Monroe Anderson

What would Allah say about Chick-Fil-A?

    I’d heard about Chick-Fil-A long before I tasted it. It was being touted by a few of my friends as so good it would make you want to slap your momma.
    Last year, while driving out east,  my wife, Joyce Owens, and I stopped at one of its franchises and much to my surprise, I discovered Chick-Fil-A tasted like, well, it tasted like....chicken.
    It wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t special either. Harold’s Chicken Shack on the South Side or Marcello’s chicken on the North Side both serve a tastier bird.
    So when I noticed that a Chick-Fil-A had opened a couple of blocks off the Mag Mile, I made no beeline to grab a bite. And, when there was a call to boycott the fast food chicken chain because its CEO, Dan Cathy, exposed himself as being anti-gay, it was as easy for me to ignore as to not vote for Mitt Romney.
    But when Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Alderman Joe Moreno started making noises about cancelling Chick-Fil-A’s order for a second restaurant in Chicago, my interest was piqued.
    The two Chicago pols took it beyond the boycott to the political stage. Should a restaurant be barred from doing business in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood because Cathy--who takes prides himself in being a good Christian and family man--is a bigot?
    There would be no easy answer if Cathy’s bigotry was just a matter of religious belief. But this man puts his money where his mouth is. In 2010, the fast food chain donated nearly $2 million to anti-gay groups.   
    The bottom line: Cathy’s nearly 2,000 restaurant chain is funding bias against gays.
    And while there is no proof that any Chick-Fil-A has refused to take money from homosexuals, the contributions speak volumes in and of themselves.

All you have to do is look at it a little differently.

Instead of Chick-Fil-A CEO being a family man and a Christian, let’s imagine that he was a family man and a Muslim. As a good Muslim, let’s say he bragged about being anti-Israel, rather than anti-gay. Let’s think of what the reaction would be when it was discovered that he contributed money to anti-Israeli groups. Not terrorists groups but pro-Palistinian groups.

I wonder how important it’d be that Chick-Fil-A had no record of discriminating against Jews. And I wonder if the same people who flocked into the Chick-Fil-A Appreciate Day would be lining up to show their support and contributing to record sales.

There’s that old axiom about not discussing religion or politics at the dinner table. Dan Cathy might want to make it his food for thought.

Novel blog: Sweetspeare's Sirens

 
 

    Shortly after I bought my first PC, I started my novel about the first wave of African American journalists to go into mainstream media in Chicago in the early 1970s. That was back in late 1985. I finished my novel six years ago, then spent a good year trying to find an agent to represent it and me. 

It was the most belittling and discouraging professional exercise I've ever experienced. I systematically sent letters out to dozens of literary agents. Frequently form letters were what I got in return, perfunctorily encouraging me--after they expressed no interest. 

In a dozen instances or so I got letters asking to see the first three chapters. All but three of those interested agents sent personalized letters gently rejecting my labor of love. The rejection letters from the other three came after I'd sent the complete novel.

In every case, those who read it told me that the novel was well-written and that the characters were well-developed and interesting. Then came the but... One was bothered because the novel has a number of flashbacks. Another liked it but basically said it was too long. The third didn't really say why not.

I thought I understood their hesitations back then. I think I understand them even more today. 

My novel, originally entitled The Corliss Column or A Generic Suicide Note, is 119,000 words or about 500 pages long. Too much book for a first novel. It is also not a commercial effort. It's not a mystery novel or a how-to book. No mainstream celebrity, I've not been trashed in the pages of the National Enquirer nor has my private life been teased in a promotion for Access Hollywood. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck haven't the foggiest idea who I am. Neither does Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews.

There are a couple of other reasons why an agent might not find me and my novel a top prospect. I'm no thirty-something so they are unlikely to get three or four decades of steady income off my production. After many false starts, I didn't really get serious about completing my first work of fiction until I had turned 50 and came to the realization that if I didn't do something soon I could end up on my deathbed speaking in short breaths about the novel I was going to write.

When I finished the novel five years after a concerted, disciplined effort, what I had in hand was a story about my protagonist, Pierce Trotter, and other black journalists' efforts to overcome hidebound, institutional racism in the news media--a pre-existing condition that is the book publishing industry suffers from as well.

Today, of course, it's a new game; sort of. While the law of last-hired, first-fired is still in effect, resulting in an disproportionate number of minorities losing jobs in the cut-backs, both the mainstream media and the book publishing industries are on life-support: Therefore the embedded racism rampant through both industries will go with them.

And while my novel, newly-named Sweetspeare's Sirens, a Tell-All Memoir by Pierce Trotter, is historical faction, I choose to look forward not back. I've decided to use the new media to publish my novel about the old media.

Beginning tomorrow, I'm going publish my book 140 characters at a time on Twitter. My tweets will show up on my other social media outlet, Facebook. Once 500-900 words have passed through Twitter and Facebook, they'll appear on MonroeAnderson3.0, a contemporary expression of the name on my birth certificate Monroe Anderson III, the new blog I've created exclusively for Sweetspeare's Sirens. Nearly finally, the novel post will appear in longer-form on my Facebook page until somewhere, someday it materializes as a hardcopy book.

Meanwhile, I'll be cutting the length of the novel by 40,000 words or so as I shoot it out into cyberspace. 

A warning: Since Sweetspeare's Sirens is set in the '70s and '80s, there's lots of sex, drugs and Rhythm & Blues. There is also some raw language.

My latest venture into social media may also morph into performance art. We'll see as my experiment evolves.

I hope you'll follow me on this electronic journey. It should be some trip.

This was cross-posted on MonroeAnderson3.0.

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.

Movie Monsters, Barack Obama, Mother Nature and other terrifying things

 

The original The Mummy, starring Boris Karloff, was on satellite TV the other morning. My wife, Joyce, watched. I didn't.

Even when I was a young, easy-to-frighten child, The Mummy didn't scare me much. As long as I didn't let myself get cornered, The Mummy wasn't about to get me. I could outrun the dead man walking. Same thing with the Frankenstein Monster. He was way too slow and clumsy to catch me with the quick reflexes and the fast feet.

But, the Werewolf was different. He was fast, strong and vicious. Unlike the embalmed moving mannequin and the blockhead assembled from the booty of grave robbers, The Wolf Man was VERY scary--when the moon was right.

I remember my eight-year-old imagination playing havoc with me after seeing a rerun of the 1941 Wolf Man on our black-and-white TV set. During the next full moon, as I undressed for bed, I'd stare at my feet, just checking to make sure they were not sprouting wolf hair ala Lon Chaney. And I had no interest in wandering around our small, Gary, Indiana backyard when the moon was bright and round. I often would toss and turn before finally getting to sleep.

That fear, of course, was a once a month or so event. The rest of the time, I lived a fairly fright free life--unless I happened to catch a Dracula movie on the boob tube.

Talk about scary; there was no movie monster more blood curdling than the Count. He was lightening-fast. He could morph into a bat. He could vaporize into a mist and slip underneath your bedroom door. There was no evading or escaping him.

Thank God he feared the cross. I took to wearing one for weeks after seeing any of the Hollywood reincarnations of Bram Stoker's masterpiece. The Crucifix was comforting but not a panacea for the lingering terror the movie had injected into my psyche. Even now, as a card-carrying AARP member who's on the brink of senior citizenship, celluloid vampires can put me on edge. I watch True Blood for fun and for the sheer adrenaline rush.

All that's to say, when I hear the wingnuts going on about President Obama and how they fear for America, I understand. Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and Sarah Palin routinely contribute to the mass hysteria by summoning up imaginary monsters that make The Werewolf look like the family Labrador retriever and Dracula look like the Count Muppet on Sesame Street.

To hear the Birthers, the Deathers, the Tea-Baggers and the Republican leadership tell it, President Obama is a James Cameron creation. Or as Kyle Reese put it: "Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."

The wingnut terrors, of course, are about as real as my youthful fears of the wolf man and the vampire.

Meanwhile, today's headlines force me to recall another low-budget movie monster: The Zombie. In these old black-and-whites, Voodoo sorcerers from Haiti summoned up the dead to wreak havoc and to reckon revenge.

The devastation and horror of the worst earthquake to hit Haiti in 200 years, and the countless number of lives lost, put fear and power in the proper perspective: There are real horrors in life; horrors that don't come with popcorn or silly little tea-bags hanging from your straw hat.

---

 

 This commentary was cross-posted on the AgoraVox and Newsvine websites.

A mother of a father's day

    There is no comparison between Mother's Day and Father's Day--it's all in the cards and flowers and candy and jewelry and, ahhhh, neckties.

    The moms get it. The dads get less.

    More than $11 billion was spent this Mother's Day cards and gifts. Come June 21, a less beefy $8 billion will be spent on us fathers across America.

    Although I must admit that I'm a bit jealous, as a man I understand. As a general rule, we aren't on the job like mothers are. We're either out of the house, earning a living or--in too many cases in modern America--just out of the house period.

      But, there's something else that may be in play as well. Men aren't supposed to be as sentimental as women. If a spouse or a child misses a birthday or Father's Day, a man is expected to shake it off and stay in the game. Miss those special occasions with a mother and there will be guilt to pay. Who carried you for nine months? Who went through the excruciating pain of childbirth? Who wiped away your tears and kissed away your fears?

    And if you were to show up on the nightly news after ax murdering the girl next door, who would be on the TV announcing with complete conviction that she knew her child could never have done such a heinous crime?

     Besides all that, tradition also favors mom. Way back in 1914, Congress designated the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day. It wasn't until 1966 that President Lyndon Johnson designated the third Sunday in June as Father's Day and it was six years later before when President Richard Nixon signed it into law.

    All that to say is that I get it when Joyce Owens my wife and the mother of my two sons, gets the holiday card and call that passed me by. It may even be partially my fault. When I noticed that both of us were being taken for granted by both our sons, I started quietly pulling them aside to remind them to be sure to call their mother, who they know and I know, did a great job and deserves to be appreciated for it. I secretly remind them to buy her cards. I'd quietly quiz them about their intentions on giving her gifts.

    After my prompting them through a few special occasions, they've come to realize that father knows best and the cards and calls now come to their mother almost without fail.

    So I was pleased when Scott Anderson, our older son, called his mother this morning for Mother's Day. After they'd talked for about half an hour, I got on the telephone to find out how his new job as a game developer at Kaos Studios in NYC was going and how he liked his new overpriced Manhattan mini-apartment.

    We chatted for about 15 minutes with Joyce frequently interrupting my conversation with him to offer a few more motherly pearls of wisdom and love. Just when I was about to hang up, Scott said he had one more thing he'd like to tell us. 

    Six weeks ago, Scott and his friend, Steve Swink, presented at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco the early stages of the computer game, Shadow Physics, they've been working on in their spare time for the past year or so. After the presentation, Scott was interviewed about the dynamics of the game.

    That interview, which was posted three weeks ago on YouTube, already has more than 101,000 views. That's not to play a game but to see Scott talk about his unfinished game. There are also more than 300 comments about the game or--to be more specific--the video of the game.

    Here's one comment I particularly like: "this is really an all around amazing idea for a game...i would definitely pick this up if it became available. the whole concept is so abstract yet understandable and explores a whole new dimension of thinking and ability to adapt because nothing like this has ever been done before. amazing idea. 5 stars. this is going in my favs."

    No, the comment is not from Scott's mother but from someone whose nickname is touRR30.

    But Mother's Day or not, it was me with the swollen chest. Afterall it was me who brought the first PC into the house 23 years ago, when Scott was only three. It was me who bought him computer games and gave the preschooler unrestrained access to my $2000 machine. It was me who sent him off to computer camp at Stanford University when he was 13. It was me who enrolled him in a math camp at the Illinois Institute of Technology the summer his 14th birthday. It was me who arranged, when he was in the 9th grade, for a year-long apprenticeship with Ali at CompuServ Plus where he learned to build his own computer from scratch. And it was me who took him to the Chicago Internet Street Fair just as he was beginning his senior year in high school, which led an internship at cyberPIXIE where he first learned how to program for wireless devices.

    I may have been MIA  for the lion's share of the diaper changing, but I made my personal parental contributions and I'm seeing them pay off. So, while I may or may not get a call from Scott on Father's Day, all things being equal, this was a very good Mother's Day for me.

    And should Shadow Physics get picked up by some big game distributor and should he become another one of those twenty-something Internet multi-millionaires, I won't be too disappointed if he fails to call me on Father's Day because he's too busy designing his next big hit--a new shiny red Porche in dear old dad's garage will do just fine.

    (Here's the YouTube video of Shadow Physics.)

Democrats on the love vote

   

       At least one of Chris Matthew's often repeated political quips is going to have to be changed.  It goes like this: Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line.

       Well, during the first three days of this four-day convention here, in Denver, I’ve watched Democrats in love, fall in line.
      It was some sight to behold. Michelle Obama was stunning in appearance and speech on Monday. The next night, Hillary Clinton strongly endorsed Obama and chiefly commanded her troops to not be the enemy within and prepare for the battle begun.         Tonight Bill Clinton seconded that emotion.
       And, just like that, all those worries about a floor fight or a brokered convention vanished. It was all verbal hugs and kisses. Goo-goo ayes and acclamations. Obama and Biden are a team and the Clintons have given their blessings.
       It looks like bad news for the Republicans. For the past week or so they’ve been courting Hillary’ disenchanted and disillusioned followers, hoping to woo them into a temporary political tryst. Republican operatives played on the tensions between the Obama and Clinton camps. They clucked about possible swipes Hillary had made and help spread rumors that Bill would be a party unfaithful.
    No such luck and the GOP’s sweet nothings, for the most part, seem to be falling on deaf ears.  And while there are still are a small percentage of Hillites ready for the taking, I don’t think there’s enough to spoil the Democrat’s new union. We'll see.
    But no doubt about it, this has been Obama’s night. Tomorrow will be his day. Ain’t love Grand, Old Party?

("A Love Puzzle" by Joyce Owens is shown above. (30" x 40" acrylic & collage on canvas.)

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.

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.

Why Rev. Wright received a standing "O" at a Catholic Church

    Media clips aside, Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s standing in the African American community remains strong and steady. It’s not just simply because his sermon snippets were taken out of context; it has much to do with America’s historical treatment of blacks.
    Slavery By Another Name, a new book by the Wall Street Journal’s Douglas Blackmon documents that. The book also illustrates why sermons in black churches don’t carry the same messages as sermons in white ones. Blackmon’s book reveals that the enslavement of African Americans continued in the Deep South until the dawn of World War II.
    Here’s my ebonyjet.com commentary Rev. Wright, slavery and politics in America. It was  posted on the website this morning. (The painting of a slavery survivor is by my wife, artist Joyce Owens.)

Slavery By Another Name

Monday, March 31, 2008
By Monroe Anderson

Rev. Jeremiah Wright emerged from his self-imposed public exile to make a surprise appearance Friday at a Catholic Church where its audience of 1,000 black Chicagoans gave him a rousing standing ovation.

White America may find the unapologetically warm welcome the former spiritual adviser to Barack Obama received at St. Sabina Catholic Church surprising. Black America will not.

Rev. Wright has been vilified by the radical right, chastised by one white TV talk show host after the next and caricatured by white TV comedians. To them, those snappy sermon snippets that played in an endless loop on cable and network television were the words of a racist, hate-filled madman. To many black Americans, what Wright said was nothing less, in spirit, if not in law, than the truth.

"It's my country, right or wrong," for most of white America. For most of black America, we know what's right, we are also painfully aware that what's wrong needs to be seriously addressed. We'd know it even if our nation's prisons weren't disproportionately overcrowded with African American men, our failing schools weren't still separate and unequal and our unemployment rates grotesquely greater than in white America.

But, should we choose to ignore today's reality, there's always yesterday's: slavery.

No fruitful discussion of race can take place in this nation without discussing that peculiar institution and its legacy which lingers to this day. The knee-jerk retort from many white  Americans is that slavery was ended nearly a century and a half ago and that neither they nor their relatives had anything to do with it. African Americans, they argue, use it as an excuse for whatever ails them and that our anger is baseless.

    "This new world order of the old South called for thousands of black men to be arrested, charged with whatever, jailed and then sold to plantations, mines, railroads, mills, lumber camps and factories in the deep South."

In his "A More Perfect Union" speech, Obama pointed out that the "anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots" won't work.

An examination of our nation's real history reveals that by an evil and coordinated design, slavery went on much longer than the Emancipation Proclamation or Juneteenth Day. An historical expose by Douglas A. Blackmon reveals that it didn't end until World War II, approximately five years after Rev. Wright was born.

In his book, "Slavery by Another Name," which hit the bookstores last week, Blackmon reports on the "Age of Neoslavery" that thrived in the South until "the greatest generation" went to World War II.

In the wake of  its defeat in the Civil War, the South's plantation owners, industrialists and powerful white politicians began reinstituting slavery through laws designed "to criminalize black life," Blackmon, the Atlanta bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal, writes.

This new world order of the old South called for thousands of black men to be arrested, charged with whatever, jailed and then sold to plantations, mines, railroads, mills, lumber camps and factories in the deep South. Countless thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily arrested, subjected to enormous fines and charged for the costs of their own arrests. Unable to pay the jacked up debts, they were sold as forced laborers.

In other cases, southern blacks were kidnaped by southern landowners and forced into years of involuntarily labor. Elected southern officials "leased" blacks who were convicted on trumped up charges to local farmers and entrepreneurs, and dozens of national corporations–including U.S. Steel–who preferred free and abundant labor over the other kind. Unlike in the days of legal slavery, the new masters had no financial incentive to attend to the health of their free laborers so these black men were literally worked to death.

Exploiting federal regs and legal loopholes that winked and nodded at the neoslavery system, southern states prospered off the free black labor. When WWII loomed, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered that the neoslavery come to a screeching halt out of fear that the Japanese propaganda machine would put it to great use against America.

In "Slavery By Another Name," Blackmon points out that, as a result of this and other insidious practices, African Americans were put at a great economic disadvantage, which explains why white wealth dwarfs that of blacks to this day.

So, in one of these sermon snippets, when Rev. Wright God damns America, most blacks understood that he was speaking in an historical context–not a religious one. And, if they were honest, those who have benefitted most from the racial injustice should understand it as well.

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. Follow his blog at monroeanderson.typepad.com

Hillary’s bogus experience and Barack’s undocumented defeat

    In New Hampshire, the dueling themes were experience versus change. Hillary Clinton was the one with experience. Barack Obama represented change. By the time election day arrived, Hillary was the experienced one who really represented change. Barack’s change represented false hope because he was too inexperienced to do anything but wish upon a star.
    And so it went. And while it was going in that direction, I got to thinking about Mrs. Clinton’s experiences and how they might apply to rescuing the nation’s economy and beating down the terrorists. Before long, I came up with a personal interpretation.
    Hillary’s principal presidential experience was that she was married to Bill. For eight years she got to watch him run the nation. No doubt she was his confidant. She also got to go to most of the leader-of-the-free-world functions that he had to attend.
    I am married to the artist, Joyce Owens.  (You are looking at one of her paintings, Eve's Power Trip. Click on her name to check out her website.) For the past 30 years, I’ve watched her work on hundreds of paintings and three-dimensional constructions. I’ve helped her name some of her paintings and price some of the others. I’ve gone to more of her exhibition openings than I can count; I listened to more of her lectures and speeches on art than I can recall.
    But, unlike Hillary's premise on politics, I know my experiences in the art world don’t quite make me a visual artist. I sometimes doodle and I did a water color once and I must admit, it was good enough to exhibit side by side with some of the other art at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art–of course less sophisticated art patrons may have thought it a bit amateurish.
    And I doubt if I’ll receive any invitation for a one-man show at the Chicago’s venerable South Side Community Art Center. I won’t be on the cover of Art News Magazine. And I could easily join the ranks of starving artists.
    Maybe I am just not as audacious as Hillary. So I watch her as she boldly seeks Bill’s old job, pretending that sitting on the sidelines is as validating as suiting up on the hardwood court, while I keep an eye on what’s real . . . which takes me to Barack’s loss in New Hampshire.
    As Tony Fitzpatrick and Jeb have already pointed out in the comments section of my blog, Hillary and Barack each received nine delegates out of the New Hampshire primary.
    By my reckoning, that would be a tie.
    And when the two candidates got the hell out of the Granite State, moving onto what’s next, they took their total pledged delegate count with them. Barack had 16 from Iowa and nine from New Hampshire for a total of 25. Hillary had 15 from Iowa and nine from New Hampshire for a total of 24. John Edwards had 14 from Iowa and four from New Hampshire for a total of 18.
    To call Obama the race’s front-runner would not be an exaggeration. To point out that it’s too early and too close to call goes without saying.