act, and is a co-founder of Chicago’s Black Harvest Film Festival, before shrugging off the Oscars brush off as no big deal.

    Mims might be right. There are the obvious bragging rights, but there is no guarantee that an Oscar will get an actor more work or a higher salary.

    And long after all the sound and the fury over this year’s Oscars have come and gone, the real action will remain where it already is: at home on our big flat-screen TV sets.

    Going out to see a movie, with servings of popcorn, soda and candy, can cost a family of four as much as $80 so we’re staying away in droves. According to a CBS News Poll, 84 percent of Americans see movies at home, four percent at the theater and 10 percent pretty much divided between home and the theaters.

    Television is also giving the theatrical movies a run for the fame and fortune as far as actors and producers are concerned.

    More than two and a half viewers watched Laurence Fishburne’s Hannibal every week as the veteran Black actor pulled down $175,000 per episode. Fishburne is also a co-star along with Anthony Anderson on the TV sitcom, Black-ish. He and Anderson are also producers..

    Producer Lee Daniel’s new drama, Empire, starring Terrence Howard and Taraji P. Henson, has been building its viewership from week to next. The Hip-Hop mogul show, which MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry summed up as a combination of Breaking Bad, Glee, House of Cards and The Real Housewives,  is the new “it” show for Black viewers.

    Since she created Grey’s Anatomy, Writer and Producer Shonda Rhimes has her own cottage industry on network TV with Private Practice and Scandal. She is also an executive producer on How to Get Away with Murder, the new TV drama that last month earned the show’s star, Viola Davis, a Screen Actors Guild Award.

    More than nine and a half million viewers watch Kerry Washington’s Scandal religiously. She reportedly earns $150,000 per show which means no one’s going to be throwing a rent party for her anytime soon. But, this is where the money gets really funny.  While the audience for ratings champion, The Big Bang theory, is twice that of Scandal, all three of the white stars, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, Johnny Galecki are paid  $1 million each per episode.

    That’s entertainment. Hollywood won’t be winning many awards for treating African Americans fairly over the past century. America’s movie industry has been waging an image war on Blacks since D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation first hit movie theaters 100 years ago. Griffith’s movie, originally named The Clansmen, espoused white supremacy while  glorifying the KKK. One scene features white actors in blackface who are supposed to be newly elected Black legislators during Reconstruction, sitting around, barefoot, eating chicken, drinking whiskey and recklessly eyeballing white women.

     Donald Bogle’s, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films, pretty much sums up much of Hollywood’s presentation of Blacks well into the 1980s.

    It’s that history and what took place on the Pettus Bridge that brought tears to some in the audience as they watched John Stephens and Lonnie Lynn-- aka John Legend and Common--perform, and later accept Oscar for Best Original song, Glory.  

    “We know that right now the struggle for freedom and justice is real. We live in the most incarcerated country in the world,” Legend said during their acceptance speech. “There are more black men under correctional control today than were under slavery in 1850. When people are marching with our song, we want to tell you that we are with you, we see you, we love you, and march on.”

    Common and Legend are right on. The struggle continues. But every now and then, we do get to witness some glory.

 

Black History Month is still not history

 

    Besides holding down her job as my wife and mother of my two sons, Scott and Kyle, Joyce Owens is an artist and a professor and curator at Chicago State University. When she's not eyeballs deep in one of those five jobs, she takes time out to curate an exhibition for Sapphire & Crystals, a collective of African American women artists here in Chicago.

Without fail, this is the time of the year when the S & C's can bank on an exhibition somewhere. Black History Month really is predictable. And without fail, this is the time of the year when I was a captive sounding board, forced to hear Joyce complain about how this was the only time of the year that it occurred to white galleries, universities and community centers that showing art by black women is a good thing to do.

I understand all too well.

Although I'm available year round, my best speaking engagement in 2009 was a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr./President Barack Obama Celebration for the City of Chicago Height, Illinois. Of course, Obama's Inauguration was a true historical moment. The King Holiday and Black History Month, on the other hand, have become as regular as a Gregorian Calendar.  The two African American observation's have sort of blended into Black History Season, which begins the day after Christmas for Kwanza and rolls on through the end of February. As for the rest of the year--forget about us.

I was reminded of this peculiarity when I read the latest post of my friend Jack White, Buckwheat's Black History Month Tour, on the Washington Post's black website, The Root. This visit to "the Home of Retired Racial Stereotypes" is a funny as Jack's drop in last April. Check it out and then tell me--if you can--why Black History Month shouldn't be integrated into American history, 24/7/52?

Here's Jack's post:

Buckwheat’s Black History Month Tour

By: Jack White

Posted: February 1, 2010 at 6:38 AM

Forget all the black public intellectuals. The Our Gang character has a few things to get off his chest. I came across Buckwheat packing a Kente cloth suitcase in his suite at the Home for Retired Racial Stereotypes. He was softly humming, “On the Road Again.”   

"Going somewhere?” I inquired.

“Course I is, White,” squeaked the famous Our Gang character. “It’s Feb’rary and that means it’s time for my annual Black His’try Month speakin’ tour.”

“Your what?” I responded. 

“My annual Black His’try Month speakin’ tour!” said my diminutive friend in a high-pitched voice as he carefully folded a colorful dashiki and placed it in the valise. 

“This the month when black public in-tee-leck-shals like me rakes in ‘nuf speakin’ fees to pay the bills the rest of the year when nobody wants to hear nothin’ we got to say,” said Buckwheat. “It’s kinda like bears eatin’ ‘nuf salmon durin’ the spawnin’ run to get them through the winter.”

“I never thought of it like that,” I observed.

“Where will you be chowing down … I meant, speaking?” “Oh, I’m booked solid,” said Buckwheat proudly. “I’m as pop’lar as Henry Louis Gates, Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson, Melissa Harris-Lacewell and Clarence Page put together. I got a Black His’try road show with a bus and everythin’! ”

“But how could you possibly compete with such a gallery of brilliant minds?” I asked, skeptically.

“All of them just talks ‘bout black his’try,” he ranted, his voice rising into higher and higher registers.

“I lives it. I don’t just talk about racial stereotypes—I IS one! Nobody can say ‘Here I is’ or ‘Otay’ like me! Those are MY trademarks!!! I is an icon!! I is an original!!! WHEN YOU SAY BUCKWHEAT, YOU SAY BLACK HIS’TRY!!!!!”

His tiny fists were pumping in the air, and he was shrieking at such a high pitch it fractured the crystal glasses in the dining room.

“Is that so,” I remarked.

“Yeah, and I got a book comin’ out to prove it. It’s called The Negro Squeaks of Rivers,” Buckwheat boasted. “PBS is plannin’ a 19-part series based on it. They think it could be bigger than Roots.”

Just then, I heard the growl of an engine and an enormous red, black and green touring bus pulled up at the door. It looked like the Kingfish was at the wheel.

“That’s my ride! Gotta go get paid!” shouted Buckwheat, lugging the bulging suitcase toward the door. “So long, White. Be seein’ you in March!”

I waved goodbye, shook my head and closed the door.

Jack White is a regular contributor to The Root.

This column has also been cross-posted on the African American Opinion.com website.

Will hope black out despair?

When I was in junior high, my speech teacher cited an article in one of the popular periodicals of the time--Look or Life magazine, if memory serves me right--reporting that the Negro was the most motivated American in the nation.

            You can tell how long ago that was by the Negro reference. It was in the early '60s when the Civil Rights movement was producing palatable progress. Dr. Martin Luther King was a force to be reckoned with. Malcolm had not yet been murdered. And many a young Negro who was planning of making something of himself wore his hair closely cropped in what was called a "collegiate." 

            In case you're wondering, the collegiate was identical to the hairstyle President Barack Obama sports now.

            On June 16, 1966, both the hairstyle and the sense that the whole nation was our oyster went out of vogue--as did Dr. King and his nonviolence movement. That was the day Stokely Carmichael, the 25-year-old fiery orator who had replaced John Lewis as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, defined a new social movement in America. In a stirring speech in Greenwood, Mississippi before 3,000 civil rights volunteers who were gathered to protest the shooting of activist James Meredith, Carmichael expressed his anger in a surefire manner.

            "We been saying 'Freedom' for six years," he said, referring to the chant that movement protesters used as they were beaten by hostile policemen pointing water hoses and unleashing vicious attack dogs. "What we are going to start saying now is 'Black Power!' "

            For me, and many other young Black Americans, "Black Power" and the "Black is Beautiful" mantra that followed were psychologically liberating. But, with the murder of Dr. King and the urban uprisings that followed, inner-city Black  America went under siege; most of the businesses that hadn't been burned out shipped out and with them went far too many of the jobs. 

            Racial integration made it possible for educated and motivated Blacks like me to follow the opportunities, leaving those not as fortunate behind. Drugs invaded and occupied the Black community in overwhelming quantities; unrelenting crime and violence followed.

            Soon, for many poor, unskilled Blacks, the only Good Times was a sit-com on TV.

            As a general assignment reporter for the Chicago Tribune, each year I'd cover the State of Black Chicago speech given by James Compton, the president of the Chicago Urban League. The list was a long litany of depressing facts dressed up in unrelenting despair. On a couple of occasions, I covered the National Urban League's annual conference when I heard more of the same.

            That's pretty much been the state of things and the outlook for things to come until about a year ago. That, of course, was when it became clear that Barack Obama had a real shot at becoming the POTUS.

Now that we have a Black man in the White House, argues Danielle Belton, on her blog, "The Black Snob," we're in a different era.

Some like Tavis Smiley haven't gotten the message. So Belton takes the radio/TV host to task for partying at his annual "State of the Black Union" gathering--as if it was 1999.

       Rather than taking some the same point of view, Belton says that we may want to look up rather than hang our heads down. Take a look at her blog to see how she sees it.>

            Rants: State Of Emergency

The State of the Black Union concluded in Los Angeles this weekend after the input of various scholars, activists, political leaders and pundits, mixed with the fear of the recession (or depression if you're just talking about black people. Economically things have been nightmarish for African Americans for some time) with the optimism of President Barack Obama's election. 

Founded by author/journalist Tavis Smiley, this was the 10th year for the event where 6,000 people attended panels, networked and discussed the state of the race. 

The funny thing about the state of the race: it's bad. 

Depending on where you live it is either horrific or merely annoying, but bad. Yet the other funny thing about black America is that if you've been hearing a car alarm blare at you for more than 100 hundred years, do you start to not even notice that it's there? Do you begin to think that your maladies are just realities? Do you accept the status quo?

All my life I've watched black people "settle." And when I mean settle, I mean it in many, many forms. Some "settle" for the mediocrity. Some settle for the poverty or violence of their neighborhoods (or the neighborhoods they left and now tut-tut as if fixing the old neighborhood was all the matter of Robert Preston showing up with 76 trombones to blow all the gangbangers away). Some settle for the fact that marriage, stability, peacefulness, happiness, good health, mental stability and intelligence is the property of others, not us, not for you. Things that should be natural rights become "something white folks do."

To read the rest, click here.

What President Obama represents for Dr. King's legacy

For nearly half of my life, Black History Month was Black History Week. In 1976, after Carter G. Woodson's initiative had been celebrated during the second week in February for 50 years, it became a month-long observance.  

Although it's not official, not even announced, the Black History Month has quietly become Black History Season. It starts the day after Christmas, with Kwanzaa and runs through the end of February.

Dr. Martin Luther King's national holiday serves as the midway point for this season of recognizing Black History. So, it's befitting that Barack Obama would be sworn in as POTUS this year the day after MLK Day. 

To mark that historical occurrence in these historical times, I was the keynote speaker at the King Day celebration a week ago today in Chicago Heights, thanks to an invitation from Mayor Anthony DeLuca and City Clerk Ethel Taylor invited to speak to their theme, "A Dream Achieved," which tied in Dr. King's dream to the Obama reality.

I don't believe we're quite there on the achievement piece, so here's the text to the speech I gave to to audience at Chicago Miracle Temple Church in Chicago Heights, Illinois:

The Dream Achieved

It was just a few months ago, when one of those opinion poll crews was canvassing Western Pennsylvania—you know, that area between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh that may as well be Alabama?
Anyway, one of the pollsters knocked on the front door of one of those western Pennsylvania homes. A woman came to the door. The pollster asked her if she was voting for John McCain or Barack Obama. The woman turned around and yelled, “Honey, who are we gonna vote for?” A male voice yelled out from the back of the house, “We’re votin for the nigger. The woman calmly turned and repeated to the pollster, “we’re voting for the nigger.”
When I first told my wife, Joyce, this story, she thought that I was joking. I wasn’t. It happened. It was reported in newspapers. It was posted on the Internet.
And, in a backhanded true-life sort of way, it lets us know that what Dr. King was addressing two score and six years ago is actually a dream half done.  

The Pennsylvania couple may not have gotten past the color of Obama’s skin but they were able to see the content of his character.
       Speaking of seeing, I see puzzled looks on some of your faces. Wasn’t this supposed to be a speech about The Dream Achieved?  Where’s this man going with this?  Stay with me, okay?
The original title of Dr. King’s 1963 speech was “Normalcy—Never Again.” That wasn’t exactly a title that would flow off anybody’s tongue or stir anyone’s soul.  So, it didn’t take long or much imagination for Dr. King’s wonderful words to become the “I have a Dream” speech.  Nor did it take long for his speech to get white washed by the mainstream media.
         In his speech, which was delivered at the March on Washington for jobs and freedom, Dr. King talked a little about his dream but a lot more about the American nightmare.  He spoke less about what he hoped our nation would do and much more about what our nation had not done. That’s the part of the speech that gets little play on TV or radio.  So, I’m going to read a key part of what Dr. King had to say.  Before I say what Dr. King said, let me caution you: I’m going to say it without the wonderful flow or rhythm you’re used to hearing in Dr. King’s speech. I want you to hear the words stripped of the passion and flavor.
"In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men - yes, black men as well as white men - would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.'"
When Obama takes his oath of office tomorrow I want you to think of it as earnest money…not that we’ve been paid in full. There are still some matters that need to be cleared from the books.
Right now, there are one million black men unemployed.  That’s what Dr. King was talking about.
Right now, half our children drop out city high schools before they graduate. That’s what Dr. King was talking about.
Right now, there are a million black men locked up behind bars. That’s what Dr. King was talking about.
And here’s something he said in his Dream speech that could have been a sound bite from him after Oscar Grant was murdered by an Oakland transit cop two weeks ago: “We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.”
I’m hoping that President Obama will be hearing Dr. King.
Since he launched his presidential campaign, Barack Obama has been talking Lincoln but I suspect, that he was thinking King.  

Yesterday, when Obama spoke in Washington, he stood in front of the Lincoln Monument but it was at the very spot Dr. King spoke 46 years ago. When I was on the Obama press bus last winter covering his campaign in the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries, I heard him quote from the Dream speech.  At every campaign stop, Sen. Obama would explain to his overflow crowds that he was running for office because of what Dr. King called “the fierce urgency of now.”
       Well, come tomorrow, the time will be now, for President Obama to cash and carry some of that urgency.
       When he swears in tomorrow, the time will be now for President Obama to also pay some old dues to those African American giants that shed blood, sweat and tears to make his presidential dream come true.  

You know the names all too well. Frederick Douglass. W.E.B. DuBois. Booker T. Washington. Thurgood Marshall. Malcolm X. Rev. Jesse Jackson. Harold Washington. Colin Powell.  And then there are the strong black women whose contributions were critical.  Harriet Tubman. Sojourner Truth.  Rosa Parks. Fannie Lou Hammer. Shirley Chisholm. Barbara Jordan. And even, let me see if I can get this out my mouth, Condoleezza Rice.
If these men and women hadn’t done what they did, Barack Obama wouldn’t have been able to do what he has done—or what he will have to start doing beginning tomorrow.
       Thanks to his predecessor, Obama has a lot of doing—and undoing--to do.  

After all the galas and parties are over and the celebrating has ended, we will still have some difficult days ahead. George W. Bush has left us in one big mess. 

There are two wars waging. There’s the deep recession.  There are tens of thousands of Americans losing their homes. There are nearly 50 million of us without health insurance. And nobody knows where the money is coming from or going to.
       And there’s a lot more that we can’t expect a President Obama to take on.  Some of it is on us. Before the Dream can really be achieved, we’ve got to take care of our own business.
       Right now, only 25 percent of black children have a father in the house. That wasn’t Dr. King’s dream.
       Right now, our youth are killing our youth in record numbers. That wasn’t Dr. King’s dream.
       Right now, our senior citizens are afraid to leave their homes at night; afraid they’ll be mugged or murdered. That was not Dr. King’s dream.
       So, right now, I say that when President Obama is sworn in, that we flip the script.  

In our public schools, rather than having the thugs in the in crowd and the brainiacs isolated and ignored, let’s make it hip to be smart.  

Let’s see if our daughters can just say no to knuckleheads who want to see how many babies they can father but not bother to raise.  

Let’s see if we can’t take Dr. King’s wise words and President Obama’s string of accomplishments and make them the new dream for the new generation and the generations to come.
       Let me remind you of the prophetic words in Dr. King’s Memphis speech, he spoke these words the night before he was murdered.
       “I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain top. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the Promised Land.”
       Obama, obviously, is there. A lot of us are there with him. But there’s still some dreaming to do and work that must be done. None of us can afford to forget about those we’ve left behind. We owe it to Dr. King’s vision.
       Thanks and God bless.

While we're at it, here's the full length version of Dr. King's 1963 speech in Washington.

Martin Luther King - I Have A Dream @ Yahoo! Video

History Happens in Denver

    On the 53rd anniversary of the murder of Emmitt Till, the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech at the Washington Mall and 72 years after the first African Americans attended a Democratic national convention, history happened.
     Barack Obama became the first African American to accept the Democratic Party nomination for the president of the United States. His acceptance came before 84 ,000 faithful in a stadium where a contact sport stirs men's blood year in and year out.
     His acceptance speech was inspirational and spirited. Republicans John McCain and George W. Bush were taken to task for failures too many to list, but many were ticked off, and too painful to ignore. His acceptance speech offered hope framed by real solutions to real problems. His acceptance speech was a rapid round of fire power in the escalating battle for the White House.
  November 5, 2008 may be the time the forces for good won.
     It would be a great change and a greater leap forward for America.

Before Obama's speech: Great expectations

     The view from the sports press box at Invesco Field, home of the Denver Broncos, is close to panoramic.  Thirty-one other bloggers are perched up here with me, and like me, waiting for nightfall and the dawn of Barack Obama’s historic face-off with John McCain.
     In less than 90 minutes, the acceptance speech begins. Obama’s got some big shoes to fill: His own.
    High expectations in the Mile High City and beyond, from sea to shining sea and around the planet people are awaiting a spellbinder. He’s got to equal or surpass his Philadelphia speech on race last March. He’s got to match or outdo his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston.
    It doesn’t stop there. Obama’s speech is exactly 45 years after Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream”--aka "the Broken Promise" speech on the Mall in Washington, D.C.
   Anything less in substance and style than these three monumental speeches could easily be labeled as a dud by the MSM and his Republican detractors. Stay tuned, we’ll hear soon.
   In the meantime, here’s Dr. King’s classic.

Tall tales from the black right

    In rare moments of weakness, I try to give black Republicans the benefit of the doubt. I tell myself they are hanging out with those who don’t want us in their country clubs, board rooms or places of worship because some of us need to be in the party for some semblance of balance—a don’t put all your political eggs in one basket strategy. I tell myself that the tainted tenth that belong to the GOP are there because they are naturally conservative and have a right to join up with some of their kind, regardless of race, creed or national origin. I tell myself that anyone who is a black Republican must be a true believer—not exactly the type that’s interested in thinking things through.
    Before I get anywhere close to convincing myself, the benefit of doubt gets beat down by reality: These bee-oh-cons are terribly twisted. Logically challenged, too.
    As conservatives, what do these African Americans want to conserve? The enduring legacy of the white masters?  Jim Crow?  Lynching?  The modern-day justice system that disproportionately warehouses young black men in prisons? An educational system that fails black youth long before it flunks them out?
    It seems to me that the greatest challenge for black Republicans is to rationalize why they're part of a party--the party of Rush Limbaugh and Jesse Helms--that can barely disguise its disdain for most black folks. Why bother with reality when you can do this: Substitute the Nights with Uncle Remus for One Thousand and One Nights.
    With bold-faced brashness and a willy-nilly wistfulness that would put President Bush and Karl Rove to shame, the National Black Republican Association has posted their billboard proclaiming that Dr. Martin Luther King was a Republican.
    But wait, there’s more. I don’t want to spoil it for you. I’ll let you see for yourself. So I’m sharing their lame YouTube anti-Obama video with you. But, before you watch it, you’ll need the appropriate mood music.  Try “Bring in the Clowns.”
    In case you don’t know the lyrics, here’s one stanza from the Judy Collins classic:

Don’t you love farce?
My fault, I fear
I thought that you’d want what I want
Sorry, my dear
But where are the clowns
Send in the clowns
Don’t bother, they’re here

Jesse Helms is dead--Let's bury American racism with him

   

    Arch conservative and rabid race baiter, Jesse Helms, died, ironically, on Independence Day. 
    For most of the 86 years he spent on this earth, Helms devoted way too much of his time and energy preventing African Americans from experiencing the freedom and independence that he, along with other Euro-Americans, took for granted.       
   In 1950, Helms became an unofficial researcher for United States Senate candidate Willis Smith, a conservative Democratic lawyer. While working on the primary campaign against Frank Porter Graham, Helms had a hand in creating an ad that read, "White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races."
    When not being outright racist, the five-term North Carolina senator was about as negative as he could get. Not only did he oppose civil rights, he opposed gay rights. Not only was he against communism, he also opposed a woman’s right to choose. Helms was against school busing and opposed giving up the Panama Canal.
    "There was plenty to stand up and say 'No!' to during my first term in the U.S. Senate," Helms wrote in his memoir, Here's Where I Stand.
    By the end of his first term, Helms had earned the moniker “Senator No.” He relished the label, even though it wasn’t meant as a compliment.

    "If there is such a place as hell, then Helms will be fist bumping while hanging out in the deepest, most segregated corner with another one of the right-wing's iconic bigots, Strom Thurmond...."

    Before running for the Senate, Helms was a conservative commentator on WRAL-TV. This is what he had to say about America’s greatest civil rights leader and the SCLC:  "Dr. King's outfit ... is heavily laden at the top with leaders of proven records of communism, socialism and sex perversion, as well as other curious behavior."
    Helms also called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 "the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress."
    A conservative icon, Helms defeated former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt—who is African American—in his last two runs for Senate in 1990 and 1996, by running racially loaded campaigns. In the first race, a Helms commercial showed a white fist crumpling up a job application, with these words underneath: "You needed that job ... but they had to give it to a minority."   
    Helms will be remembered, noted Kerry Haynie, a political science professor at Duke University, “for the strong racist streak that articulated his politics and almost all of his political campaigns.”   
    If there is such a place as hell, then Helms will be fist bumping while hanging out in the deepest, most segregated corner with another one of the right-wing's iconic bigots, Strom Thurmond, who died five years ago. Although both racial dinosaurs are gone, unfortunately, their hate-filled beliefs have been passed down from one generation to the next.
    Just go to some of the right-wing blogs where you will see the pack mule mentality that was wrong-headed and outdated when Jesse and Strom were just good old country boys. The blogs, written by hand-me-down haters in this millennium, perpetuate all that is ugly and ignorant in what passes for conservative thought.
    There’s Tightrope, for one example, a blog where “it’s not illegal to be white, yet,” which features four pages of nigger jokes and sells white power t-shirts on the side.
    Fortunately, the nation former Dixiecrats Helms and Thurmond cherished, and the blog mob on Tightrope pines for, is slowly but surely becoming a bad American memory. 
    And Barack Obama’s swearing in on January 20 as the nation’s new leader will be the clearest signal yet that the twisted convictions of Helms and his ilk are those that belong to a dying breed.

Dr. King's Death: My personal memory

   

    I was a j student about to leave Indiana University’s Ernie Pyle Hall when the news came over the wire service. Dr. Martin Luther King was dead. His life cut short in Memphis by an assassin’s bullet.
    I remember being struck by more emotions than one all at one time. I found the irony that the pied piper of peace would meet a violent end.  I felt justified in my anger and the Black Power philosophy I had adopted a year and a half earlier.  And I felt smug.
    In the wire service story, a young minister, Jesse Jackson, was mentioned.
    “Who’s Jesse Jackson?” My student editor asked.
    As one of only two black students in the entire journalism department, I knew who Jesse was. My white student editor did not.  It was expected that I know all things important to them while they knew almost nothing that was important to me.
    Dr. King’s death would serve as the fulcrum in shifting that equation. Urban riots were already breaking out across the nation as news of the slaying spread.  All this was popping at the beginning of my spring break and on the eve of my first professional job interview.
    As I drove into Chicago that Friday, it was the day after Dr. King’s death and the day before my 21st birthday.  I was running late for my interview with Bureau Chief Don Holt for a possible summer internship at Newsweek Magazine’s Midwest office. Traffic was crawling. It was bumper-to-bumper into the city and bumper-to-bumper out. Smoke billowed from the West Side.
    Chicago was burning.
    I had landed my shot at the internship after one of my professors told me Newsweek was looking for a black journalist for its Chicago bureau because it was going to be a long hot summer. Summer had come early.
    My job interview was not so much about my interests in becoming a journalist as it was about what young blacks my age were thinking and feeling. Why did I think the riots were happening? How much support did I think Robert Kennedy would have among black Americans? Had Dr. King maintained his relevancy among young blacks like me?
    I held nothing back. It turned out to be the easiest job interview I’ve ever have. I was told I had the job before I left Newsweek’s office.
    That was the beginning of what has now been a four decades long adventure in American media.
    Those prophetic words in Dr. King's final speech have punctuated my journey. For me,  and most African Americans, it’s not over yet.

 

This is the first worthy chain e-mail ever

   

    I got this one tonight from my friend, Al Robinson, a 70-year-old semi-retired Chicago businessman, who is both socially and politically alert. I have no idea who wrote this viral e-mail but it's worth a read, some thought and some intelligent discussion.

    What do you think?

    On January 31, I learned the name of the author, Detrick DeBurr, of the e-mail, thanks to this info from the Daily Kos website: Update[2008-1-31 14:9:38 by DavidSewell]: Catte Nappe found the source of the letter.

Obama and Black People

I am practically seething with all of the black people, especially so called "intelligent”, "educated", black people giving a million tired excuses of why they won't vote for Barack Obama and will vote for a Hillary Clinton:

1. He's not ready/He's not experienced.

Man please. You have the top 3 Democratic candidates with 1 Senate term under their belt. Hillary as the First Lady as experienced? Not one executive decision is made being as the first lady. That's like Stedman recommending a book, endorsing a candidate, or having his own show...SO WHAT.

2. White America is not ready for a Black president.

Whaaa? Was White America ready for slavery to end? Giving us the right to vote? Desegregation of our society? When did black people ever let white people dictate when and where we were getting our just due, our break? We've always stepped up and demanded what we wanted, or we were either hitting the streets and tearin' up some stuff, escapin', marching, or picketing. White America is ready for a Black President because Barack Obama is the right man for President, PERIOD.
Besides, that never stopped anyone from voting for Jesse Jackson, a man with NO political experience AT ALL from almost snatching the Democratic nomination in 1984, and coming darn close again in 1988 20 YEARS AGO.

3. Barack is half black and half white, so he's not really black anyway.

I should backsmack anyone who has ever thought that. Ever heard of the one drop rule? It has not only been a social standard for WHO is black, but it also upheld the constitution in keeping us from suing a white person over personal property. No black person ever refers to another black person as "biracial". You black. You might have another heritage in your lineage, but this country as well as any other sees you as black, PERIOD. Lame excuse people.

4. I don't know what issues Barack stands for.

When the heck has that ever prevented black folk from voting for a black candidate, really? I guess now, but the main people saying that couldn't tell you anything about Hillary's or John Edwards platform either. Please stop fronting.

5. All he did was give that one speech.

How many great people have defined their lives, the scope of human history, and changed the world in a speech? Moses, Jesus, Paul, Martin Luther, Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Ronald Reagan, Nelson Mandela, Jesse Jackson, and Jim Valvano all have changed the course of history of the world and the hearts of billions of men and women in societies since the beginning of time with a speech.
That is the purpose of a ra lly. A person speaks, and it prepares all to act in relation to the spirit of what is spoken. That is why we go to church, not to just hear our pastor blather, but to refresh God in our hearts and spurn us to take up God's will in our lives.
So save all that ying yang about that speech.

6. If all of those white people are supporting him, he must be in their back pocket.

Save the conspiracy theory home skillet. He's liked because he comes at a time where a person that looks exactly like them lied to their face (two in a row, if you include Bill Clinton with Monica and of course Bush with Iraq), and flat out said what no politician would admit: We have two Americas, blue and red, black and white. It was not publicly said, and on top of that proposed that we ACTUALLY DO something about it, not find more ways to be divided and not come together despite our differences. Noble concept and one to be championed. That's JFK, FDR, and Abe Lincoln material. So they were feeling it, just like I was and you should too. His legislative work has been indicative of this as well, including his Fuel Standard work with President Bush. Check the resume, it shines.

THE REAL REASON BLACK PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO VOTE FOR OBAMA IS THAT THEY ARE AFRAID THAT HE'LL WIN, AND:

1. WE’LL HAVE NO MORE EXCUSES LEFT.

We won't be able to say, "America is racist", "I cannot get a break because I'm black", and all other random excuses many blacks make for not achieving anything in their lives.

2. IF SOCIETY IS LEFT UNCHANGED AFTER HIS PRESIDENCY WE'LL LOSE HOPE.

If a black man becomes President, I honestly believe many black people feel that all of the world's problems should come to an end. No more crack selling, no more black on black crime, no more baby mama drama and dead beat daddies, no more people on welfare and on the chow line, no more winos, no more police brutality, no more DWB, no more predatory loans, no more ghettos, no more racism period, no more Middle East unrest, just everybody singing cumbaya. To some degree, I think a lot of white people, especially liberal, feel that way too, that's why they are all up on him like that.
THAT'S RIDICULOUS. If it happened, he'd be one of the greatest people that ever lived, but that's way too much pressure to put on one man. DANG! I feel that people are really not ready for the world to get better anyway. It's like that father you never knew but won't make a relationship with because you don't want to be let down. It's unfair and let that go. Barak will make a great President, but he won't solve all of the world's problems, nor can he solve all of black peoples' problems either.

3. SO CALLED "EDUCATED" BLACK PEOPLE WON'T BE SO SPECIAL ANYMORE BECAUSE THE PLAYING FIELD WILL BE LEVELED.

Absolutely hate more than anything else. The above 2 reasons were largely a poor disadvantaged black person's inner fear about Barack. Many of number 2 and all of this one is specifically tailored to you bourgeois folks that actually like being the only black person (or one of a very few) in your medical school, your law school, your master's program, your Ph.D. program, your high fallutin' Fortune 500 Company, your faculty at your prestigious institution.
You feel deep inside being a talented 10th will become a talented population. As much as you detest and look down at your disadvantaged brothers and sisters, and claim they need to "get a job", "get an education", "pull themselves up from their own bootstraps", and "stop being so ignorant", you like them where they are. You are the one that has that shady feeling in your belly when a new black person is hired because you don't want them to screw it up for you. Yeah you...I'm talkin' about you. You know who you are. You think deep inside,  Keishas, Darnells, Shequans are going to get theirs now that Barak is in office, and you won't be so special anymore.
See you like racism. You probably are like Clarence Thomas, the man that benefited from Affirmative Action but now you got yours, nobody else can get in too, so you vote against Affirmative Action. Yeah, claim you got your opportunity on merit. No, you got it on the backs of our ancestors that had to fight for you to get that job. Now you don't want a world where everyone has an equal opportunity. Well actually neither do poor blacks either, see 1. < /P>

3. IF HE MESSES IT UP, WE'RE ALL SCREWED.

Back in the day blacks with degrees could do nothing but shine shoes outside the company. Now we're in them, making decisions, even CEOs like my man Stanley O'Neal, the first black American to take the helm of a major Wall Street firm. That brother completely mismanaged the company, like many others who mismanaged banks and cause losing equity because of security back sub prime loans. Now, those that are in the know are afraid that a black man cannot ever get that opportunity to be THE MAN at a major institution again.
Not only that, if Barack messes it up, there will be a backlash on all of black America. "You guys had your chance to run the free world, and you blew it".
Sorry Charlie, Barak is one man. You can 't use the logic for yourself as far as getting ahead, but lose it for this man. George Bush completely botched America's standing in the world, but I don't see anyone afraid to elect another white man. So come off of it.

4. BLACK WOMEN FEEL SORRY FOR HILLARY BEING CHEATED ON BY THE REAL FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT.

This is so dumb, I cannot address with words, but it's the truth for a lot of black people, who felt Bill was the first Black President, and sistas especially would feel like they were vindicating a woman that was done wrong by anotha brotha.

5. BLACKS LIKE TO BE DIFFERENT FROM WHITES AND BARAK WILL BREAK DOWN BARRIERS WE LIKE HAVING UP.

Keep it real people. You hate it when anything we do gets imitated. It is instantly uncool. Most blacks love that we have our own thing, our own culture. Having Barack win means for a lot of people America will have more of a shared consciousness. We'll actually have to come together and squash some beef to make this country cooperative. I don't completely believe this concept, but I'm down for it. Once again, Black people really do like racism.

For all of you doubters out there this is what you really need to ask yourselves:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

That's all the brotha is trying to do. So vote for him, drop the excuses, and support the first viable Black Candidate. Our ancestors demand that we do so.