William Jelani Cobb a blogger at Ebonyjet.com wrote this poignant piece. Prayer For A Random Black Man.
I have been high on Obama for the last month, rambling on about new eras and dividing lines of history. And these are intoxicating times, days when hopes we were afraid to harbor have come so close to harvest.
But I crashed hard last week the day I was told that a student I knew, a brilliant, beautifully gifted young Morehouse brother was dead, the victim of a gunshot wound that resembled a suicide. Two days later I learned that my first cousin, a member of the Bloods, had been shot dead in his home and the house set ablaze. It was then that I remembered that the world is not so well choreographed, that we drag fragments of awful into our dreams and the bitter past is always, always with us. This is the second time I've had to pick up my pen to exorcise the grief of two black men killed in the same week. Forgive me if I repeat myself.
These are the moments that make our contradictions apparent, like what it means to come closer than we ever dared imagine to fulfilling the dream while one million of us languish behind bars and forty percent of our children live in poverty.
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CULTURE
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Now this is the type of culture I LOVE talking about!!! Reclaiming True Grits. ( Why soul food is actually good for you.)
Mention "soul food" and you will hear scores of health and medical professionals claim that it is the downfall of the health and well-being of African Americans. It is true that African Americans have some of the highest rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and some cancers of any group in this country. But frankly, I'm getting sick of soul food being held partially responsible for this. The majority of people imagine the traditional soul food diet as unsophisticated and unhealthy fare comprised of high-calorie, low-nutrient dishes replete with, salt, sugar, and bad fats. Rather than vilifying traditional soul food, let's focus on the real culprit, what I like to call instant soul food.
In reality, soul food is good for you. In order to understand why, you have to understand grits. As seen with instant grits, mass production and distribution has diminished the product's superb quality and has obscured the distinctive characteristics that make down-home hominy so darn desirable in the first place. The taste of instant grits boxed up in a factory can never compare to the complex nutty flavor of grits stone-ground in a Mississippi mill. So it's understandable that those who have only had that watered-down stuff (read: many of my friends in the Northeast) scoff at the mention of grits.
Similar to instant grits, instant soul food is a dishonest representation of African American cuisine. And to be clear, when I refer to instant soul food, I'm not just describing the processing, packaging, and mass marketing of African American cuisine in the late 1980s. I'm also alluding to the oversimplified version of the cuisine that was constructed in the popular imagination in the late 1960s.
The term "soul food" first emerged during the black liberation movement as African Americans named and reclaimed their diverse traditional foods. Clearly, the term was meant to celebrate and distinguish African American cooking from general Southern cooking, and not ghettoize it. But in the late 1960s, soul food was "discovered" by the popular media and constructed as the newest exotic cuisine for white consumers to devour. Rather than portray the complexity of this cuisine and its changes throughout the late 19th and 20th century, many writers played up its more exotic aspects (e.g., animal entrails) and simply framed the cuisine as a remnant of poverty-driven antebellum survival food.
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This is a deep question. Is it too soon to make Katrina into art?
Conventional wisdom teaches us that historical fiction takes a while. It's a process, much like the stages of grief. A culture must wade through the shock, acceptance, recovery and reflection of a particular incident in order to draw insight from hindsight.
"Lower Ninth," an original one-act torn right from the pages of recent history and now playing at the Flea Theater in New York City, patently ignores this presumption. The introductory details are cryptic: two men, we are told, Robinson Crusoe-ed by "a terrible storm," will come to terms with their internal demons and their outward fate. The storm, of course, is Hurricane Katrina, and the drama, penned by 30-year-old Beau Willimon, is among the first crop of fictionalized accounts of the disaster.
Willimon says his inspiration came from an iconic 2005 cable news shot of two men waving from the roof of a home uprooted home in the wake of the storm. "I kept seeing this image looped over and over, of two guys on a roof, looking for help," he says. He wondered, along with the millions of others suctioned to their television screens: How did they get there? What did they say to one another? Did they survive?
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I hope Hollywood does this film justice. This could be an important piece of modern culture. If they produce this just to be first and beat the Ziggy Marley/Martin Scorsese film due a year later, I will start a blog war against the film. No Woman, No Cry
Variety reports that The Weinstein Company has secured the rights to "No Woman, No Cry: My Life With Bob Marley," written by his widow, Rita. TWC plans to use the book as the basis for a bio pic on the reggae icon, who died of cancer in 1981 at the age of 36.
Marley’s book, published in 2004, chronicles the couples volatile 15-year marriage, the birth of their four children (Marley legally recognized 10 children, though he is said to have fathered 22) and addresses charges of estate mismanagement leveled at Rita.
Though Rita Marley will executive produce, music usage is unclear since producer Jerry Weintraub secured the rights to Marley’s recordings for a similar project he tried to launch in 1999. This most recent project is slated for a late 2009 release, said to be prompted by the announcement of a Marley documentary being produced by Ziggy Marley and the peripatetic director, Martin Scorsese. That project is slated for release in early 2010.
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LAW
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If you live in Alabama please get the word out NOW! If you work with a voter registration organization spread the word TODAY! In Alabama, a Fight to Regain Voting Rights Some Felons Never Lost.
The Rev. Kenneth Glasgow, onetime criminal and founder of a ministry called The Ordinary People Society, spent years helping people with criminal records regain the right to vote in Alabama, where an estimated 250,000 people are prohibited from voting because of past criminal activity. The Rev. Kenneth Glasgow has spent years helping people with criminal records to regain the right to vote in Alabama.
Then he discovered that many of them had never actually lost the right.
Because of a quirk in its Constitution, Alabama disqualifies from voting only those who have committed a "felony involving moral turpitude." Those who have committed other felonies — like marijuana possession or drunken driving — can cast ballots even if they are still in prison, according to the state attorney general.
But it has been slow work cajoling public officials to enforce and publicize the law. Until Friday, the secretary of state’s Web site advised, incorrectly, that those with any kind of felony conviction could not register unless they had served their time and their right to vote had been restored by the Board of Pardons and Paroles.
Because neither the Legislature nor the attorney general has offered a definitive list of crimes involving moral turpitude, there is no way of knowing how many inmates are eligible to vote. But state agencies generally agree that those convicted of drug possession — at least 3,000 of Alabama’s 29,000 prison inmates and thousands more on probation — are eligible. Most felons and former felons, however, assume that they have lost the right to vote.
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Do I dare be a tad bit hopefull? Civil rights cases at issue for FBI.
The FBI is investigating 26 unsolved civil rights era cases out of nearly 100 referred to the bureau over the last year, Director Robert Mueller says in calling the protection of civil liberties one of his top priorities.
Mueller was set to testify Wednesday at an FBI oversight hearing before the Senate. Lawmakers were expected to press him about whether his agents violated the civil rights of U.S. citizens whose personal information was obtained secretly in terror and spy investigations.
In a prepared statement sent Tuesday to the Senate, Mueller vows "to protect the security of our nation while upholding the civil rights guaranteed by the Constitution to every United States citizen."
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INTERNATIONAL
City Of Men "Does a big screen homage to Brazil's most popular television series bring fresh perspective to life in the favelas?"
Though not actually an official sequel to director Fernando Meirelles’ (The Constant Gardener) brilliant and breathtaking 2002 film City of God, Paulo Morelli’s film City of Men, (which was co-produced by Meirelles) deals with the same themes and ideas and takes place in the same favela slums on the hills surrounding Rio de Janeiro. It even shares two supporting actors from God (Silva and Cunha) though this time they’re playing the lead roles instead. Yet, City of Men stands quite well on its own as a compelling, absorbing drama full of rich details and subtle nuances.
Wisely, Morelli (a long time collaborator of Meirelles) does not try to copy Meirelles’ flamboyant, aggressive visual style that he used in God. Instead he goes for a thick, textured look conveying the sweltering heat of the Rio slums. And unlike Meirelles’ film with its downbeat, nihilistic view of the oppressive weight and poverty and hopelessness, Morelli gives us instead, amidst the senseless violence and life-is-cheap attitude, a glimmer of hope and redemption through friendship and everlasting, all conquering brotherly love. The end result however, is more emotionally involving and satisfying.
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Forbes just published it list of World Billionares. Most noterworthy are the first two legit Black African Billionares.
I used the word legit because two former Nigerian dictators were reported to be billionares but they may have mananged this feet by looting their nations. I also am excluding a few White South Africans and North African Arabs which is why I used the term Black African (man that was way to complex).
#334 Aliko Dangote of Nigeria at ".3 billion, and #503 Patrice Motsepe of South Africa (BTW who got some of his firt business contacts while working with Gov. Wilder D-VA as a lawyer before returting to SA).
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For the sake of all it's people, I hope the answer to the next question is yes. In Crisis, Zimbabwe Asks: Could Mugabe Lose?
presidential election is scheduled here for March 29, and Ms. Sithole said she hoped this time Mr. Mugabe would finally lose. Now 84, he is a former guerrilla fighter who has led the nation since independence in 1980. "Mugabe was a hero of the liberation struggle, sure," she said. "But now there is an even bigger struggle, the struggle to survive, and he is killing us."
She may conceivably get her wish. Mr. Mugabe is burdened not only by Zimbabwe’s persevering misery, but also by two formidable rivals. One is Morgan Tsvangirai, a well-known opponent with trade union support; he won 42 percent of the official vote in 2002, when inflation was a mere 139 percent. The other is Simba Makoni, a onetime cabinet member backed by influential figures in the governing party itself; these dissidents are no longer willing to wait for Mr. Mugabe’s death to initiate the succession.
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Diaries of Note
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My Black Herstory by Robinswing
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I Guess Black Voters Don't Count by Modern Yossarian
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Blacks, the Democratic Party and the Future by baltogeek
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"Pro-lifers" attacking Planned Parenthood for... racism by BruinKid
SPECIAL NOTE
I'm posting this offer again, like I did last week. Now that I feel Black Kos is somewhat established, I would like to move it to the next level. Starting around this spring, I would like to make this a group effort. What I bring to the table is finding news across the web. I would like to get some better writers involved. (I'm an engineer so I'm better at numbers :-). I'm looking to eventually have 2-3 people colaborating on every Friday edition. If interested let me know in the comments. Sephius1 and Robinswing I saw last week you were interested so I'm going to include you already, I'm just seeing if there is anyone else?