Commentary
Robinswing, Black Kos Editor
I’ve been pretty determined not to allow my hollydaze buzz to get harshed by some of the shenanigans on this site. There are those who make staying upbeat harder than Chinese arithmetic.
The more time the blackwoman spends on the planet the clearer she gets about certain things. One of the things I’m clearest about is the importance of forgiveness. It’s the only way to move past the bullshit all of us get handed from time to time.
When I was younger I figured out that forgiving someone is an act of utter self-interest. When we forgive we are not saying we are okay with whatever the hurt might have been. We are saying we refuse to burden the journey through time and space with someone else’s shit. When I forgive it is never about the person. It’s about how I choose to live my life.
If you live fully and sometimes flat out, it is almost a surety you have bumps and lumps perhaps you alone see. Real life takes effort and effort almost always meets resistance. It is the way of things.
(con't.)
Resistance can take so many forms. The effort must have a singular form. Focus. Effort takes sustained energy in spite of the resistance. It is easier to marshal the necessary energies if you are not bogged and weighed down in old hurts. Or new ones.
Forgiveness requires a willingness to move forward with life. Some folk don’t seem to have much of this and so they cling. They cling to ancient enemies and old hurts. I suspect there is some comfort in this. Billie Holiday sang to heartbreak and called it her old friend. A lot of people make friends with their pain. Sad. Really.
I have forgiven much and often. This doesn’t mean I allow those who hurt me to get close enough to do so again. In my opinion this would be as self destructive as walking around carrying that person in my mind with anger and bitterness.
I do not believe I would have survived if I had not been able to forgive. Being black in America is a lot about forgiving. Sometimes daily.
I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve worked to forgive those angry faces that stood and threw bottles and cans at us as we marched in peace. I think I’ve done it and then something comes up to remind me there are still plenty of folks all around the country just like them.
Hell, there are a few of them around this site.
Clever little devils some of them. Silly too. For many it is inexperience and the hormonal toxicity of youth. You know, the period when you don’t know shit and don’t know you don’t know.
A few seem to me to be terribly afraid. They live from the intellect and detach themselves from the messy sometime-ness of real life.
Others I suspect suffer from delusions of grandeur. Thinking that writing on the Internets makes them something other than anonymous folk sitting in front of a computer screen. They imagine themselves as generals of a cyber army of soldiers ready to smite those who in their opinion deserve it. They will tell you they are against all wars. Except the ones they start in cyberspace. They seem oblivious to the irony.
There are those on this site the who are the real deal. Folk who have put their lives, livelihoods, body and soul into their political passion. Not a few have seen the insides of funeral homes far too often. Some have just missed being in those lowered coffins that dot the landscape of the heart.
It is difficult methinks, for some people to even imagine what it is like to watch people you know and love die for a cause. To watch our sons and brothers herded into prison. For what they believed in. Or what the system believed in. Locking up and killing those most likely to breech the bull. Bloodied protesting war. Shot on college campuses.
None of this Internet sitting in front of a computer protesting. We hit the streets. The streets hit back. Hard. Didn’t stop us. We had passion.
Progress requires passion. Real passion requires forgiveness from time to time. In order to move forward. This is what activist do. Move forward
Growing up I was taught when you forgive you also forget. That like some of the other stuff taught to children turned out to be bullshit. You never forget. Nor should you.
The blackwoman has learned to forgive. I can and do forgive those who have or would try to harm me in whatever way. I forgive them. They just don’t get to do it again. I don’t forget.
I am also really clear about this...I am more than capable of jumping in a person’s shit. And forgiving myself. Afterwards.
Now run and tell that.
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Commentary
by Sephius1
As most african-american can attest to, our hair is our pride and joy. From a very young age we are introduced to hair care products like Luster's Pink Oil Moisturizer, Crown Royal's Hair dressing, Sta-So-Fro (pronounced Stay So Fro). Later in life you dabble in stuff like S-Curl activator for those with Jheri curls, perms for the ladies, and texturizers for the men. Ahhhhh those were the days.
And lets not forget the hot comb. I have many battle scars. When I was young my momma would straighten my hair with the hot comb before she put it into cornrolls. But even with all that, I thank god for those who took initiative in the black hair care industry. People like Marjorie Joyner
Marjorie Stewart Joyner was born in Monterey, Virginia on October 24, 1896, the granddaughter of a slave and a slave-owner. In 1912, an eager Marjorie moved to Chicago, Illinois to pursue a career in cosmetology. She enrolled in the A.B. Molar Beauty School and in 1916 became the first Black women to graduate from the school. Following graduation, the 20 year old married podiatrist Robert E. Joyner and opened a beauty salon.
She was introduced to Madame C.J. Walker, a well-known Black businesswoman, specializing in beauty products and services. Walker supplied beauty products to a number of the most prominent Black figures of the time, including singer Josephine Baker. With her fame, Ms. Walker was able to open over 200 beauty salon shops across the United States. After Madame Walker's death in 1919, Marjorie was hired to oversee the Madame C.J. Walker Beauty Colleges as national supervisor.
A dilemma existed for Black women in the 1920's. In order to straighten tightly-curled hair, they could so so only by using a stove-heated curling iron. This was very time-consuming and frustrating as only one iron could be used at a time. In 1926, Joyner set out to make this process faster, easier and more efficient. She imagined that if a number of curling irons could be arranged above a women's head, they could work at the same time to straighten her hair all at once. According to the Smithsonian Institute, Joyner remembered that "It all came to me in the kitchen when I was making a pot roast one day, looking at these long, thin rods that held the pot roast together and heated it up from the inside. I figured you could use them like hair rollers, then heat them up to cook a permanent curl into the hair." Thus, she sought a solution to not only straighten but also provide a curl in a convenient manner.....Read more >>
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This weeks news by Amazinggrace and dopper0189, Black Kos Editor and Managing Editor
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This collection deserves a section all onto itself! What a wonderful collection of images, it really is worth it to peruse the images. The Schomburg Center For Research in Black Culture: The Abolition of the Slave Trade.
People from the Bight of Benin.
Senegambian Muslims
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The NFL has several black coaches including Superbowl winners. So do high schools. Yet somehow colleges can't seem to find any??? NBC sports: Dungy calls lack of black college coaches "disgraceful".
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No matter how you feel about the NFL's "Rooney Rule," it has undeniably helped open the door for qualified black coaches.
The same opportunities have been tougher to find at the college level.
Speaking on NBC Sunday night, Tony Dungy said that minority coaches feel like they have a better chance for advancement if they move to the pros.
Dungy called the lack of minority coaches in college "disgraceful" and pointed towards Mike Tomlin as an example of the problem.
Tomlin was recommended by Dungy for an interview at a BCS school, but it never happened. The Steelers hired Tomlin a month later and have a Super Bowl ring to show for it.
"That's the difference between the NCAA and the NFL right now," Dungy said.
The numbers are hard to argue with. Only one BCS conference school has a minority head coach - Miami's Randy Shannon. Nine of 120 "Bowl Subdivision" coaches are minorities.
"They've got to step up and say, 'We're going to do the right thing. We're going to hire qualified people. We're going to hire the best man for the job regardless of what boosters or anyone else has to say,'" Dungy said. read more here -->
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This community center is on the border between the Crips and Bloods but an informal truce keeps its mural free of graffiti and allows rival gang members and needy families to receive services. LA TIMES: Painted in neutral colors
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It's hard to find a storefront around the Salvation Army center in South Los Angeles that's not been scrawled on by local taggers. Even the Virgin of Guadalupe painted on the mini-market across the street hasn't escaped the vandals.
But a sprawling mural, a story high and almost a block wide on the face of the community center, remains remarkably untouched. More than two years have passed since the center's director gave approval for the mural, ignoring warnings from neighbors that the art would be vandalized almost immediately.
Yet the reds, yellows and oranges of the mural look as bright and unblemished as ever.
Police say it's the result of an informal truce among area gangs to spare the center, which provides social services to hundreds of needy local families. read more here -->
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Remember all those people who can't seem to find enough racist thing that Rush says when he was denied an NFL team? Here's some help. Media Matters: Limbaugh on "stories" about how "the black frame of mind is terrible": "Tiger Woods' choice of females not helping 'em out"
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LIMBAUGH: I got two more stories in the stack today about how black unemployment is through the roof. Black unemployment is terrible. The black frame of mind is terrible, they're depressed, they're down -- Obama's not doing anything for 'em. How is that hoax and change workin' for ya? They're all livid. I mean, they thought there were gonna be an exact 180-degree economic reversal and it's done nothing but get bad for everybody, but they're especially upset about it because they look at him as one of them, and now they feel abandoned. And I'm sure Tiger Woods' choice of females not helping 'em out with their attitudes there either. read more here -->
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Reporting on its Broadway debut, Elizabeth Gates says Race, the latest play by Pulitzer Prize winner David Mamet, could not be more relevant to Obama-era questions of racial intolerance. The Daily Beast: White Guilt on Broadway.
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David Mamet’s play Race opened to a packed house Sunday night on Broadway and put an end to the debate about whether or not America might actually be migrating towards a "post racial" consciousness. According to Mamet’s drama—which skillfully chafes at the psychology of human racism and forces the audience into the uncomfortable realities of modern human intolerance—we are all capable of racial and gender based prejudice and our best bet to survive as a whole is to rid ourselves of popular anti-discriminatory rhetoric and start acknowledging that the social stereotypes of old are still active and alive—even in the Obama era.
The play opens to a terse discussion between two lawyers Henry Brown (played by David Alan Grier) and Jack Lawson (James Spader) over the fate of their new client—a wealthy white male named Charles Strickland (Richard Thomas) who stands accused of raping a young black woman. Almost immediately, through the fervent and unforgiving interrogation of Strickland by the two lawyers, the audience is stripped of any misconceptions that Race might be yet another shame-inducing articulation of race matters, staged to leave the audience feeling both guilt ridden and apprehensive of the "others" around them. Instead, the small cast begins to build a provocative story based around the dark and often hidden human emotions that drive all of us onto common ground: guilt, pride, shame, cowardice, dishonesty, and fear. read more here -->
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Artur Davis is on our "wait watch, and see" list, many of us are still not sold on his politics. Tuscaloosa News: A Democratic congressman seeking to be Alabama’s first Black governor has run into an early obstacle — a fight with the highest-ranking Black in his party.
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The feud between U.S. Rep. Artur Davis and Joe Reed, chairman of the state Democratic Party’s black wing, surfaced after Reed criticized Davis for being the only member of the Congressional Black Caucus to vote against health-care legislation.
Davis, in a statement Monday defending his vote, said Reed "believes that a public official’s race matters more than his capacity for independent judgment."
Reed said Davis voted against the health-care measure to help him in the governor’s race in Alabama, not to help constituents in his mostly black district.
"He is not likely to get a ‘profiles in courage’ award when any political issue makes him uncomfortable," Reed said. read more here -->
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In POSING BEAUTY: African American Images From the 1890s to the Present (Norton, $49.95), Willis makes a monumental contribution to contemporary American culture by presenting a definitive history of black beauty. New York Times: POSING BEAUTY
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Whether the lashed back of an enslaved person, the charred remains of a lynching victim or a terrified marcher fleeing a fire hose, shocking images of degradation seem to dominate the visual history of the African-American experience. Amid so much hardship, one might wonder what, if anything, to say about the nature of black beauty in photography. Deborah Willis, head of New York University’s photography and imaging department, spent a decade exploring the question. read more here -->
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Wilberforce University, one of the nation’s oldest historically black colleges, needs at least $3 million between now and June 30, 2010 and is preparing to rally its alumni and community and corporate supporters, college leaders say. Black America Web: Wilberforce University Needs $3 Million by June
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One alumnus, 90-year-old Jamye Coleman Williams, is even including an appeal for the college in her regular holiday greetings.
"I include a paragraph that says if you have not completed your charitable giving for the year, please make a contribution to Wilberforce University," said Williams, who now lives in Atlanta.
"I just send the notes and wait to see what happens," she told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
Last year, Williams estimates she raised about $12,000 or $13,000 in her various appeals. This year, she is hoping for more. She’s even reached out to one of her former students from Tennessee State University, Oprah Winfrey.
Wilberforce, like many other higher education institutions, is a victim of the current economic downtown, says President Patricia L. Hardaway. read more here -->
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Vakhegula Vakhegula in South Africa's Limpopo Province is not your average soccer team - with the oldest member of the team aged 83, this team of grannies says soccer has given them their lives back. BBC: S Africa's football 'grannies' look to World Cup.
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The team, with close to 40 members, meets twice a week for an hour's practice. During this time, they are not just grandmothers with families to feed, but local football stars.
With the 2010 World Cup drawing closer, excitement about the event is building in South Africa. Many people hope to benefit from, or play some role in, the football spectacular.
The "grannies" are no exception. They had hoped to play a curtain-raiser during the competition, but the South African Football Association explained that only teams that had officially qualified were allowed to play.
This, however, has not dampened their spirits. read more here -->
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Doctors of color disproportionately work in under-served urban areas. Atlanta Journal Constitution: Surgeon general calls for more minorities in medicine.
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U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin said Thursday that the nation must reverse the downward trend of minorities attending medical, dental and nursing schools.
U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, a graduate of Morehouse School of Medicine, returns to Atlanta to speak at the Morehouse sponsored Third Annual Conference on Health Disparities at the Hyatt Regency.
Vino Wong, vwong@ajc.com U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, a graduate of Morehouse School of Medicine, returns to Atlanta to speak at the Morehouse sponsored Third Annual Conference on Health Disparities at the Hyatt Regency.
"Unless the current trend is reversed, our country will see a growing ethnic and racial disconnect between those who receive care and those who provide that care," Benjamin said during a conference on health disparities in downtown Atlanta.
The 53-year-old graduate of the Morehouse School of Medicine said the recent downward trend in minority admissions follows years of gains in these areas. She cited a study that said minorities make up only 6 percent of U.S. physicians, and she lamented that the percentage was the same in 1910. read more here -->
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Thank you Leftist Vegetarian Patriot for this breaking news. LA Times: Bone marrow transplant 'gets rid of' sickle cell anemia.
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Researchers have for the first time performed a successful bone marrow transplant to cure sickle cell disease in adults, a feat that could expand the procedure to more of the 70,000 Americans with the disease -- and possibly some other diseases as well.
About 200 children have been cured of sickle cell with transplants, but the procedure was considered too harsh for adults with severe sickle cell disease. Now a team from the National Institutes of Health and Johns Hopkins University is reporting today in the New England Journal of Medicine that it has developed a much-less-toxic transplant procedure and used it to cure nine of the first 10 patients studied.
"We really don't have anything else to offer patients with sickle cell disease" who do not respond to hydroxyurea, the only drug useful in treating it, said the paper's senior author, Dr. John F. Tisdale of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. "It's really satisfying to perform a therapy that . . . gets rid of the disease." read more here -->
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Outside of corporate Hip-Hop, conscience rap still exist. Color Lines: The Greening of Hip-Hop.
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Twenty-year-old aspiring rapper Tre Pound was born in San Francisco’s Hunters Point, a predominantly low-income community of color with the dubious distinction of housing the two most toxic Superfund sites in the United States, as well as power and sewage treatment plants. Asthma, cancer and diabetes rates in that area are all disproportionately higher than in other parts of the Bay Area. "I kinda knew where I was living wasn’t environmentally safe," said Pound, but the public school he attended provided little information about industrial pollution or climate change.
Pound said he frequently incorporates socially aware themes into his music, but he had never made an environmentally aware rap song until he signed up to compete in Grind for the Green’s (G4G) Eco-Rap battle in August. He ended up winning the competition, earning a $1000 prize and studio time, by outpacing several other contestants with his eco-friendly flow during G4G’s second annual free concert at the Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco.
Pound is just one voice in the growing number of youth voices engaged in community organizing for social change. Millions of young people around the world participate in social activism. According to Wiretap magazine, there are more than 600 youth-led community organizations currently creating green jobs, removing toxic waste, combating corporate pollution and fighting against violence in their communities. read more here -->
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[] EcoJustice: Environmental Racism, Camden, NJ, and the St. Lawrence Cement Plant by blue jersey mom
[] Let's read a book together: Guns, germs and steel Chapter 19: How Africa became Black by plf515
[] Jewish Voices of Color Must Be Heard by David A Love
FRIDAY'S WAKE-UP MUSIC
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President Obama accepts the Nobel Peace Prize.