Commentary
Robinswing, Black Kos Editor
Since the first of the year I’ve been sensing a shift in the fundamental ways that things have been done. I wrote about it in my first diary of this year. I wrote about hope.
One of the comments in that first of the year diary challenged the idea of hope.
Now if he had a plan that actual had a road map to hope - then I would consider it. Don't you find it weird that a campaign slogan is hope? Come on.
Here is my reply...Hope is not a road it's the way you take the journey.
For the past six months I and others have been taking this journey of hope. We are half way there now and things are looking good.
(SistahSpeak con't)
I understand how difficult it was for so many to cast aside their cynicism, yet it was to my mind the highest calling of this campaign season.
Americans of all stripes have had hope cauterized by divisive and corrosive politics for way too long. Americans of all stripes have been afraid for longer than that. Americans of all stripes have been longing for change in the core of their being.
On the first day of the year 2008, I leaned into the moment and gave myself permission to look past what politics in the country had become and into the possibility of a new kind of politics with a new person offering the country the chance to rise above. I started hoping.
The blackwoman was thrilling with the idea that in her lifetime she would bear witness to both whites only signs on fountains and a black man as President of the United States of America.
The blackwoman found reasons to rejoice knowing that soon there would be no more bush-whacking going on.
On January 1st, Iowa hadn’t happened. Not everyone was as sure as I was then.
June 6th. Not everyone is as sure as I am now.
Barack Obama will be President of these United States of America. Everyday an image rises in my mind. It first showed up on Jan 1st. It is the image of Barack Obama standing outside with one hand raised with the other hand on the Bible being sworn in at the 44th President.
It will likely be a bumpy journey. Likely there are parts of the road ahead with potholes that are now invisible. We’ll get there. That is the audacity of hope.
Now, run and tell that.
Editorial Endorsememt
It will come as no surprise to those who regularly read Black Kos that we have been supportive of the candidacy of Barack Obama. We most certainly have. However we have not given an editorial endorsement until this moment.
The editors of Black Kos without hesitation and with a great deal of pride endorse Senator Obama for the President of the United States of America.
His candidacy is both historical and amazing. His presence on the national stage is changing politics in ways that will require presidential historians to fully articulate.
He is everything that we admire and more.
His campaign will serve future generations as an example of what well run and well conceived campaigns ought to look at.
His insistence upon focus is a thing of beauty.
His intelligence and the ability to think and see outside of the box are the qualities this country needs as we move toward solutions that arise out of the last seven years lack of real leadership, ability or intelligence.
We at Black Kos appreciate his honesty and integrity and believe that this country will be well served by these qualities when he is our president.
Barack Obama rose from a fine field of Democratic possibility to shine as the one most Democrats saw as the standard bearer for the 21st century.
The Democratic Party got this one right. We believe America will do likewise.
Barack Obama. The peoples choice. The choice of Black Kos.
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Just in case you were on - MARS, or PLUTO
NYTimes ≫ Obama Clinches Nomination.
Senator Barack Obama claimed the Democratic presidential nomination on Tuesday evening, prevailing through an epic battle with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in a primary campaign that inspired millions of voters from every corner of America to demand change in Washington.
A last-minute rush of Democratic superdelegates, as well as the results from the final primaries, in Montana and South Dakota, pushed Mr. Obama over the threshold of winning the 2,118 delegates needed to be nominated at the party’s convention in August. The victory for Mr. Obama, the son of a black Kenyan father and a white Kansan mother, broke racial barriers and represented a remarkable rise for a man who just four years ago served in the Illinois Senate.
"Tonight, we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another — a journey that will bring a new and better day to America," Mr. Obama told supporters at a rally in St. Paul. "Because of you, tonight I can stand here and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States of America."...... More ►
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Many times people think it takes a huge effort to impact peoples lives. At times it does, at other times it takes $10.00.
NYTimes ≫ A $10 Mosquito Net Is Making Charity Cool.
Donating $10 to buy a mosquito net to save an African child from malaria has become a hip way to show you care, especially for teenagers. The movement is like a modern version of the March of Dimes, created in 1938 to defeat polio, or like collecting pennies for Unicef on Halloween.
Unusual allies, like the Methodist and Lutheran Churches, the National Basketball Association and the United Nations Foundation, are stoking the passion for nets that prevent malaria. The annual "American Idol Gives Back" fund-raising television special has donated about $6 million a year for two years. The music channel VH1 made a fund-raising video featuring a pesky man in a mosquito suit.
It is an appeal that clearly resonates with young people.
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Big ups!
NYTimes ≫ Jamaican Sets World Record in 100 Meters at 9.72.
The Reebok Grand Prix meet took place at Randalls Island on Saturday night, but it was a home crowd for Jamaica’s newest sprint star at 100 meters, Usain Bolt.
And the 6,490 fans were greeted with a stunning performance as Bolt set a world record in 9.72 seconds, competing in the event for only the fifth time in a professional race. His mark eclipsed the previous record of 9.74, set last September by his countryman Asafa Powell, and left Tyson Gay of the United States, the 2007 world champion, more than a yard behind in 9.85....... More ►
NYTimes ≫ In a Crackdown, Zimbabwe Curbs Many Aid Groups.
Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Zimbabweans — orphans and old people, the sick and the down and out — have lost access to food and other basic humanitarian assistance as their government has clamped down on international aid groups it says are backing the political opposition, relief agencies say.
In recent days, CARE, one of the largest nonprofit groups working in the country, has been ordered by the Zimbabwean government to suspend all its operations, which help 500,000 of the country’s most vulnerable people. This month alone, CARE would have fed more than 110,000 people in schools, orphanages, old-age homes and in various programs, it said....... More ►
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For my part I have always tried to understand "why" a person say or does an offensive thing. If a comment comes out of ignorance then that person should be educated, but they should be treated different then a person who say something out of hatred. Too often both these types of comments are treated the same way. Take this story from Utah.
Washington Post ≫ A Different State of Race Relations.
Earlier this year, a state senator stood on the statehouse floor here and spoke disparagingly of a pending bill. "This baby is black," said Sen. Chris Buttars, a Republican, adding, "It's a dark, ugly thing."
Weary of talking about race? Come to the Beehive State, where race relations is a topic of bracing freshness.
Here, basic issues of sensitivity -- what is spoken of aloud and what is best left unsaid, assumptions good and bad, all the delicate matters that in so many parts of the country have been burnished to exquisite subtleties by worry and constant attention -- are still very basic indeed.
Take what happened to Tamu Smith. Smith was in cosmetology class when she felt a hand on her head. A classmate was handling her hair.
"And I said, 'Don't ever touch my hair without asking me,' " Smith said. "And she was like, 'Well, I can touch your hair.' And I was like, 'What?' And she was like, 'I can touch your hair because I've never touched black people's hair before.' "
It was after a supervisor was summoned that, as Smith recalls, the classmate whined a question that, a decade later, still strikes at the poignant and suddenly timely essence of being black in Utah: "If I don't get to touch Tamu's hair, then what black person's hair am I ever going to touch?"
While Buttars's cutting remark about an offending piece of legislation was, the Rev. France A. Davis said, "the kind of thing you'd see when I was growing up in Georgia," the controversy was finally put to rest when the senator apologized before Davis's mostly black congregation at Calvary Baptist Church, which knew a teaching moment when it saw one...... More ►
The Root ≫ Good Times: 'Ain't We Lucky We Got 'Em'
The close of the writer's strike-shortened television season – the endless season finales and salacious sweeps week programming – has made me think about how far television has evolved.
But as I thought, specifically about how African Americans are represented on television, I realized that I could still count the notable and inspiring black characters this season on one hand. Heck, one of the few black characters we had on air was just killed off on CSI (strange, since the white characters whose lives were in peril during last season's cliffhanger episodes were miraculously spared). We all know black folk have come a long way in real life, but for some reason, TV still tells a different story.
I think I prefer the black television of yesteryear. We've been so busy moving forward and not looking back that we've forgotten the black characters of the past who inspired us, worked hard, set positive examples for the community and made us proud to be black. Case in point: Good Times.
During my adolescence, Good Times was often dismissed as a negative representation of black popular culture. People said it perpetuated stereotypes, and everyone focused on J.J. as The Coon....... More ►
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Ebony G. Patterson is a Jamaican artist exploring issues of gender, body and cultural identity. Her Dancehall Series, included in the Art Chicago exhibition this spring, is especially striking for its depictions of Jamaican dancehall culture and the practice of skin bleaching among its men. Holding a place very much like hiphop in the United States, dancehall has been criticized for its violent, misoginist, and homophobic stance. Patterson takes these cultural notions and addresses them in a way that allows for no response other than candid discussion.
Ebony / Jet ≫ Dancehall and Doiley Boyz.
The Dancehall series explores masculinity but as it relates to dancehall space within Jamaican culture -- the quintessential idea of what it is to be male, and how notions of homosexuality function there.
My explorations talking about bodies in general as objects, especially in terms of limbs, a removal of parts, more of an object, we can see the body.
For the last couple of years I’ve been exploring that notion with skin bleaching, I’ve always had an interest in discussions of beauty and the grotesque and the objectification, something more urgent to speak to. I am a huge supporter of dancehall culture and have been scrutinized by my colleagues for my support of dancehall. Colleagues would get at me for being interested in the music. Could be me becoming a little older and therefore a little wiser, but I can appreciate certain aspects. This unapologetic stance it takes – very raw, very in your face. That’s the essence of dancehall...... More ►
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LATimes ≫ An L.A. 'posse' passes its Iowa test
Franco and Herrera entered tiny, idyllic Grinnell four years ago as members of a "posse" of 10 disadvantaged but promising high school graduates from Los Angeles.
By banding together, the students would help one another navigate unfamiliar academic and social terrain in this remote college town surrounded by fields of corn.
Grinnell would cover their tuition -- $1 million worth -- and in return get a little more diversity on its campus of 1,500 students, virtually all of them white.
The preparation for their journey was chronicled in a Times story in 2004. Over the four years that followed, academic demands reduced some of the "posse scholars" to tears. Cultural differences left a few feeling like outsiders. Homesickness was a constant, especially in the midst of bone-chilling winters.
The pressure drove one student to quit. Two others fell behind in their coursework. But most found opportunities they never would have imagined back at high schools better known for producing dropouts than graduates...... More ►
OBITUARY
Bo Diddley, Who Gave Rock His Beat, Dies at 79
Bo Diddley, a singer and guitarist who invented his own name, his own guitars, his own beat and, with a handful of other musical pioneers, rock ’n’ roll itself, died Monday at his home in Archer, Fla. He was 79.
The cause was heart failure, a spokeswoman, Susan Clary, said. Mr. Diddley had a heart attack last August, only months after suffering a stroke while touring in Iowa.
In the 1950s, as a founder of rock ’n’ roll, Mr. Diddley — along with Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and a few others — helped to reshape the sound of popular music worldwide, building on the templates of blues, Southern gospel, R&B and postwar black American vernacular culture.
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OK this isn't in the spirit of unity, but it is in the spirit of funny.
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