Commentary, dopper0189, Black Kos Editor
As many of you may now be aware of by their absence, Black Kos Editors Robinswing and Amazinggrace have recently resigned. Black Kos would never have grown to what it is without their contributions and help, for that I will be eternally grateful. Because of some philosophical and creative differences, they have branched out into their own diary series. I would encourage everyone to check it out as both sisters are fine writers. With over 100,000 users, Daily Kos, has plenty of room for many views, and there should never be a feeling that the series are rivals, although it's sad to see them go Daily Kos inevitably needed more than one place for a "Black Voice", even though I must say I wished it happened further into the future.
My philosophy on life has always been shaped by my personal hero Nelson Mandela, a person who is both a warrior and a peace maker. I have no delusion of grandeur that I am anything close to what he is, but I respect his philosophy. He lead both the armed resistance to Apartheid but also showed a willingness to peacefully negotiate with his enemy. Reaching out to people who have insulted you is always hard, but as my father said, you don't do it for them, you do it for yourself. It's done so that YOU can have a clear conscience going forward.
Like Mandela I'm not a pacifist, I'm a peacemaker. The men in my family were taught both martial arts and how to fire a gun, but also the wisdom to know when not to use them. I have no problem defending my home, but fighting is a last resort not a first. That was my stand in something as big as Iraq, or as small as my personal life. I will always chose to fight when necessary and try to make peace when possible. Mandela chose the ballot when he could over the bullet even though he would have been justified using either.
I recognize we all have to draw the line somewhere. I have worked to oust Joe Lieberman from the party because I saw him as actively working to defeat what I think our party stands for. I would never work with the Tea Party to defeat the Health care bill even though I don't think it goes far enough, we all have our lines. But I have also worked on the campaigns of candidates who defeated my first choice in a primary, because I will never let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I have worked with groups even though I really personally didn't like their leader or members, because I try and serve the greater good. I don't have to like you to work with you, but we both have to respect each other.
Building bridges is about respect. When groups respect each other peace will inevitably happen. After Prop 8 Daily Kos was rife with conflict, but because the leaders of "the rival camps" respected each other, eventually peace returned. I have seen it after the 2004 and 2008 primaries. When groups and people don't respect each other there is an inevitable break. Several famous bullies have been chased from this site for that reason, but also several good people have left this site for others because of a lack of respect.
The same faith that got me out of bed early on Easter Sunday to hear a sunrise service by my Episcopalian Bishop here in NH, Gene Robinson, who is gracious under fire, the same faith that as a young man heard the words of my brother in faith Arch Bishop Tutu, is the same faith that drives me to try and build bridges. I haven't had to cross a bridge like John Lewis has, but he crossed that bridge, so we can cross ours. Yes when you reached out with a hand you may get a slap in the face, but that's why God gave me two cheeks!
We should have a place to argue (even fiercely!) learn, and grow. I don't want to come to a place where everyone has the same opinion, just where everyone is treated with the same respect. I have never been into blame games, because I'm a forward looking person. Sometimes I may turn off people because I seem not to care "how it started", "or who caused it", I'm always more concerned with "how to fix it".
During this latest fight on Daily Kos, I directly asked the asked the leader of the other side do you want to make peace or not? A direct one to one question. The results after that aren't on me, if you sincerely reach out and you overtures are rejected, a greater power than myself will be the judge of that.
So that's my philosophy on life. It may amuse some, it may come off as preachy to others, but it's where I stand. It's how I'll try and run Black Kos.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
Thank You.
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Todays News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Rolling Out: Lawsuit Claims Small Business Administration is Racist Towards Black Business Owners Wednesday, 07 April 2010 12:41 Amir Shaw.
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According to a $50 million lawsuit filed by Diamond Ventures, the Small Business Administration is discriminating against black business owners. The SBA, which is set-up to aid, counsel and protect the interest of small businesses, have historically denied black businesses funding that is backed by government guarantees.
The lawsuit states that black owned businesses received only 2.55 percent of SBA approved financing, only .49 percent of SBA dollars went to black owned businesses and two of 350 licensed managers in the Small Business Investment Company program were black.
Although blacks are more likely to start a business than whites, black owned businesses have the lowest survival rate of any ethnic group. Because only six percent of black owned businesses obtain bank loans, most black business owners are forced to use credit cards and mortgage refinancing to start a business. And due to the accumulation of debt and the lack of funding, only 39 percent of black businesses survive beyond four years.
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The Augusta Chronicle: Ebenezer Baptist Church begins work to open financial literacy center & fosters economic empowerment.
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In the segregated South, the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. knew that the path to equality in America was through economic empowerment, and as pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, he encouraged his congregation to have savings accounts and own homes.
His son, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., was also focused on the wealth gap as a barrier to full access to the American Dream. At the end of his life, the younger King was committed to ending poverty and opening opportunities for all citizens.
On Wednesday, two of King's children helped break ground on a center for financial literacy and economic empowerment at Ebenezer, where the elder minister and his son co-pastored from 1960 until the younger King was assassinated in 1968. The Martin Luther King Sr. Resource Facility will be the flagship for Operation HOPE, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization that educates underserved and low-income Americans about personal financial responsibility.
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NPR: Before Celia Cruz Or J.Lo, There Was Graciela
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As Latin jazz icon Graciela Perez-Gutierez drew her last breath yesterday morning in a New York hospital, her good friend Mappy Torres placed a pair of wooden claves in her hands.
Claves, of course, are two small dowels of wood. They're struck together to provide the two-bar phrase that is the heartbeat of Afro-Cuban music.
Mappy told me she did it as a symbolic reference to one of the singer's favorite songs, called "Vive Como Yo Vivo." It includes the lines:
Yo quiero cuando me muera
(I would like, when I die)
Tener las claves en la mano pa' gozar!
(To have the clave in my hands so I can celebrate!)
Graciela, who was known primarily by only her first name, had many friends awaiting her: she counted among her peers Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington, not to mention many other musicians from the generation that seamlessly fused Afro-Cuban music and bebop.
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Daily Californian Forty Years Later: African American Studies Flourishes
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The fortieth anniversary of African American studies at UC Berkeley is a milestone to be celebrated in every possible way. It is not only a celebration of an academic department but of a movement and the many people who made it happen and have kept it alive. Grounded in the broader national and global struggle for human and civil rights, the institutionalization of Black studies at UC Berkeley created the space for black Americans (and other hyphenated Americans) to be included in the university curriculum. In the process, it changed the fundamental character of higher education forever.
Since its inception in 1970, African American studies at UC Berkeley has continued to alter the very fabric of university life and teaching. The women and men of this field have integrated the study of the African Diaspora into the university in a way that all people can participate and feel a part of. Over a span of forty years, the department has evolved into an academic unit that is respected as a model nationally. That is, it has become an interdisciplinary, multi-racial intellectual center that hosts, attracts and produces some of the most diverse, complex thinking, scholars and scholarship in the world.
As an international center for global black scholarship, African American studies has hosted and produced many academic, cultural and political superstars known for their work on campus and beyond. Its faculty has included three recipients of the Berkeley Citation (June Jordan, Barbara Christian and Reginald Jones), one recipient of the campus's Distinguished Teaching Award (Barbara Christian), and one recipient of the Chancellor's Award for Advancing Institutional Excellence (Charles Henry). The department has also been a draw for many creative artists and intellectuals who have done stints at Berkeley over the years including James Baldwin, Alice Walker, Alex Haley, Gordon Parks, Ishmael Reed, Gil Scott-Heron, Julianne Malveaux, Joanne Braxton and numerous others.
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NewsOne: DR. BOYCE: Why Aren’t Black Men Graduating From College?
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Last week, the American Council on Education issued a report on the state of black males in the higher education system. The report reveals some interesting and disturbing trends. It turns out that black men are graduating from college at a rate which lags significantly behind other ethnic groups. When determining graduation probabilities over a six-year period, black males were found to have a graduation rate of 35 percent. This compares with rates of 59 percent, 46 percent and 45 percent for white males, hispanic males and black women, respectively. In other words, black men are a little more than half as likely to finish college when compared to their white male counterparts.
I have been a black man for my entire life now, and I’ve taught at the college level for the past 17 years. So, perhaps I can shed some light on the nature of these problems and how we might work to solve them. Some of the factors are institutional and some are cultural, so prepare to be offended by at least one of the things I have to say:
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The flap over Confederate History Month recalls the mean, mean side of the Old Dominion. The Roots: Don't Carry Me Back to Old Virginny
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When I was a kid in Washington back in the 1950s, I used to watch my dad's face change whenever we had to drive across the bridge into Virginia. His jaw would clinch, his eyes would harden, and his body would assume a determined but wary posture, as though he were preparing to enter a battle zone.
In a way, that was exactly what he was doing. In those days before the Brown v. Board decision, Washington was a segregated southern city, but compared to Virginia it was a racial paradise.
The Old Dominion was a place whose governors led the "massive resistance" campaign against school desegregation and where local officials like those in Prince Edward County shut down the entire public school system rather than allow black children to sit in the same classroom as white children. It was, in short, a mean, mean place that camouflaged its viciousness beneath a veneer of drawling Southern gentility while courtly so-called intellectuals like James J. Kilpatrick served up platitudinous rationales for keeping Negroes in their separate and decidedly unequal place on the editorial page of the Richmond Times Dispatch.
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This Week in History, by Black Kos Editor, Deoliver47
April 12
1861 The Civil War began at Fort Sumter in Charleston, SC, when Confederate soldiers attacked the harbor.
1983 Harold Washington was elected as the first Black mayor of Chicago, IL
1908 Lionel Hampton, vibraphonist and bandleader, was born in Louisville, KY
1975 Josephine Baker, internationally famed entertainer and star of the French Cabaret, died in Paris, France.
Tribute to Josephine Baker
1981 Joe Louis, world famous heavyweight boxing champion, known as "The Brown Bomber", died in Las Vegas, NV.
April 13
1873 The Colfax Massacre took place on Easter Sunday, in Grant Parish, LA. White mobs attacked blacks after an election dispute, and as many as 100 blacks were killed.
1964 Sidney Poitier won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance in Lilies of the Field. Poitier was the first black to receive an Oscar for a leading role.
April 14
1775 The first abolitionist society in the United States was founded by the Pennsylvania Society of Friends (Quakers) in Philadelphia, PA.
1976 William Henry Hastie, the first black to sit on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the first black Governor of the Virgin Islands, died in Philadelphia, PA.
April 15
1960 The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was organized at Shaw University during meetings held by young civil rights activists.
1929 Oscar DePriest was sworn in as Congressman (Illinois) DePriest served three consecutive terms and was the first Black Congressman from the North.
1889 Asa Philip Randolph, labor leader, activist, and organizer of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, was born in Crescent City, FL
1894 Bessie Smith, blues singer, was born in Chattanooga, TN.
1922 Harold Washington, the first black mayor of Chicago, IL, was born in Chicago.
April 16
1869 Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett became the first black diplomat when he was named Consul-General to Haiti by President Grant.
1895 C. J. Dorticus, inventor, patented the Photo Embossing Machine.
1973 Lelia Smith Foley became the first black woman Mayor in the US. She was elected Mayor of Taft, OK.
1947 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr. in New York City Jabbar was a star player for Power Memorial HS, UCLA and became the NBA's lifetime leading scorer. He led the Los Angeles Lakers to five NBA titles.
1994 Ralph Ellison, author of The Invisible Man, died.
April 17
1990 Ralph David Abernathy, Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) President, died in Atlanta, GA.
April 18
1955 The Bandung Conference, comprised of leaders of color from Africa and Asia, began in Indonesia.
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Voices and Soul by Justice Putnam, Black Kos Tuesday's Chile, Poetry Contributor
I had a fairly heated discussion with a couple of Bible Belt tourists
to San Francisco recently. I work at a small bed and breakfast on Nob
Hill and we get visitors from around the world. I usually avoid
political or religious discussions among the guests as they mingle in
our lobby during afternoon tea and sherry; but I'll offer my opinion,
plus any historical and literary expertise when asked. The Bible Belt
tourists complained that we "coddle" the poor here in San Francisco
and proceeded to recite biblical verse to show the error of such
charity. I reminded them that the city was named after St. Francis,
after all; and I came from a liturgy that exalted charity.
They didn't know who St. Francis was, but was well acquainted with
Leviticus; and shamelessly recited verse from his texts to "prove" the
inferiority of gays, blacks and anything Liberal. They were complete
"eliminationists" and I wondered why they came to San Francisco;
business, apparently. When I attempted to approach the argument from
a more secular and less religious stance, I was accused of being part
of the, "blame America first crowd." It was like being on Fox News,
only in the lobby of a small B&B in San Francisco, California. I'd had
enough. It was completely lost on them, but I recited the following
Michael S. Harper poem that is a small lesson in...
American History
Those four black girls blown up
in that Alabama church
remind me of five hundred
middle passage blacks,
in a net, under water
in Charleston harbor
so redcoats wouldn't find them.
Can't find what you can't see
can you?
-- Michael S. Harper
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