Commentary
Robinswing, Black Kos Editor
In about 145 days Americans will go to the polls and elect a new president. I cannot tell you how I long for the day when George Bush is no longer resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I have already offered to go in there with sage and do an energetic wipeout. Not sure what can truly be done about the stain on our collective consciousness that this man and his cronies have put upon this nation and what many of us thought America stood for. We’re gonna have to work real hard to eliminate the vestiges of his demon residue upon the citizens of this country as well as the world at large. I get a headache just thinking about it. I’ve gotten sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Meanwhile this summer we are going to be treated to nationalism in extremis as the Olympic games begin in August. Americans who think we are not ready for a black president are always ready for a black gold medalist. I’ve often thought it strange that we are all Americans when competing on the world stage. Less so at home.
(SistahSpeak con't)
I have wondered for most of my time on this planet what it is about being black makes others think I am somehow inferior. As I look upon the landscape I see so much ignorance and too little effort at overcoming it.
I keep wondering why it is that Democrats have such a hard time calling bullshit. Not doing so becomes point no point. We could reasonably spend our time screaming foul in the streets. Things really have gotten bad enough to justify our rage but we intellectually feel superior to our feelings and tamp them down. We tell ourselves that rage is the instrument of ignorance and the purview of republicans and their ilk. Why I ask myself are so many rich white men angry? I keep waiting for someone to explain the Hannity’s and the Limbaugh’s of this world. How can anyone take seriously the anger of rich white men? I certainly don’t.
I keep coming back to the idea of fear. The Hannity’s and the Limbaugh’s of the world are afraid that one day folks like me are going to get fired up enough to do something about the ways things have always been. It seems that many secretly fear that once blacks have equality we will treat them as we have been treated. They are the ones in my opinion with white guilt and it expresses itself with the idea that under no circumstance can the playing field be leveled. They are just plain old scared and their whistle in the dark is anger.
Perhaps it is a sense of being fed up with the way things have always been that stirs those women who are still upset that Hillary didn’t win the nomination. If so I can understand it. I told myself that if they took this thing away from Obama on a humbug I would be through with the Democrats forever. I hope I didn’t mean it but I don’t know.
I also understand that at this point, there is much work to be done. Bush will be gone soon. Obama will win the presidency. Racism will still exist. I will likely still be fed up. Angry. Sick and tired of being sick and tired. I hope not. I hope we can find a way to do better.
Now, run and tell that.
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Let us never forget those who came before us. John Mercer Langston was the nations forst elected black official.
Washington Post ≫ The 'Obama Before Obama'
Planted in the lawn at the courthouse on West Main Street here is a gray historical marker that draws little attention. It proudly proclaims that the country's first black elected official was native son John Mercer Langston, born in this central Virginia county, the son of a wealthy white planter and an emancipated slave of Indian and black ancestry.
History seems to whisper more often than it shouts. Langston was one of the most extraordinary men of the 19th century, and yet his achievements -- prominent abolitionist, first black congressman from Virginia, founder of what would become the Howard University law school -- have largely been forgotten. In the arc of American advancement toward black political empowerment, Langston represents the symbolic beginning. Elected township clerk of Brownhelm, Ohio, on April 2, 1855, he became, by many accounts, the first "Negro" elevated to public office by popular vote.
It took 153 years to get from John Mercer Langston to Barack Hussein Obama, a journey that endured the dashed hopes of Reconstruction and the oppression of Jim Crow to arrive at a moment that has stunned even those optimistic about America's racial progress. An underdog black politician has secured a major party's presidential nomination in a country where less than 4 percent of its elected officials are African Americans?
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Washington Post ≫ Mormons to mark 30 years of blacks in priesthood.
Thirty years have passed, but Heber G. Wolsey still cries when he recalls the day the Mormon church abandoned a policy that had kept black men out of the priesthood. "It was one of the greatest days of my life," said Wolsey, who was head of public affairs at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
On June 8, 1978, Wolsey was called to a secret rendezvous with N. Eldon Tanner, a member of the church's First Presidency, in a tunnel beneath the Salt Lake City temple.
He was handed a slip of paper: "The long-promised day has come when every faithful, worthy man in the church may receive the holy priesthood ... without regard for race or color."
"I started to bawl," Wolsey recalled, his eyes again welling with tears. "It's something we'd all been praying for a long, long time." Latter-day Saints will mark the 30th anniversary Sunday with an evening celebration of words and music in the Salt Lake City Tabernacle.
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I always like when people branch into new positive areas, especially folks who have influence over popular culture.
NYTimes ≫ Martial Art of Chess, Promoted by a Rapper.
The rapper RZA, a founder of the Wu-Tang Clan, sat in a suite on the 48th floor of the Mandarin Oriental hotel overlooking Central Park, staring at a chess game through a pair of sunglasses. His hand was frozen a few inches above the board as he looked for a strategy to thwart his opponent.
Chess has long had an important role in the aesthetic of the Wu-Tang Clan, which has songs about the game. In "The Wu-Tang Manual," a 2005 book about the group and its members, RZA (pronounced RIZ-a) wrote that chess is part of the Wu-Tang essence "because it’s a game of war — it’s about battle. And Wu-Tang was formed in battles, from challenging each other."
RZA, 38, learned the game when he was 11, from a girl who, as he writes in the manual, also took his virginity. Though he and his cousin GZA, another founder of the group, both love chess, they did not play much when they were younger because, GZA said, they were too poor to own a board.
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NYTimes ≫ Albinos, Long Shunned, Face Threat in Tanzania.
Samuel Mluge steps outside his office and scans the sidewalk. His pale blue eyes dart back and forth, back and forth, trying to focus. On a bus in Dar es Salaam, says he constantly feels threatened. The sun used to be his main enemy, but now he has others. Mr. Mluge is an albino, and in Tanzania now there is a price for his pinkish skin. "I feel like I am being hunted," he said.
Discrimination against albinos is a serious problem throughout sub-Saharan Africa, but recently in Tanzania it has taken a wicked twist: at least 19 albinos, including children, have been killed and mutilated in the past year, victims of what Tanzanian officials say is a growing criminal trade in albino body parts.
Many people in Tanzania — and across Africa, for that matter — believe albinos have magical powers. They stand out, often the lone white face in a black crowd, a result of a genetic condition that impairs normal skin pigmentation and strikes about 1 in 3,000 people here. Tanzanian officials say witch doctors are now marketing albino skin, bones and hair as ingredients in potions that are promised to make people rich.
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The Root ≫ Running for President or Running for His Life?
Zimbabwe will hold a run-off election on June 27. Presidential contender Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader, insists that he and his party have already won. But Robert Mugabe, the wily leader of the ruling ZANU-PF party refused to accept the results and in time—an unprecedented long time—the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission agreed that neither presidential candidate had gotten the necessary majority to declare himself the winner. But throughout the contested campaign and prolonged announcement of the results, one question keeps coming up:
What makes Mugabe run?
Robert Gabriel Mugabe is older than John McCain. Eighty four, to be exact. His country, as well as his struggle legacy is in tatters and the era of the Big Man all across Africa is drawing to a close as new rules of the African road call for an end to the era of president for life, and a growing number of African leaders are answering the call
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BBC ≫ Ethiopia appeals for urgent aid
Ethiopia has launched an urgent appeal to international donors for more than $300m (£154m) of emergency aid.
A total of 4.6 million people are now thought to need food aid, because of the drought which struck most of the country in the early part of this year.
In some parts of the country, health centres and feeding clinics are already being overwhelmed with large numbers of severely malnourished children.
Existing stocks of food aid will cover June, but the crunch will come in July....... More ►
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The Root ≫ Young, Black and in Decline in the Obama Age?
As the country braces for a bruising general election fight between John McCain and Barack Obama, I can't help but wonder whether young black voters are going to matter at all. Four years ago, you couldn't even think about the presidential election without having someone toss you a "VOTE OR DIE" T-shirt or tell you who his or her favorite artist was going to vote for.
Four years later, the political landscape has shifted, and there is little media focus on the demographic of 18-to-25-year-old blacks and the role they will, or will not play, in November. Even the unprecedented race and gender dialogue of 2008 has created no sustained discussion about young black voters. So does the black youth vote matter in 2008?
I have a dear friend from Cleveland, my hometown, who is politically active on both an institutional and grassroots level and has raised her son to be not only active, but critical. He is not yet of voting age, so I hesitate to even mention him, but he so personifies the attitude of many young people today. Following the 2004 presidential election he said, "We vote...and we're still dying...now what?"...... More ►
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The Root ≫ More guns on the streets, a rising death toll and the beginning of a long summer.
All across Harlem USA, it's known as the 'Memorial Day Shootout.' And no one wants to remember it.
As families, friends and acquaintances celebrated the season's most picturesque evening late that Monday, a scene erupted on the borders of Marcus Garvey Park that could have come right out of a frightening war movie. And when the far-too-real, 10 minutes of mayhem had ended, seven teens lay bullet-riddled and bloodied along a three-block stretch in the heart of the neighborhood Malcolm X, James Baldwin and Billie Holiday once strolled for inspiration.
In time, all the victims are expected to heal and survive, but what about the new image of prosperity and goodwill being cultivated in Harlem?
"It had gotten a little better, and now it's getting worse again," said Jackie Rowe-Adams, a lifelong borough resident who lost two young sons to street violence, which has made her acutely aware of such issues...... More ►
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Africa Science News ≫ Scientists now heighten war against malaria
Beginning with genetically altering the malaria parasite through gene knock-out technology, scientists now target the potassium channel of the parasite through which a team of researchers has been able to prevent the malaria parasites from forming in mosquitoes and has thereby broken the cycle of infection during recent animal tests.
Research teams consisting of scientists at the University of Copenhagen and John Hopkins University, Baltimore, have prevented the parasite from going through the normal stages of its life cycle and developing a cyst (egg-like structure or occyst), which spawns new infectious parasites."
As it is exclusively the parasites from these oocysts that can infect new individuals, we were able to prevent the disease from being transmitted to the animals in our tests", explains Assistant Professor, Peter Ellekvist from the University of Copenhagen.
The findings have been published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. The malaria parasite has an extremely complicated lifecycle, which starts with the fertilisation of the parasites male and female gametes and the formation of an oocyst, in the mosquito's stomach wall...... More ►
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Latinos Embracing Obama......More ►
┗ by wisconsin girl
Dream No More Deferred?......More ►
┗ by tbrucegodfrey
"Racism isn't a problem; we have a black president!"......More ►
┗ by TheBlaz
Screwing the Kids Part I - Racism and Scholastic Segregation......More ►
┗ by inflector
10 years after Jasper, TX -- race in America......More ►
┗ by ProgressiveSouth
Just a reminder from last week!
Editorial Endorsement
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.