Commentary
Robinswing, Black Kos Editor
The blackwoman has gotten to a place where she can watch most things with some degree of detachment. Not everything. Most things. Life is a series of re-runs. If you live long enough you see the same old thing time and again.
I remember a time much like the time we are living in now. I have seen the anger that twists the soul, in faces before. I have looked into the face of hatred. It does not frighten me. At all.
In many ways, we are in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement Part Two. Seems to me they are playing three card Monty and Madness Mind Meld, trying to make this about Health Care or Tea Bags. It is not. Nor is it about Birthers or Deathers. Or Speeches to School Children. Not about. Any of them.
This is about finding a way to humiliate the black man who thought he could be President of these United States. This is the republican’t objective. This is anger about not being able to stop him or outsmart him. If more people understood this we could be about the business of change. His success would mean all those centuries of claiming by virtue of skin color you are superior was a lie. What would the children think?
They say...
He is not one of us. Not from this country. They want their country back. Let us call him by the name of the preeminent racist of the twentieth century. The irony is rich.
They mean...
He is black. Not white. A black man has taken the reigns of power. He is the boogeyman.
What many see as irrational behavior I see as the new way racism acts. This is because racist do know better. Can’t get away with calling him a nigger. This is the racist bridge to the twenty-first century. Let’s call him a facist, or socialist or communist or anything that will stoke the fear. And hatred. American as apple pie. Maybe even more so.
Fear and anger have always been a part of the movement of this country. They presided over lynchings and genocide. Were present in the Civil War. There after World Wars I and II. They are always there. They use violence and vitriol. They show up to impede progress. Eventually they fail.
For all of my life I have wondered when it was going to end, this hatred and fearing. They are diseases of the mind.
One day, some of these people or their descendants will have the opportunity to get well. Until then those who can see must hold a higher vision. Those who speak must speak the truth.
We will win this battle. It is inevitable. It is the destiny of this nation to one day live up to the ideals created as as cornerstones of this Republic. It is our destiny.
I’ve felt this before. With John and Bobby. Obama certainly looks like a man of destiny. One of the things I’ve noticed about him is that he is extremely lucky. During both the primaries and the general everything that could break his way did. Still does..
I don’t know any black people who do not see what’s going on. I’m sure there are some, I just don’t know any. I know white folks who see it too.
Almost from the beginning, the black community knew exactly what Obama was going through. Understood he could not show anger. There were some pretty rough and racial times at this site back in the primary battles. Some black folk left. I understood why.
Those of us who stayed had to listen to folks tell us what was or wasn’t racist. I am still pretty amazed so many folks confuse prejudice with racism. There are folks who are quick to give racist the benefit of the doubt. Those who proclaim there is no such thing as white privilege and whose sense of sophistication leads them to believe it is human nature, just tribalism to see and fear difference. I wish I could make them all read, "Roots". Or to make them watch "We Shall Remain" on PBS. These people need to find their tender parts.
The photos from the last Civil Rights Movement touched the tender parts of a lot of Americans. Dogs and hoses unleashed on pregnant black women. White men and a white woman who believed in equality murdered. The images of hated made an impression on folk who had not given it any thought. Things shifted. It is happening again. Those faces. I’m hoping that this time no one has to die to touch the tender parts of the American psyche.
To be very clear I am not talking strictly in terms of the South. At least down south there are racist I can respect. Up front with theirs. Not like Chicago where white folks just up and moved when black folk moved into their neighborhoods. Where they smile in your face at work and lock their car doors when they see you on the street.. Down South, black and whites often lived close to each other. Ate the same foods. Played together as children. Those who hated you stayed away and made no bones about how they felt. The faces of those shouting two four six eight, we don’t want to integrate in Alabama looked just like the faces shouting invectives in Boston. Racism is not a regional disease.
Yeah, I’ve seen it all before. Thing is, fear can’t win. It has no power. If it did it wouldn’t be afraid. Time to know this. Fear is the fuel that ran this country into a ditch. People got tired of being afraid. They opted for hope. I think it’s time to re-up on that hope thing. Hopeless is just another way of being frightened.
I ain’t no ways tired. Or scared. Of nothing. Of nobody. I have overcome.
Now run and tell that.
It's often easy as an adult to underestimate the power of roll models. Several black male teachers in this next story point to their own mentors from childhood as examples. Jacksonville News: African-American male teachers try to be role models.
Thomas came to teaching five years ago after careers in the Navy and the corporate world. It's a challenge and a reward, he said, especially when trying to be a positive male role model for students who don't have many. "We're trying to be the teacher, the father, the uncle, the friend," he said.
Maxey, from Raines, said teachers need to challenge students to be better. "Children want structure, they want a place where they fit in, they want something that's bigger than them. School can be that," he said.
Paden, from Lighthouse Christian, said teachers are role models in ways big and small. "When I walk in front of them, I don't say, 'Put your shirt in your pants,' and then have my shirt hanging out my pants," he said. "I've got to walk the walk before I can talk the talk."
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This is a late edition, but it really is a must read. Tongue planted firmly in cheek Salon's Glenn Greenwald on how the hiring of Jenna Bush Hager by NBC's "Today" show to be an education correspondent smacks of non-meritocratic promotion Salon.com: Glenn Greenwald
They should convene a panel for the next Meet the Press with Jenna Bush Hager, Luke Russert, Liz Cheney, Megan McCain and Jonah Goldberg, and they should have Chris Wallace moderate it. They can all bash affirmative action and talk about how vitally important it is that the U.S. remain a Great Meritocracy because it's really unfair for anything other than merit to determine position and employment. They can interview Lisa Murkowski, Evan Bayh, Jeb Bush, Bob Casey, Mark Pryor, Jay Rockefeller, Dan Lipinksi, and Harold Ford, Jr. about personal responsibility and the virtues of self-sufficiency. Bill Kristol, Tucker Carlson and John Podhoretz can provide moving commentary on how America is so special because all that matters is merit, not who you know or where you come from. There's a virtually endless list of politically well-placed guests equally qualified to talk on such matters.
The first Black Woman to run for president of Brazil was profiled in the New York Times. She isn't a gadfly but a serious candidate. In an unrelated note, politicians in the city of Recife which is 80% black, has started to wonder why they have never had a black (or even mixed raced mayor), just asking this question this is sending shock waves through Brazil. New York Times: A Child of the Amazon Shakes Up a Nation’s Politics.
For Marina Silva, life began in the heart of the Amazon. From the age of 11, she walked nine miles a day helping her father collect rubber from trees. These days, as an icon in the environmental movement, she has dedicated her life to protecting that same rainforest.
Illiterate and seriously ill from hepatitis, Ms. Silva left her home when she was 16 and headed by bus to the city of Rio Branco seeking medical care and an education. There she learned how to read and write, graduated from college and became a teacher and a politician.
She worked closely with her friend Chico Mendes, the rubber tapper and environmental activist, before he was gunned down in 1988 by ranchers opposed to his activism. When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected Brazil’s president in 2002, he picked Ms. Silva to be his environmental minister, and on her watch Brazil devised a national plan to combat deforestation and created an indigenous reserve roughly the size of Texas.
Last week Ms. Silva shook up Brazilian politics by announcing that, after nearly three decades, she was leaving Mr. da Silva’s Workers’ Party to join the Green Party, where she is likely to be its candidate in next year’s presidential election.
Nigerian born Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a powerful author, her work is well worth the read. New York Times: The Thing Around Your Neck
Midway through Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s first story collection, "The Thing Around Your Neck," a gentlemanly British professor who has convened a workshop of African writers at a resort near Cape Town pronounces a Tanzanian’s story about massacres in Congo just the thing he wants for his magazine. "It was urgent and relevant," Adichie writes. "It brought news." The professor goes on to say that the story a Nigerian writer has submitted — about a bank clerk in Lagos who is asked to offer sexual favors to secure a new client — is "agenda writing." "Women are never victims in that sort of crude way." The young woman interrupts him to say that the story was in fact her own experience, and then walks out, leaving his leering glances behind.
The tensions embodied in this moment — between fiction and autobiography, the expectations of the observer and the experience of the witness, not to mention the value of certain experiences in the global literary marketplace — practically seep through the pages of this collection. As a whole it traces the journey Adichie herself has taken. Brought up in the Nigerian college town of Nsukka, in the aftermath of the failed war for Biafran independence that killed two of her grandparents, she moved to the United States at 19 to attend college and had early literary success with her novels "Purple Hibiscus" and "Half of a Yellow Sun." All these personhoods are represented here: the sheltered child, the vulnerable immigrant in Philadelphia and Brooklyn, the foreign student adrift in a dormitory in Princeton, the young African writer asked to objectify herself for an uncomprehending audience.
More sad stories from America's greatest shame, as we remembered the anniversary of her destruction. The Root: Waiting for Charity in New Orleans
Charity Hospital was where the poor people of New Orleans went until Katrina forced its closing. Now, as the debate rages about whether to reopen Charity or build a new hospital, those poor people continue to get the short end of the stick.
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Universal access to healthcare is only part of the battle. Ending food deserts, and better lifestyle choices also have to be part of the equation The Root: Move It, Lose It, Learn It.
African-American children tend to be fatter than their white and Latino counterparts. And fat kids mean unhealthy kids. What do black parents need to do to unpack the pounds and tackle obesity-related health issues?
A sad piece of American history and culture. BlackNews.com Lynching Victim Emmett Till's Casket to go to Smithsonian.
The glass-topped casket that displayed lynching victim Emmett Till's disfigured body to the world and became a rallying point for the civil rights movement is headed to the Smithsonian Institution for the planned National Museum of African American History and Culture, Till's family announced (last) Friday.
FRIDAY WAKE-UP MUSIC
This morning we bring you The Queen of Soul (who we affectionately call Re-Re) >> Rock Steady
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