Morehouse graduates in the rain cheer President Obama at commencement address (Pete Souza)
President Obama and the Mighty Men of Morehouse
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver Velez
If you have not yet listened to, and watched President Obama delivering the commencement address at Morehouse College, on Sunday, May 19, 2013 it is posted here for you to absorb and view.
This was the 129th commencement ceremony at Morehouse, an historically black college (HBCU). What made it different from all of the ones that preceded it, was that the "Mighty Men" of Morehouse were being addressed by the President of the United States. Black man to young black men.
Morehouse is an all-male campus in Atlanta GA, part of a network of HBCUs there.
Those of us who grew up in the black community, and aspired to a college education refer often to "The Morehouse Mystique".
It has proven over the years to be more than mystique. Morehouse has graduated some of the finest men to lead our community, in the liberal arts, sciences and political activism.
The list of alumni from Morehouse is stellar, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and includes Julian Bond, Maynard Jackson, Lerone Bennett, Jr., Howard Thurman, Spike Lee, Samuel L. Jackson, Edwin Moses, Louis W. Sullivan, and David Satcher.
Morehouse faculty have also contributed greatly to shaping not only Morehouse students, but the world of academic knowledge.
According to Morehouse's own "About Us" page, Morehuse was the first historically black college to produce a Rhodes Scholar. The school's first Rhodes Scholar, Nima Warfield, was named in 1994, the second, Christopher Elders, in 2001. A third, Oluwabusayo "Topé" Folarin, was named in 2004.
Morehouse has been home to seven Fulbright Scholars, Damon M. Lombard (1995), John Thomas (2004), Jason T. Garrett (2006), Morgan C. Williams, Jr. (2006), Lasean Brown (2008), Eric R. Baylor (2008) and Wendell H. Marsh (2009).
Since 1999, Morehouse has produced five Marshall Scholars, five Luce Scholars, four Watson Fellows and 2010 White House Fellow, Erich Caulfield. Previous Watson Fellows include, Craig Marberry '81, Kenneth Flowers '83 and Lynn P. Harrison III '79.
President Barack Obama holds an honorary doctorate from Morehouse.
I often hear people speak of "the black middle-class". There would be no black middle class today were it not for HBCUs. Granted, post-segregation, black Americans can now attend what were mostly or all-white institutions of higher learning, a select few did so in pre-Civil War America, but the bulk of our doctors, lawyers, educators, scientists, writers, theologians, and leadership graduated from campuses like Morehouse, north and south.
My parents met at an HBCU. My aunts and uncles and great aunts and uncles all attended and graduated from HBCUs. Some were the children of enslaved men and women. I attended an HBCU too.
In case you are wondering—yes, HBCUs accept white, latino, asian and Native American students. Always have. Many were a haven for Jewish students and scholars when the Ivy League schools had a Jewish quota (see Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow). Morehouse had a white valedictorian in 2009.
Morehouse differs from the rest of the HBCUs in one respect. It is all male. Its sister campus is Bennett College, in Greensboro, NC and it is often linked with Spelman College in Atlanta.
Given the history of what has been done to black men in America, Morehouse continues to meet the challenge of graduating black men who will give back to their communities.
PREPARING YOUNG MEN TO CHANGE THE WORLD
With the right resources, politicking or posturing, anyone can be a leader. Right?
Wrong. At Morehouse, we are redefining the meaning of leadership. It’s not about attaining the highest title or position, but about attaining skills such as compassion, civility, integrity and even listening. Morehouse is poised to become the epicenter of ethical leadership as we continue to develop leaders who are spiritually disciplined, intellectually astute and morally wise.
And leadership first begins at home. Nearly three-fourths of our students volunteer within the community. This volunteerism connects them to their communities and helps them see that, as individuals and as a squadron of educated black men, they can make a difference.
Many Morehouse students also travel or study abroad, awakening them to the complexities of a global community. In today’s age, ethical leaders must have an appreciation of different perspectives and customs, and must also be prepared to negotiate the discordant views that are converging from the four corners of the globe.
Morehouse is committed to training the leaders who will change their communities, the nation and the world.
This statement from Morehouse brings me to the President's inspiring and challenging address to the graduating class.
There has been quite a bit of media buzz about his remarks, from the right-wingnuts, and also from some corners of the white left, and a few black critics/pundits.
Read the transcript.
Listen to his remarks and the response.
Look at the faces of those in attendance.
I was struck by this photo.
One young man commented to youtube hate speech.
I am a Morehouse man, and so is my brother and one of my cousins. On today I am even more proud to be such. All of my Morehouse brothers on this timeline don't worry about the hatred. This is a victory today
I smiled in agreement when I read this blunt comment from
rikyrah over at 3ChicsPolitico, responding to a critique from
Tim Wise, who—Just.Did.Not.Get.It.
The Morehouse speech was for black people. The setting, the cadence, the ideas were for black people. PBO said the same things that GENERATIONS of black leaders have from Frederick Douglas, Fannie Lou Hamer, etc. The memory of that knowledge is in our bones..in our DNA passed from generation to generation.
The mother fucking special thing is…it was said today by the mother fucking President of the United States of America.
For those who don't understand, it is important to recognize that we face a dual battle in our communities across the U.S.—we have to fight external systemic racism, day in and day out. We also have to fight a battle in our own neighborhoods and homes to reverse the affects of that racism. We are mired in what
Fanon called "colonized mentality". We have been exhorted by leaders from DuBois, Garvey, through Malcolm X and Dr. King to deal with developing self-reliance and personal responsibility—
in spite of the walls and barriers of racism.
I was an activist during the rise of the Black Pride and Black Power movement led by students from HBCUs. I worked with my brothers to get them out of gangs, out of prisons, off drugs and to serve the people in Black Panther Party Rainbow Coalition survival programs.
I am pleased to see that our black POTUS echoed the words of those who came before him to these young black brothers who will help lead us into the future.
As their auntie, grandma, godmother, sister or daughter I salute them, and the President.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Jean-Michel Basquiat’s “Dustheads” sets auction record. Afro American: Black Artist’s Painting Fetches $48.8M in NY.
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A Jean-Michel Basquiat (zhahn mee-SHEHL' BAH'-skee-aht) painting has set a new auction record for the graffiti artist at a sale of postwar and contemporary art in New York.
Christie's says "Dustheads" sold for $48.8 million on Wednesday.
His "Untitled," a painting of a Black fisherman, held the previous record when it sold for $26.4 million last November.
This image released by Christie's auction house on Friday April 12, 2013, shows a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting titled "Dustheads" that could sell for as much as $35 million at a May 15 auction. Basquiat's painting has set a new auction record for the graffiti artist at a sale of postwar and contemporary art in New York. Christie's says "Dustheads" sold for $48.8 million on Wednesday. Photo/Christie's (AP Photo)
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Director explains how Venus and Serena doc explores the way their enigmatic dad shaped their lives. The Root: Intimate Look at the Williams Sisters.
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In Venus and Serena, the new documentary that hit select theaters recently, director and producer Michelle Major and her team dug into the lives of the Williams sisters during 2011. With unfettered access, the cameras caught the pair practicing with their parents, recovering from injuries with blood-filled IV bags and learning from John McEnroe when to curse out referees -- and Serena smooching with then-boyfriend Common.
But for all the behind-the-scenes access, including a moment in which their mother, Oracene Price, fusses after being questioned by a British reporter about why Serena grunts, many critics complained that the film doesn't reveal any new information for avid tennis fans.
"We've heard that, but we think it's incredibly revealing," Major told The Root. "We went into this because there was so much mythology and so many negative stories around these two women who deserved to have their stories told truthfully, whatever it was. Also, their father, Richard Williams, is portrayed in the media as [a] sinister Svengali who's 'puppeteering' his daughters, and we wanted to get to the bottom of that."
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The future of media must include all of us. The Nation: How to Fix Journalism's Class and Color Crisis.
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When I was a kid, my family loved watching science fiction films and television shows. Some of them, from Star Trek to Soylent Green, featured a multiracial band of humans, plus various sentient life forms. But in other features—let’s say the awesomely campy Logan’s Run—everyone (or nearly) in the future was white. My family suspended disbelief for the duration of the movie. Then, depending on our mood, we either laughed at or lamented the idea that anyone thought the future would be monochrome, except for the pantsuits.
Today I feel like I’m watching that movie all over again. This time, it’s called The Future of Journalism, and we can’t afford to suspend our disbelief. CNN recently published a promotional graphic saying, “Allow Us To Reintroduce Ourselves.” It featured thirteen on-air personalities. No one in the group was Latino, East Asian or Native American. The graphic included 2013 CNN hire Michaela Pereira, who is black, but so far unfamiliar to most of the CNN audience, as her duties as a morning host begin next month. Quite a reintroduction for a network once personified by Bernard Shaw, a man who gave a blistering speech at a National Association of Black Journalists Conference about the promise of journalistic diversity denied. (Full disclosure: I worked at CNN very happily in the mid-’90s.) Of course, CNN’s staffing is more diverse than this promo indicates, which makes it even more puzzling. Do they think this is good branding? Do we just not care anymore about the implications of race in this so-called post-racial world?
In fact, we are witnessing the resegregation of the American media. The 2012 annual survey of the American Society of News Editors found that while total newsroom employment dropped 2.4 percent in 2011, the loss in minority newsroom positions was 5.7 percent. Between 2007 and 2010, ASNE noted, the minority job losses were even more pronounced. In 2005, the Knight Foundation stated plainly, “Newsroom diversity has passed its peak at most newspapers.” A report by the Radio Television Digital News Association, meanwhile, found that in 2011, when 35.4 percent of Americans were considered “minorities,” only 20.5 percent of those employed in television were people of color; and, shockingly, only 7.1 percent of radio employees—in that medium, a sharp drop since 1990.
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The conclusions may be a little too broad, but their methodology is very interesting. Washington Post: The World's Most and Least Racist Countries.
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Some of the finding:
* Anglo and Latin countries most tolerant. People in the survey were most likely to embrace a racially diverse neighbor in the United Kingdom and its Anglo former colonies (the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) and in Latin America. The only real exceptions were oil-rich Venezuela, where income inequality sometimes breaks along racial lines, and the Dominican Republic, perhaps because of its adjacency to troubled Haiti. Scandinavian countries also scored high.
* India, Jordan, Bangladesh and Hong Kong by far the least tolerant. In only [four] of 81 surveyed countries, more than 40 percent of respondents said they would not want a neighbor of a different race. This included 43.5 percent of Indians, 51.4 percent of Jordanians and an astonishingly high 71.8 percent of Hong Kongers and 71.7 percent of Bangladeshis…
* Racial tolerance low in diverse Asian countries. Nations such as Indonesia and the Philippines, where many racial groups often jockey for influence and have complicated histories with one another, showed more skepticism of diversity. This was also true, to a lesser extent, in China and Kyrgyzstan. There were similar trends in parts of sub-Saharan Africa ...
* Pakistan, remarkably tolerant, also an outlier. Although the country has a number of factors that coincide with racial intolerance -- sectarian violence, its location in the least-tolerant region of the world, low economic and human development indices -- only 6.5 percent of Pakistanis objected to a neighbor of a different race. This would appear to suggest Pakistanis are more racially tolerant than even the Germans or the Dutch.
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When do we stop ignoring these types of problems? Naturally Moi: Michelle Obama Speaks at School with Tons of Rats, Leaking Ceilings and Paint Peeling from the Walls.
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First Lady Michelle Obama is making the commencement circles, giving speeches around the country to young people who are very excited to see her. Mrs. Obama made a stop at Martin Luther King High School in Nashville this week to speak at a school that has overcome a great deal.
In the only high school graduation speech the first lady is going to deliver this year, Mrs. Obama spoke at a school that has a serious rat problem. The school is also reported to have leaking ceilings. The dilapidated conditions of the school are a testament to the economic inequality that leaves many urban schools struggling, while suburban students are granted the lion’s share of the nation’s educational support and opportunity.
The event was held off campus in order to window dress things for the First Lady. Faculty and students protested the move, because they felt it important that Mrs. Obama see the conditions that the students deal with every day.
Principal Schunn Turner has even said that she has to keep her hand bag in a plastic container so that rats can’t get into it. She says that teachers have to put down glue traps to catch rats and they also have regular flooding and peeling paint.
“I have sent four emails in the last week about some rats burrowing in the ground out front,” she said.
“It is getting worse. I had no idea how terrible a building could be until I came to MLK. And it is surprising since we are a nationally-ranked school, and we have so many stellar students that the building does not look anything like people would expect to be offering a top-notch education.”
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
On this date, 21 May 996, Pope Gregory V crowns his cousin Otto III German emperor.
On this date, 21 1260, Kublai Khan of the Mongol Empire sends his envoy Hao Jing and two other advisors to the Song Dynasty court of Emperor Lizong of Song. While attempting to negotiate with the Song in order to resolve their conflict, Hao Jing and his fellow emissaries are imprisoned by order of the high Chancellor of China, Jia Sidao.
On this date 21 May 1856, Lawrence Kansas captured and is sacked by pro-slavery forces.
On this date 21 May 1861, North Carolina is 10th state to secede from Union.
On this date 21 May 1861, Richmond, Va is designated The Confederate Capital.
On this date 21 May 1863, the Siege on Port Hudson, Louisiana begins.
On this date 21 May 1864, General David Hunter takes command of the "Department of West Virginia."
On this date 21 May 1918, the US House of Representatives passes amendment allowing women to vote.
On this date 21 May 1971 - National Guard mobilizes to quell riot in Chattanooga Tennessee.
A common thread binds each of these events, on this day; almost eerily so...
All Their Stanzas Look Alike
All their fences
All their prisons
All their exercises
All their agendas
All their stanzas look alike
All their metaphors
All their bookstores
All their plantations
All their assassinations
All their stanzas look alike
All their rejection letters
All their letters to the editor
All their arts and letters
All their letters of recommendation
All their stanzas look alike
All their sexy coverage
All their literary journals
All their car commercials
All their bribe-spiked blurbs
All their stanzas look alike
All their favorite writers
All their writing programs
All their visiting writers
All their writers-in-residence
All their stanzas look alike
All their third worlds
All their world series
All their serial killers
All their killing fields
All their stanzas look alike
All their state grants
All their tenure tracks
All their artist colonies
All their core faculties
All their stanzas look alike
All their Selected Collecteds
All their Oxford Nortons
All their Academy Societies
All their Oprah Vendlers
All their stanzas look alike
All their haloed holocausts
All their coy hetero couplets
All their hollow haloed causes
All their tone-deaf tercets
All their stanzas look alike
All their tables of contents
All their Poet Laureates
All their Ku Klux classics
All their Supreme Court justices
Except one, except one
Exceptional one. Exceptional or not,
One is not enough.
All their stanzas look alike.
Even this, after publication,
Might look alike. Disproves
My stereo types.
-- Thomas Sayers Ellis
"All Their Stanzas Look Alike"
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