A special thanks to everyone who recommended my Black Kos diary last week! Thank you it meant a lot to me!
MOST POPULAR NEWS STORIES SELECTED BY BlackPlanet.com USERS (20 million Black users in the USA, 40 million worldwide)
- Men with AIDS still sleeping with woman
- 1,000,000 flee Southern Cali fires
- Is it just me or is the "thugged out" look fading (seems to be a broken link)
- The biggest lie about Black relationships
MONEY
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Michelle Singletary, personal finance columnist for the Washington Post, and NPR wrote the following
Study on Savings By Blacks and Whites Reveals Shades of Gray
For 10 years, Ariel Mutual Funds and Charles Schwab have issued an annual report on the saving and investing habits of middle- and upper-income blacks.
The survey throws a spotlight on the progress of black money-management skills -- or lack of progress. It also compares the investing behavior of blacks and whites.
Like many others, I've often found reason to comment on the results of the surveys. But now I wonder about the value of comparing the two groups. What exactly do we learn that can help change decades of economic differences? Do these surveys just perpetuate the notion that blacks aren't taking care of business?
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Message of realism is in these cards
African-American women who love to send greeting cards can have the hardest time finding cards that fit their needs. The "Mahogany" and Maya Angelou lines are great, but sometimes you want a message that's less poetic and more conversational.
Enter Nashville entrepreneur Janet Darden and her line of cards, "The Keepin' It Real Collection." Darden pulls no punches when it comes to getting her point(s) across.
"Although I am a Christian, I consider my cards to be 'inspirational,' because a lot of 'Christian' cards play it too safe," says Darden distinguishing among greeting card categories. "We have gotten to a place where I think we sugarcoat things way too much.
"The truth is that there are days when things hurt so bad that it cuts to the white meat. I wanted to create a line that addressed those times when prim and proper prose just wasn't going to cut it."
There are some newer lines of greeting cards, like Hallmark's "Journey Collection," that touch on issues like substance abuse, dieting and depression, but Darden's $2 cards tackle topics like troubled relationships, self-worth and celibacy in a manner you probably wouldn't expect from a church-goin' woman.
To bolster the self-image of a girlfriend, send a message that plays audio: "Tell yourself, 'I am a beautiful black queen, no matter what size and shape my body is. What counts is the size of my heart.'"
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The following conversation with Van Jones (on AlterNet) is an excerpt from the new book Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grassroots (PoliPointPress, 2007) by Kevin Danaher, Shannon Biggs, and Jason Mark. I blockquoted a few parts that I think are relevant to issues you often hear on D Kos.
The Future of Cities: How Sprawl and Racism are Intertwined
Q. You've talked about cities and land use as issues that interest many groups: the suburbanites, environmentalists, and inner-city residents. If both environmentalists and inner-city residents have an interest in stopping sprawl, what's preventing them from working together?
VJ: Racism. It is the reason that people move away from each other. People don't want to talk about why people call this a "good" neighborhood or that one a "bad" neighborhood, but often it has to do with the race of the people that live there. White people divorce themselves from the bad neighborhoods and move to the suburbs. The black community has a lot of built-up feelings about our history, about the racism we experience. There is some healing that needs to take place there, so these communities have some issues, and don't want to work with each other, necessarily. There are a lot of feelings there.
Q. Many environmentalists genuinely want to work with other communities to address these issues of common interest. What is thwarting those efforts?
VJ: Those folks often speak about working together through "outreach" -- outreach in the sense of "outreaching to" these people or those people. Outreaching to the black community: "Well, we outreached to them so 'they' could hear our agenda and get onboard with what we are saying." This, as opposed to saying "let's go make some friends," building relationships, creating relationships. Figuring things out from a place where everyone's views are included. Relationships are give and take, mutual aid and help. Outreaching is the white thing, it's about bringing folks into what you are doing, and does not necessarily convey understanding.
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EDUCATION
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New leader intent on fixing black college
At beleaguered Paul Quinn College, the self-proclaimed oldest historically black school in Texas, Michael Sorrell should be the most unpopular man on campus.
Named president this month after serving as the school's interim since March, Sorrell has already ordered a business-casual dress code for students and made class attendance mandatory at the campus in south Dallas.
Sorrell even decided in football-crazy Texas to save $600,000 a year by cutting the football program and, he chuckles, "lived to tell."
The charismatic 40-year-old Sorrell — a lawyer, businessman and political consultant — admittedly lacks the traditional academic background of a college administrator. But he is winning converts among the student body, who say his full-speed-ahead approach to fixing Paul Quinn is just what the school needs.
"Some students say he is just trying to do this for publicity," said Kenneth Boston, the student government president. "Go sit down and talk with him one on one. Get to know him. Then you will understand what he is doing and why he is doing it."
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Minority professors underrepresented
According to the column, Non-white Americans are still significantly underrepresented as recipients of Ph.D.s in the United States, according to the American Historical Association, and the Association aims to encourage administrators at universities across the country to change this precedent.
The American Historical Association published a column in its October issue addressing the issue of equity for minority historians in the academic workplace
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INTERNATIONAL
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The Difference Between Black Brazil and Black U.S.
African Americans sometimes embarrass themselves, often without know it, by assuming that others from the Diaspora see the world in the same way as themselves. Blacks from other nations are also frequently puzzled and confused by U.S. Black behavior, and even the concept of Blackness that prevails in the United States. Afro-Brazilian journalist Italo Ramos shares his notebook of impressions on the ways being Black - and the assumptions of whites - are different in the two countries. One example: in Brazil, affirmative action in education is spreading like wildfire, while in the U.S. it is under whithering assault. The author explores the reasons why.
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For those who don't know Lucky Dube is one of Africa's largest stars, and hero of the anti-apartheid movement. He was killed last week. I first got interested in politics through listening to anti-apartheid lyrics in reggae!
5 Arrested in Killing of Reggae Star
Investigators looking into the shooting death of the South African reggae star Lucky Dube arrested five men early Sunday and seized two handguns and an automobile believed to have been used in the crime, a Johannesburg police spokesman said.
Reggae Star Killed in South Africa Carjacking (October 20, 2007) The spokesman, Eugene Opperman, disclosed little else about the arrests, which came three days after Mr. Dube was shot as he dropped off his two teenage children at a brother’s house in Rosettenville, near downtown Johannesburg.
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In one of the most rightwing countries in Europe (only Austria and maybe Poland can compete here) this was a huge victory. Swiss elect first black lawmaker
"I am the black sheep elected after being chased," declared the first black politician to be voted in to the Swiss parliament in the first interviews following the elections.
Ricardo Lumengo, who arrived in Switzerland 25 years ago from Angola, was savouring a victory that surprised him more than anyone else.
It was a victory made all the sweeter in the context of an election campaign fought on the anti-immigration, anti-crime views held by the right.
The highly controversial poster from the Swiss People's Party showing a black sheep being kicked out of Switzerland by three white sheep gained them headlines at home, loathing in the foreign press and a substantial increase in votes and seats at home.
The backlash though, from the message of zero tolerance for foreigners who commit crimes on Swiss soil, apparently played on the sympathies of those voters outraged by the tone.
"I am red and black. I like it," the Socialist Party member told the German language paper Blick, referring to his party colours as well as his skin.
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POLITICS
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Obama Criticized Over Singer
Senator Barack Obama is drawing criticism for signing up a gospel singer with controversial views about gay men and lesbians for his campaign in South Carolina.
The Obama campaign has recruited several gospel acts, including Donnie McClurkin, for a statewide tour to begin this week in Charleston. Gospel music is one of many ways the campaign is trying to reach black evangelicals in South Carolina, an early voting state where half the Democratic primary voters are black and where at least one recent survey shows Mr. Obama is losing ground to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Mr. McClurkin, a black preacher who sang at the Republican National Convention in 2004, has gained notoriety for his view that homosexuality is a choice and can be "cured" through prayer, a view ridiculed by gay people.
Critics on the Internet say Mr. Obama is trying to appeal to conservative blacks at the expense of gay people. Surveys have found that that blacks are less supportive than whites are of legalizing gay relationships.
Mr. Obama said last night through a spokesman that he "strongly disagrees" with Mr. McClurkin’s views. He did not indicate he would cancel Mr. McClurkin’s appearance, but said, "I have consistently spoken directly to African-American religious leaders about the need to overcome the homophobia that persists in some parts of our community so that we can confront issues like H.I.V./AIDS and broaden the reach of equal rights in this country."
Any time I do an Obama story, I like to disclose that I am an Obama supporter
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Rep. Diane Watson (D-CA), has introduced legislation that cuts off all government relations with the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma until it agrees to accept the black descendants of the Cherokees as full participating citizens of the Cherokee Nation.
Jim Crow in Indian Country
Imagine yourself as an African American and resident of the State of Alabama in 1964, the year that President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the historic Civil Rights Act. And again imagine in 1964 that Alabama Governor George Wallace, in an act of defiance that not even he considered, introduced legislation to expel all African Americans from Alabama.
Now fast forward to the year 2007, over four decades later, when the citizens of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma voted last March to expel their black citizens in a manner that equaled if not surpassed the most vitriolic attacks against African Americans in the once segregated South.
Many Americans do not realize that some Native American tribes owned slaves of African descent. As an independently recognized nation in the 19th Century, the Cherokee Nation embraced and promoted African slavery, a position it maintained after removal to Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma) in the 1830s.
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CULTURE
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African-American woman power, on land and at sea
Today, thousands of African-American women are members of, and even lead, their professional associations. It can rightfully be said that they've come a long way, baby!
But many, perhaps most, haven't cut ties with the sororities and the clubs, some founded more than 100 years ago, with the specific purpose of nurturing black women's educational, business and professional aspirations.
These organizations saw black women through the toughest times; the times when a man who called them names was more likely to be promoted than to be condemned.
Black women, then as now, need to be organized against the onslaught. They still need the safe havens that were created back in the days when black women were banned from membership in the other women's groups in their cities and towns.
Mention such names as Links, Chums, Girlfriends, Moles, NCNW, AKAs, Deltas, Zetas or Sigma Gamma Rho, and most African Americans will know exactly who and what you're referring to.
These aren't secret organizations; they have hundreds of thousands of members who annually raise and distribute millions for scholarships and projects nationally and within their local communities.
When I hear people claiming that African Americans do little or nothing to help themselves, I realize that such ignorance is possible because organizations founded by black women, and black men, still largely go unmentioned in the mainstream media.
Yet, they persist, both out of need and tradition.
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Dairies of Note on Daily Kos
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Black vs. White--Wildfires vs. Katrina--Rich vs. Poor by diarist ProudBushBasher
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Obama, McClurkin, Black Sexuality and History by diarist (an old Black Kos favorite) sephius1
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I listen to the BBC on NPR at nights and read them online, but I missed this shocking story BBC: Black genes = obesity and failure as humans by diarist JamesBrown4ever
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our leaders skipped history class: revealing the u.s. foreign policy on africa by diarist scoutbanana