Are you your brothers and sisters keeper?
By ThisIsMyTime, Black Kos Guest Editor
Brother thinks Black folks are truly tolerant in this country. All 40 millions of us less the 1 million. The 1 million are incarceratedso they don't have any option except to be patient.
It has been almost 50 years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act but Black folks are still victims of inequality. In job. In housing. In building wealth. In Health Care. In Education. In getting Justice. Name it and you got it. Black folks are at the bottom. Still.
Forgive me I am speaking the truth and my sentiment ain't a reflection on you today but on our collective weakness to fixing institutionalized racism and our lack of vigor in fighting for a strong anti-racist system. Nor should anyone need to feel you are a target of supremacy just because you are White since I am mostly speaking of the supremacist system we live in, the people that aid it and why these stories must end.
I am my brother's keeper. His pain is my pain. I am my sister's keeper. Her pain is my pain. However, this cycle of pain has been repeating itself for way too long. Brother is sick of being sick and tired of the lack of will power to build my Americas inner-cities like we built Europe, Japan, Israel, Egypt, Iraqi, et al. How long can we avoid the obvious? It is because of our ancestors this nation was built to be what it is today. It was built from scratch. With bear hands. With slave hands while pushing through years of ugly struggle that has left its scar everywhere. How are black folks in the United States of America doing today?
I sometimes ask, is it too much to ask to have the will to see the disparity and try to do what a long list of black folks without a name had done for free to empower this country White folks? Is asking for policies that will give us opportunity too much to ask? Don't get me wrong, conditions have improved for a few fortunate of us but they haven't improved for a lot of people. If you think otherwise, you don't know shit and I will try to school you.
Yes, I am talking about disparity. Brother is sympathetic to all who are unemployed because he has been a victim too but the disparity is hardly discussed by the MSM. A lot of things about us people usually don't get much air time unless the event is used to demonize us. Some fucking tired ass tactic to turn public opinion about Black folks. Ain't it? The fucking thing is it has worked for a number of years. Thank God, we got Obama in their face day in and day out to change the myth. That alone is worth my vote. Some may not agree with that but you have not lived in my shoes for a day so I understand you.
Going back to the disparity, while our economy is bottoming out of a recession, if you think 9.6% unemployment is something that should make me flinch and blame this administration for getting us out of the gutter, you don't know my people's pain. The worst has been normal for black folks for a long time. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, "the national [unemployment] average for June 2002 was 5.9 percent. When broken down, the national average for whites was 5.2, and for blacks it was 10.7." In fact today (September 2010), unemployment for black folks isclose to 20% across the board and worse in some States like Alabama, Illinois, Ohio, and South Carolina. In Michigan, it is at almost 27%.
Oh...pardon me if I forgot to mention black teen unemployment is at 45 percent while it is at 25% for White teens. These black teens will soon be if past history is any indication an inventory made for prison profiteering if our criminal justice system is what it is today with all the unfair sentencing laws that targets minorities where rehabilitation is a crusade by few religious zealots and Prison Industry complex to game the system. No wonder we have one in every 15 black men and 1 in 9 black men ages 20 to 34 incarcerated.
Yes, my name is Tyrone, Tamika, Aisha, Keisha, Jackson, Jamal and yes I struggle to get a call back from employers because my resume has a black sounding name. Unfortunately. I have never been a convict subject of modern day enslavement but more white ex-cons get called back for job interviews compared to me who is crime-free black applicants.
Yes, the majority of us are poor people. Very poor. Systemic racism has us by the neck and almost making us crawl on our knees. Our safety net has been demonized and our lawmakers have given us their middle finger. At least some of them. We still get out and vote for some unprincipled mothafucking Democrats or the lesser of the two evils. Yes, we do and we do it because we have patience and we know what the other side has stored for us. Especially us African Americans.
They build wealth, we build debt. We have 237 millionaires in congress -- that is a whopping 44 percent of the body – compared to about 1 percent of Americans overall. Now you know why some of these mothafuckers want to extend Bush's tax cut to the rich. Fifty have net worths of at least $10 million, and seven are worth more than $100 million. California, Rep. Darrell Issa is the richest lawmaker on Capitol Hill with an estimated $250 million in net worth who has been fucking Democrats left and right in CA. Can these people really look out for my best interest?
Why do you think public option did not become law? You think it's because Obama did not want it? Or, why do you think the stimulus plan is what it was when Paul Krugman and other economists were calling to double the funding of the stimulus to around $1.5 trillion instead of the $787 Billion passed? Or why do you think anything with a "public something" is not popular? Because it is codified with redistribution of wealth to the have nots -- and the fact many black folks will fall in that category and be helped makes some folks' stomach cringe. My people are still enemy number one to some of the constituents of these self serving lawmakers. Instead of walking the walk on principle, these fools motto is I am saving me my ass. It is difficult to give their share when they have gotten it effortlessly. Tricks and Greedy bastards! They still want me to finance them from the little I make when they use the tax code to pay zero sums in the name of ""Small Business"".
Can't use the tax code in ways that will benefit me. Gots no investments and inheritances or the ability to take deductions for mortgages and 401K. My inheritances has been long striped from me and was given to him who has made his money the old fashion way. A good enough reason for me to support the Democratic candidate Joe Manchin as he is down by 3 point in West Virginia(Raese 46-43 percent).
My people have been fighting for equality for 400 years. There isn't an accurate death counts for that struggle.
The dead never had a death certificate. Nor was there a death roll for slaves. Just an educated estimate of about 30-60 million deaths. Some did not make it to land and were victims of an in-transit mortality, thrown to the sea. Others, about 50% of those that made it were victims of first "seasoning" phase as properties. It's like you lived and you died -- erased as if you never existed.
However, a carpenter's roll from 1795 includes the names of five slaves who built the White House: Tom, Peter, Ben, Harry and Daniel. No last names of course. They would be happy to know an African American family resides in the house they built some 215 years later. They also would have been sad to know that in this day and age there is so much despair for black people. Institutionalized racism is still alive and well. It now uses different face – systemic and legal policies of inequality/supremacy that is embedded in our laws to weep the weak from standing up. It's an extension of the old system sugar coated by clever laws that favors more of the haves.
Make no mistake about it -- never would I disrespect my ancestors suffering by drawing a parallel to the suffering of today. Today's struggle is not comparable to the struggles of the past while the scar is still visible to date. Here is the evidence as you can listen to their voices and to the song they sang.
Simply, our current system is fucked up. It is the same system that allowed the deaths of more than 886,000 African Americans that could have been prevented had they received the same care as whites or the same system that allowed a four fold wealth gap between Whites and Blacks in a 23 year span or the system that allowed to looting minority owned asset via Sub-prime Mortgage Refinance Lending that targeted and destroyed high concentrations of low-income and minority household or the system that allows the millions of cases of race-based housing discrimination against people of color each year and on and on and on.
The beauty about black folks is that we are full of hope. There ain't any kind of money that can buy out the "HOPE" inventory out of Black folks. There has been years of this anti-racist hoping, marching, speaking and writing by black folks which often gets silenced. I love Tim Wise and I always thank him for understanding the pain. As shameful as it might sound, it is indeed the fact that it has to take one White man to validate people of color in the eyes of white folks in the broad media sense. He speaks for me and I don't have an insecurity issue with having fewer slots on the stage for a white person speaking about my inequality so eloquently and be heard. Can you imagine if the 96% of the White folks here at DailyKos speaks with the kind of passion Tim Wise speaks where the effect of our antiracist movement will be?
When you are in the bottom, you can only climb up and you can get up faster if someone pulls you up. Are you your brothers and sisters keeper? What are you doing about it?
I know one thing we have to do is VOTE this November. I sure as hell ain't going to give the keys back to a bunch of hate filled souls. You can give me a Democrat any day of the week and twice on Sunday. The other side has made their view obvious and it is not American. It is the good ole boys club they seek. Can't have that.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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"People who had the means & had the education started moving out of what had been the historic Black neighborhoods." NPR: 'Disintegration' Of America's Black Neighborhoods.
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Writer Eugene Robinson grew up in a segregated world. His hometown of Orangeburg, S.C., had a black side of town and a white side of town; a black high school and a white high school; and "two separate and unequal school systems," he tells NPR's Steve Inskeep.
But things are different now. Just look at the nation's capital — home to the first black U.S. president, a large black middle class and many African-Americans who still live in extreme poverty.
Robinson details the splintering of African-American communities and neighborhoods in his new book, Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America.
His story starts in America's historically black neighborhoods, where segregation brought people of different economic classes together. Robinson says that began to change during the civil rights era.
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Black women and other people of color have been disproportionately affected by the policy -- and as one woman's story illustrates, just the threat of discovery can take a terrible toll. The Root: 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Hurts African-American Women the Most.
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During the recent heated debates on Capitol Hill about repealing "Don't ask, don't tell," former Army Sgt. Tracey L. Cooper-Harris sent a poignant letter to President Barack Obama urging him to "do the right thing."
Cooper-Harris, who is black, wrote in the May 10 letter that her male compatriots sexually blackmailed her as a teenager to guard her secret of being gay. "The signal from command was clear: being gay was a far more serious offense in the military than sexually harassing a fellow service member," she wrote. "I ultimately chose what I believed was the best decision for me at the time. I let these men have their way with me in exchange for their silence."
Cooper-Harris is not alone in her desire to see the law repealed. But as an African American woman in the military, she had particular reason for concern. Since "Don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) was passed in 1993 under the Clinton administration, the law has proved to be most damaging to black women and other people of color serving in the military, according to a study released in 2003 by the Washington, D.C.-based Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN).
African-American women were discharged under DADT at almost three times the rate at which they serve in the military, according to the report, which looked at discharge numbers for 2001, the most recent ones available for black service women. Although black women made up less than 1 percent of service members, they represented 3.3 percent of those discharged under the policy, the report says.
Getty Images
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Dog whistle time. The Washington Informer: Contradictions of Fear of the African American Influence in a "Post-Racial" America.
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During a recent interview with Rolling Stone, President Obama was asked about his musical preferences, he replied in part, "My iPod now has about 2,000 songs...There's still a lot of Stevie Wonder, a lot of Bob Dylan, a lot of Rolling Stones, a lot of R&B, a lot of Miles Davis and John Coltrane...a lot of classical music. ...my rap palate has greatly improved. Jay-Z used to be sort of what predominated, but now I've got a little Nas and a little Lil Wayne and some other stuff, but I would not claim to be an expert..."
Soul, folk, rock, R&B, jazz, "A lot of classical", and some rap; sounds like a fairly diverse musical palate. This represents the musical tastes of a number of American’s of the president’s generation, especially those with school age children. Diversity is good, unless you are reading the Fox Nation website.
According to the Huffington Post, Fox Nation took this description and briefly posted the headline, "President of the United States Loves Gansta Rap" with photos of tattoo laden Nas and Lil’ Wayne thrown in for "flava".
How does the president’s acknowledgement of an appreciation for rap music become a love for "Gansta Rap"? This is not too subtle code language from conservative media that "deracialized" President Obama has a link to the Black community, an affinity to some element of African American culture and this is something to fear.
Here is another example in a long list of examples of how some elements in the media and politics continue to play to the fears of too many in America by fanning the flames of prejudice and racism.
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All I can say is yup.. The Root: The Benefits of Being a White Ridiculous Candidate.
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Tea Party-movement-backed Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell today released a campaign ad in which she tells Delaware voters directly, "I’m not a witch." I’m no advertising expert, but it seems to me that if you’ve got to remind people that you’re not a witch, your problems are bigger than a 30-second spot can handle.
Besides refuting her time spent in witchery—"But not in a coven!" she asserts—O’Donnell has fessed up to decrying abortion as "adultery," proclaiming that we should cut funding to AIDS research, implying that she has classified information about China's plans for world domination and saying that she’s not sure she would lie to Nazis to protect a Jew. Also spotty is O’Donnell’s education record, which she appears to have fudged twice—charges she denies.
Whatever you think of her religious beliefs, it seems pretty obvious that O’Donnell is unfit for major elected office. So unfit, in fact, that I can’t help comparing her with this year’s other most famous amateurish candidate: Alvin Greene.
Running in South Carolina, Greene surprised everyone back in June when he won the Democratic Senate primary and the opportunity to take on incumbent Jim DeMint. Like O’Donnell, Greene had no experience in office, a controversial back story and a propensity for saying crazy things in public. Unlike O’Donnell, however, the political machine abandoned him almost as soon as he won. The DSCC refused to put any money into his campaign, and South Carolina Democratic officials asked him to drop out of the race. Some people even accused Greene of cheating. Watching O’Donnell’s meteoric rise to fame, I’m left wondering how she’s become a major talking point on cable news a month before the election, while Greene was almost literally laughed into hiding.
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Black Voices: 'Congo' Actor Ezra Mabengeza Channels Freedom Fighter Patrice Lumumba.
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'A Season in the Congo', written by the late Aime Cesaire and produced by Jackie Jeffries and Rico Speight, explores the nation's first year of independence and the rise and fall of Patrice Lumumba.
Through archival footage, music, and magnetic performances, the play unfolds in such a beautifully honest and heart-wrenching way.
To know the story of the Congo is to know the scars left by acts of inhumanity. It can leave one to ponder why some among us harbor the murderous motivation to control as many of the earth's natural resources as possible, and to wonder for how long. But, pain is not the only story.
There is also the story of resilience, often untold, but nevertheless present.
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After 50 years of independence, the West African country is finally severing ties with its former colonial master. Al Jazeera: An African renaissance in Senegal?
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Senegal, a country on the Western edge of Africa with a predominantly Muslim population, has a fully functioning democracy and has largely escaped the separatist violence that has hampered the progress of several of its neighbours.
But it is not without its problems. Its economy has recently faltered and there are suggestions that its cherished tradition of democracy is under threat, with the president allegedly grooming his son to succeed him.
On the eve of the 50th anniversary of Senegal's independence from France, Abdoulaye Wade, Senegal's president, made an announcement confirming what many knew already: The special link between Senegal and its former colonial master was over.
"I solemnly declare that Senegal is retaking, from this day, the 4th of April 2010, at zero hours, all the bases previously held, on our soil, by France, and intends to exercise its sovereignty there, which lies in principle in the present declaration," he said.
The relationship between the two countries dates back to the 17th century, when Africans snatched from their towns and villages walked through the 'door of no return' on Goree Island and boarded slave ships heading for the New World.
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In my current job, I have to focus quite a bit on food allergies. Health Day: Black Male Children Have Highest Rates of Food Allergies.
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Children, males and blacks have the highest rates of food allergies in the United States, and the risk is 4.4 times higher among male black children than in the general population, a new study finds.
Overall, 7.6 million people (2.5 percent of the U.S. population) are estimated to have food allergies, according to researchers who analyzed data from 8,203 people, aged 1 year to 60 and older, who were included in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in 2005-06. The participants had their blood tested for antibodies to four specific foods: peanuts, milk, eggs and shrimp.
Food allergy rates were highest (4.2 percent) among children aged 1 to 5 and lowest (1.3 percent) among adults older than 60. Compared to the general population, food allergies were two times more common among children aged 1 to 19, three times more common among blacks and two times more common among males.
Peanut allergy was the most common food allergy, affecting 1.3 percent of the survey participants. Rates of peanut allergy were 1.8 percent in children aged 1 to 5, 2.7 percent in children aged 6 to 19, and 0.3 percent in adults.
The study, which appears in the November issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, was funded by the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
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The Judge "AD Catanzarite for some reason comes up with I think ridiculous pleas whenever it's a young white guy. I'm just telling you what my observation is." PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW: Allegheny County judge: 'White boys' given deals
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An Allegheny County judge rejected a plea deal in a criminal case Tuesday after he accused a prosecutor of only offering deals to "white boys."
Common Pleas Judge Joseph K. Williams, who is black, rejected a deal to allow a white defendant -- Jeffery McGowan, 24, of Franklin Park -- to get three months of probation for an incident in which he is accused of trying to fight with police after a traffic stop.
"(Assistant District Attorney Brian) Catanzarite for some reason comes up with I think ridiculous pleas whenever it's a young white guy," Williams said. "I'm just telling you what my observation is. If this had been a black kid who did the same thing, we wouldn't be talking about three months' probation."
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Journalist Dan Charnas discusses his new book The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop. The Atlanta Post: ChicagoNew YorkWashington, D.C.The Economic Machine Behind Hip-Hop.
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It’s no secret that Hip-hop is now a multi-billion dollar industry and the predominant popular culture of global youth. It has birthed CEOs like Sean Carter, Damon Dash, Lyor Cohen, Steve Stout, Chris Lighty, Sean Combs and early pioneers like Charlie Stettler and Russel Simmons. Although hip-hop’s cultural influence has been documented twice over, there has never been a comprehensive look into the economic machine behind hip-hop from it’s earlier humble beginnings to its present day status as a musical juggernaut. The Atlanta Post sat down with Dan Charnas, author of The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop to discuss corporate America’s early flirtations with hip-hop, the evolution of the record deal, corporate appropriation of rap music, and hip-hop’s influence on corporate marketing.
Why did you think it was so important to chronicle the business acumen of rappers and the evolution of the rap industry?
The real reason is that nobody’s ever told that story of the people who work behind the scenes. For decades what was a street culture nobody even knew about and what is now the world’s predominant pop culture. Part of it comes from me having been part of the industry for about 15 years working for a record company and working with the Source [Magazine]. Another part comes from being a journalist and being really fond of the great writing that’s been done by hip-hop by writers like Jeff Chang, who wrote the best book ever on HipHop, focusing primarily on its cultural history.
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[] Conservatives Proclaim Year of the Black Republican. Again. by Avenging Angel.
[] Rachel Maddow: Bill O'Reilly is "a race-baiting f*ck." by MinistryOfTruth.
[] Haitian Farmers: Growing Strength to Grow Food by Bev Bell.
[] Village Voice: White America Has Lost Its Mind by Vyan