The epitome of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The man not only preached peace, it oozed from his every orifice. When the white establishment notched up its machine of violence and oppression, when the police were wielding their batons and letting dogs maul peaceful protestors, when white men bombed black churches under the cover of darkness and killed four little black girls, when defenders of white supremacy hid in the shadows and aimed their weapons of destruction at men who only wanted equality, Dr. King’s philosophy was to love those who meant us harm. Violence was not the answer. A true man of peace would know better.

When I think of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the last thing I would think of would be a person who would condone war as a means to peace. Although it is believed that war is an unavoidable part of the human social condition, people who initiate wars, people who contribute to wars, people who escalate wars, people who dream of wars, aren’t usually thought of as Nobel Peace Prize contenders. While we might appreciate our soldiers, nobody gets the Peace Prize for their ability to kill and win wars. If that was the case, J. Robert Oppenheimer would’ve won the prize for being the father of the atomic bomb. And companies like Lockheed and Boeing would be consistent Peace Prize contenders and winners for their latest and greatest killing machine with exponentially more fire power than last year’s weapon of destruction.

Normally, the Peace Prize is aimed squarely at people who have demonstrated an unwavering objective towards peace. Dr. King preached incessantly about turning the other cheek. One has to admit, that sounds like someone who is doing their damnedest to keep the peace and is worthy of being recognized as such.

President Barack Obama is no man of peace. He has demonstrated time and time again that he has no real desire to work for an end to war. His whole response to the status quo of inequality and subjugation is to look the other way or to simply do what the majority of people want in order to keep whatever remains of his popular appeal. For a black man to become President of the United States, it wouldn’t look good if he supported the black community. These days, a President of the United States has to keep the status quo of racial inequality that is becoming more and more popular as more people try to convince everyone that racism is a thing of the past regardless of the inequality that continues to manifest. A man of peace would not be afraid to talk about inequality because a man of peace isn’t searching for status or material wealth or power or anything else that might be an impetus for war.

A man of peace does not fight a war in an oxymoronic bid for peace. A man who fights war is a man trying to kill, maim, and obliterate his opponents into silence or submission. The peace that is gained is the peace of intimidation and domination. It’s the kind of peace that a parent might gain from their child with a painful slap across the child’s face. It’s the kind of peace a man or woman gains from their significant other when he or she is aggressive and regularly uses violence to enforce their way. It is the kind of peace that comes not from understanding but from overwhelming power and an ability to conquer. A man of peace does not stand up to accept a globally recognized prize of peace with a promise to escalate war.

If Mr. Obama did not hold the key to the most destructive war machine on the face of the planet, his appetite for war would be much different. But since we have confidence in our ability to kill with utter force, we can afford to escalate hostilities on armies with only a fraction of our troops, strength, destructive capability, or our wealth. It is always far easier to escalate war against people who are poor and a people who are believed to have no redeeming values. On the other hand, a man of peace would find a way to keep guns silent and keep destruction at bay.

When the Nobel committee announced that Mr. Obama was the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, many people wondered why. He had no real record to point to show that he earned such recognition. Many people thought his selection was premature. But others said that he would earn his prize with his future decisions and accomplishments.  In the aftermath of Mr. Obama’s predecessor, a man who invited those who wished us harm to engage us in conflict with the infamous words “bring’em on”, nearly anyone who replaced him would have looked like a real peace prize contender.

But today, we see exactly what kind of man was selected. Mr. Obama is a man who refers to himself as a Commander in Chief at war. In many respects, he sounds exactly like his predecessor who professed to be a man of peace as he initiated two wars. Mr. Obama professes to be a man of peace as well. And as soon as he kills the enemies of the United States, as soon as we kill everyone who does not share the values or our high minded majority, we will have the kind of peace that is attainable only through conflict. But a man of peace knows that such a peace is a temporary thing.  A true man of peace doesn’t talk about peace while keeping the world’s mightiest war machine in his back pocket.

Oh, Mista (B)lack President, the first and onliest one, Neo for Niggas…I feel so much better about myself now that you in the White House.  I knows that you the President for ALLS the people, but I can just feel that special feeling you have for us every time I see you camel walk through the Rose Garden.

Though people been complaining about what you HAVEN’T done for us here at home, you jes showed ‘em wit your new domestic plan that added 35,000 new jobs for us. Sure, we gots to gots ta go Afghanistan, but hell, work is work, you feel me?!

So’, we gots to dig some ditches and might could catch some shrapnel in our azzes… at least we get some paper, plus 4 hots and a cot up in that bitch. Fo’rilla’, they say it ain’t much different than South Central on a Saturday night…’cept for the dry heat and the mouse-sized mosqutoes. But shit, that’s what guns are fo’!

Yes Lawd, you does look good in a suit and I feel your niggerish, cocky pimp-stride as you head toward the podium to talk that regal shit you talk. You ain’t carryin’ a tray and “fuck all ya’ll that think I should” is what you announce with each step.  “I AM the Leader of the Free Muthafuckin’ World BITCHES!”  and the hell if you don’t look the part.

There are times I must say, when your words, like the barbed wire ’round my back fence, leave me feeling knotty and all fuzzy in my dome piece.  But chu know, I take that as mainly my ig’nance of big things like strutural poverty, wars and genocide.

Not to complain, homie, but I swear I wished you’d put yo’ black glove on pushed jes’ a little harder on that health care shitty. I mean, my granny look like she got elephantiasis, her ankles are so GOT-damned big… AND she got what they call a “heart murmur.” Imagine that: like a heart can talk or somethin’. I tell you this medicine shit is complicated.

One thing I can’t rightly understand is how, if we truly are the greatest country on the planet, how come other countries have better, cheaper healthcare and dey live longer?! I saw parts of that medical movie by that bitch-type mu’fucka, Michael Moore, that showed how England, France and even muthafuckin’ Cuba(!) got health care that puts our shit to shame!! (I thought them fools jes played baseball and shit?!)

I mean, it costs a grand now just to take an ambalance to the hospital; in Europe, its like a cab ride. And those EU niggas live longer and some say betta. At least they not so fat.  I mean, Mr. Prez, why can’t we have what they have…or betta?! If we the best, our healthcare should be better, shouldn’t it??!!

But I know tho’ bro: first things first.  We gots to take care of Wall Street, the banks and shit, the credit card companies, cuz we is relying on them to give us that credit and that paper. I mean, where would we be without credit cards? I know I would be fucked up if I couldn’t charge all of my essentials to that plastic panacea?! Shit, I’d be fucked. And hell, a little interest is a small price to pay to get the really important things – like Xbox, Quiet Storm cd’s, diapers, formula, tuition – paid up and paid out. That shit is the real safety net a nigga needs in the 21st, right Prez??

If this Afghan thing don’t don’t work out though – I had a hernia operation and my sugar is bad – what I’m gon’ do? The rec center just closed down cuz of budget cuts and the Boys Club is busting at the seams. The good news is that they gon’ open a new detention facility on the outskirts of town and they might take me, hernia or no hernia. They gotta lotta beds up in that bitch so they gonna have a lot of jobs.

Still, I gotta funny feeling. Really, I’m scared. I’m going to church mo’ and mo’ and that helps. Like Phillip Bailey sung, “Keep—your—-head—to—tha—SKYYYYYY!!!” I’m doing it, boss! I’m keeping my head up, my fist down and banking my faith in the man upstairs and in you, brotha! I know you got our back.

Its kinda like what Michael Corleone said in the Godfather Part II: “keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” I know thas’ why you got all those slew-footed demons and shystie muthafuckas up next to you. You wanna know how they think/what they gonna do – like Hyman Roth, when you told him you wanted to rock Pantangeli. That nigga didn’t know if he was comin’ or goin’…and you pumped the steel in that bitch in the end.

I can’t wait until you paint the White House B-L-A-C-K!! All of us waitin’ for that, waitin’ fo’ yo’ signal. We gonna march on the White House with Rev. Wright. Yea, everybody knows that lil skirmish was all pre-planned to throw the Devil off yo’ Afrocentrc scent. Yep, the Rev. got his youth brigade of Afro-wearing fist pumping Panthers ready to spout Mao and feed chicken wings to Michelle on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Stay black, Prez, and keep bein’ that Supa Spook by the door. We know the signal to Go Black is comin’ and we’ll be ready.

Peace,

A True Believer

Let’s keep it real for a hot minute re: Balloon Boy. You know if the parents were poor & Hispanic or Black, the state would have taken all them kids pending an investigation. I’m just saying.

A Mexican woman recently had one of her children kidnapped from her home & was stabbed 8 times in the process. The state quickly came in & took the rest of her children then threatened to deport her.

I know, I know, apples & oranges, but still. My mini rant is over.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department released twenty four year old Mitrice Richardson at an ungodly hour in the middle of the night from a remote substation. The young black woman, an executive assistant and lived with her grandmother in Los Angeles, was arrested on September 17th from an upscale restaurant in Malibu, about forty miles from her home, when she was presented with the eighty nine dollar check and couldn’t pay. The restaurant staff said she was behaving. They claim that at one point she sat at a table of six other restaurant patrons and engaged them in conversation. That’s really odd because we know people never bother to try and meet other people. And by odd behavior the staff must have been referring to the fact that she was broke. That’s certainly odd to see in a Malibu upscale restaurant. The restaurant manager had to call the police.

When the police arrived, they searched Ms. Richardson’s car and impounded it after finding a small amount of marijuana. Ms. Richardson was arrested for possession of marijuana and not paying her bill. The police took her thirteen miles away to the Malibu/Lost Hills sheriff’s station. Her car remained at the restaurant. The young woman was then released at about one o’clock in the morning, without a cell phone or her car, on her own recognizance. She had no transportation and no way to communicate with her family. That was the last time anyone actually heard or saw of her.

Now, more than a week later, the police are still trying to find her. There have been few leads in her disappearance. One resident in a neighborhood several miles away from the sheriff’s station reported seeing a woman meeting Ms. Richardson’s description sleeping on a porch that morning, but nothing else. Ms. Richardson’s parents, along with their lawyer, accuse the police Friday of inconsistencies in their reports and say that Ms. Richardson should never have been released into the middle of the night so helpless. The police created an unsafe situation and handed Ms. Richardson to someone who may have done her harm on a silver platter. The police told the parents that they didn’t operate a baby-sitting service. Police also claimed that there was no room to keep the woman at the jail. But a check of police records show that there was only one other prisoner at the jail that day between 1:30 a.m. and that afternoon. What gives?

According to a statement by Captain Thomas Martin, most of the news stories have focused on her release from custody so early in the morning. But he wants the people to know that the Sheriff’s Station personnel acted appropriately and legally during the entire event. He claims his deputies acted compassionately and did their best to find someone to pay Ms. Richardson’s bill at Geoffrey’s, the restaurant, in an attempt to avoid an arrest. Although her family offered to pay the restaurant over the phone, the restaurant said that they couldn’t process phone call charges. So I guess we’re supposed to believe that the police searched Ms. Richardson’s car thinking they might find the eighty nine dollars in the back seat cushions or something. According to Mr. Martin, when the deputies didn’t find the funds, she was placed under a citizens arrest by the restaurant management and brought to the station for booking.

Mr. Martin went on to say that while Ms. Richardson was at the station, she was allowed to use the phone to call someone to pick her up. When she was unable to find a ride home, she was afforded the opportunity to remain in our custody until morning and leave at her convenience. When she declined, she was offered the lobby for her use all night, but she declined. Once she was processed and found to have no wants or warrants they could no longer legally detain the young black woman for the two pending misdemeanor charges. Mr. Martin says that he has thoroughly examined this incident and found his personnel acted professionally, compassionately, and within the law. But he prays that Ms. Richardson will be found safe and sound.

I find it difficult to believe that the police acted with compassion or professionalism to a black woman acting strangely in one of their posh Malibu restaurants in a predominantly white area by engaging other patrons in conversation. My experience has been that a black person in a predominantly white area is seen as a nothing but trouble. A black person better make sure he or she has their Ts crossed and Is dotted, Xs slashed and Os closed if they want to avoid trouble. The last thing that black people can count on is compassion from the authorities. We’re supposed to believe that the treatment given to Ms. Richardson is some exception to the norm.

So this morning I turn on the news and I don’t hear a peep about the disappearance of Ms. Richardson even though she disappeared over a week ago. What I did hear was more news about the formerly missing Yale student Annie Le. Even though her body was found inside one of the basement walls of the medical building she worked in days ago, she still manages to garner public attention.

The only way I found out about Ms. Richardson is a hookup from Dark Frosty, a visitor to my blog who sent me to Monie on the Outside. Obviously Ms. Richardson’s story just doesn’t meet the minimum standard necessary to become a national sensation for some reason. The compassion that the deputies of Malibu are supposed to have just isn’t reflected in our national community. A missing black woman just doesn’t pique our interests. It appears that if the black community wants to get the word out about this young black woman we are going to have to do it ourselves.

Eighteen year old South African runner Caster Semenya bolted to the world’s attention when she shattered records on the track. At the African Junior Championships in Mauritius she posted the fastest 800-meter run of the year at the time with a 1:56:72. When she competed in her first senior championship at the world track and field championships in Berlin just a few days ago, she clocked another record for the year of 1:55.45 and finished two seconds ahead of the defending world champion.

The wide margin of victory against elite runners of the world added to the speculation that Ms. Semenya could be a male. Officials from the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), track and field’s governing body for the world, will be conducting a gender testing procedure that includes an endocrinologist, a gynecologist, a psychologist, and both internal and external physical examinations. The IAAF director of communications, Nick Davies, says that the organization does not believe Ms. Semenya has been intentionally cheating but is the victim of a medical condition known as Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS). AIS is a condition in which a person who is genetically male but is unaffected by male sex hormones known as androgens. Some people with AIS will have a totally female body on the outside, but will lack ovaries and a uterus while others may demonstrate partial AIS and will develop more muscle mass and have more facial hair than usual.

To say that the rest of the track runners are praying for confirmation of the AIS gender malady in the test results is an understatement. Ms. Semenya literally blows away the competition with the ability to literally walk away from the rest of the pack at will. With respect to her opponents, Ms. Semenya does a very good impersonation of Jamaican sprinter and Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt, who outruns his male opponents just as easily with his own record shredding performances. As a man Mr. Bolt is immune from accusations of gender confusion. No one is going to accuse him of running like a girl, not unless it’s the bionic woman.

And speaking of the bionic woman, if Ms. Semenya looked like Lindsey Wagner, who played the transistors enhanced Jaime Sommers, questions of her gender would not have been an issue. But because she does not fall into the typical standards of beauty of keen facial features and long wavy hair, it’s easy to dismiss her as nothing more than a freak of nature undeserving of her success. If she looked more like the Florence Griffith-Joyner and ran with a long flowing ponytail and sporting the latest in Cover Girl products or was a perky bundle of muscle like Dominique Dawes then we would simply call her the winner and stand in line to swoon all over her.

Instead, we hear rumors that she might be more man than woman and suddenly point to her anatomy and ask, what gives? Does she really have too much muscle mass to be a woman? Some of her competitors look just as muscular. Maybe they should have their gender checked as well. Does she really have more hair than other women? I know for a fact that nobody questioned Brooke Shields’ gender when she walked onto the scene with her bushy eyebrows. But that won’t stop these fleet footed kettles from calling Ms. Semenya black. Italian competitor Elisa Piccione said that these kinds of people should not be allowed to run with normal women. I guess by normal she doesn’t mean slower.

Instead of being celebrated as the latest great athlete, Ms. Semenya is going to be systematically taken apart and studied all the way down to her genetic level. Her twenty third chromosome will be checked for the proper pairing and she’ll be put under a variety of technologically advanced microscopes so some of us can examine her every defect. Some of the test that she’ll be subjected to will be arbitrary and based on somebody’s opinion of what it means to be male or female. Seriously, what can a psychologist contribute to the understanding of this runner’s gender? The only reason she’s going in for psychological testing is that she did her best to win a race.

If this woman is going through a battery of tests simply because she won a race then maybe it should become standard procedure for all women who win a race to have their gender checked and their psyche scrutinized for their every Freudian flaw. Why stop there? Let’s avoid embarrassing the winners and the rest of the runners altogether by checking their femininity when they sign up before they run. But to wait until women like Caster Semenya are in the middle of experiencing their highest high, after they have put their best effort forward with astonishing results, after they have played by all the rules, while they’re steep in the middle of overwhelming emotions, to single them out for further testing simply because they won and don’t fit our expectations of how a woman should appear and act is some serious loser like behavior.

I saw my beautiful sister’s picture on Facebook yesterday. She’d attended some event, somewhere. She was HUGE. 5′ 4″ and pushing 2 and a quarter, maybe more, her features bloated, her smile distorted, the tears of a clown – streaming through the digital capture – when no one’s around.

What has to occur – in the heart, in the soul, in the spirit – in order to go from a size 6 to a size 26? And be comfortable with it, pretend that its cute, sexy, pretend that you are owning your girth and somehow, that is a virtue???

My other sister, a carbon copy, feigns acceptance of her fate…or is it resignation?

During the ’60’s and 70’s, both of these intelligent women wore the hell out of their Super ‘Fros, proudly, fiercely as did many beautiful sisters. I sat looking at previews of the film, “Good Hair” starring Chris Rock, saw the scene where Hollywood starlets admitted their use of weaves, bugged my eyes out at the aluminum can disintegrating in a vat of the product black women put on their hair — and into their brains and body!!

What kind of beating does one have to take, psychically, in order to become complicit in their poisoning, their burning and scarring, their embalming…

Their degradation?

I wanted to pick up the phone and I may yet still and scream at my sister, ask her if she does not see the squandering of her youth, her beauty, her health. Our family grew up playing tennis, so getting and staying in shape comes naturally. Becoming a human pinata is the most unnatural of behaviors.

Why and why do we lie about it?  Why do we kill and degrade ourselves and make friends with that degradation, that lie? Don’t even mention what KIND of food we eat to get the way that we are, food processed, genetically engineered, Stepford food, robotic, food made for human doings, not beings.

Take back your hair, your dignity, your self respect. Look in the mirror and see the rolls of fat as a crime, and yourself as an accessory to that crime and vow to do community service on your own damaged self.

Kick your chicken bone, relaxer, hot comb, chittlin’, Colt 45 – drug habit that you shake, sweat and sniffle over. We need rehabs for both gorging ourselves on bad food and the self-mutilation that we engage in every time a sister – or a brotha – gets a perm.

PERM? Like the Department of “Defense”, a perm aint nothing but another delicious delusion that tells us, that black is white and night is day.  Problem is, the perm also tells us that IT &  WE are beautiful while we’re wearing that garbage when it is the antithesis of beauty.

Beauty is what you had before they laid the conk on you in the barber’s chair…

And its what God gave you.

Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested!  One of the most respected African scholars in America was arrested.  What prompted his arrest?  Mr. Gates was trying to break into his own home.  He was having trouble with his front door.  And like some people who get locked outside their own home, Mr. Gates decided to get in right then and there the best way he can.

According to the news report, somebody saw a black man trying to break into a house.  The police made a visit to the house.  By the time the police showed up Mr. Gates was inside the house.  He was asked to provide proof of his identity and proof that he lived there.  Mr. Gates produced a driver’s license and his university identification.  But then what happened dissolves into a case of his side, their side, and the truth.

The police say that Mr. Gates became belligerent.  Imagine that!  Mr. Gates arrives from an overseas trip from China, a pretty good distance and a very considerable amount of time away, only come home to find his front door stuck and he has to force himself into his own home.  Shortly thereafter, the police are knocking at his door asking him to prove he owns his house.  It isn’t hard to believe that he was upset.  Dude was probably tired.  Instead of the police recognizing an angry man in his own home, the police want the respect from a black man that they feel that they are due.  Since the police didn’t get their props from Mr. Gates, they felt it was in the best interest of the Cambridge community to pull Mr. Gates out of his house and book him on charges that amount to being angry.

The spokesperson for the Cambridge police says that mistakes were made on both sides of this issue.  As is the custom when confronting black people, the police made the mistake of following the standard procedure of throwing any and all forms of compassion out the window in favor of the heavy hand of law.  On the other hand, Mr. Gates made the mistake of being a black man and thinking he was entitled to be angry on his own property.  Both sides have made key mistakes.

Mr. Gates is only the latest black man to be hauled off to jail or harassed by police for being accused of having a bad attitude.  And contrary to what a lot of people would like to believe, this is far from being an isolated incident.  I was listening to people making their comments during a program on the radio and a lot of white people were recalling their stories with police.  How come when they were harassed by police it wasn’t racist but this case was?  What makes Mr. Gates’ arrest different?

Off the top of my head I would say that none of the stories told were about police coming into their homes and arresting people when no crime was committed.  I would say that the fact that Mr. Gates identified his self and had proven that he was entitled to be in his house.  After such a long trip, it’s pretty reasonable to think that Mr. Gates was cranky.  Add a stuck door to the picture and it’s easy to believe that he’d be pissed.  Put cops on top of that and I could see him being angry.  But Mr. Gates has no criminal record and has a history of being a good citizen.  The fifty eight year old man is an asset to the community.  But good behavior doesn’t buy much these days.

Unless he had threatened somebody the police should’ve simply walked away.  But instead of allowing good judgment to prevail, the police felt that whatever damage their egos suffered from Mr. Gates’ anger required compensation.  A black man needs to have more respect for the agents of law.

People are entitled to their anger.  As a social collective we are told that our children are entitled to be angry with their parents, we are told that spouses are entitled to be angry with their significant other, some of us believe that we are entitled to give god the middle finger if we are so moved.  But then on the flip side of these anger management coins, many of us think that the lines of anger that are so crossable in other areas of our lives must be held fast and strong lest black people lose their proper regard for law enforcers.

Instead of people seeing this incident as the latest manifestation of the collective disrespect for black people, people want to sweep it all under the rug as nothing more than an unfortunate misunderstanding between two parties who both contributed to a series of mistakes being made that resulted in the harassment of another black person.  This was just another one of those cases where cops are too quick to trample the rights of a high profile black citizen by mistaking him for the typical black person without the resources to call attention to their abuse, and a case of a black man forgetting his place in our social structure.

WTF is this shit now?

I came back from a job interview yesterday and I was on my way to Tesco. I must say, I was hobbling along because I wore silly shoes, with a big hard wedge on them.

Two young black boys walked past me and one trailed behind the other like an ant. The one at the front said to me, in my face:

“Have you been having too much sex?

If my feet didn’t cane so much, I would have taken my wedges off and trust me, the police would have been there. Why in the earth is that acceptable behaviour ?

Yes, I was hobbling along because my feet HURT! Any person walking on the road can see that when a woman has been walking in heels for a while, she walks slower because them things hurt! I don’t have my Beyonce attitude nailed down yet.

It’s no big deal, but again it goes back to the whole idea of the easy street harassment of black women by black men.

Where are these boys’ fathers to teach them it is not acceptable to verbally attack women like that? The assumption of his question to me was that I was hobbling along because I am a whore.

WTF????

I would like to hear from sisters and brothers about why in the name this is continuing to happen.

Dallas Cowboy’s Video Shows

Disrespect to Civil Rights Leaders

 (link) 

 

 

 

12:31 PM CDT on Thursday, July 16, 2009  

Column by JEAN-JACQUES TAYLOR / The Dallas Morning News | jjtaylor@dallasnews.com

• E-mail

Martellus Bennett doesn’t care what you think.

Not one bit.

He doesn’t care what the Cowboys think either, so don’t feel bad. Actually, he doesn’t care what anyone thinks.

It’s obvious.

At one level that’s not a bad thing. You have to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything, as the saying goes. And you certainly can’t go through life trying to please other folks because you’ll never be able to do it.

But Bennett should have more respect for the sacrifices that tens of thousands of African-Americans have made so that he can do and say whatever foolish things he wants on MartyB TV.

Not just the sacrifices by people we hear about all of the time, such as Rosa Parks, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and James Chaney, but the anonymous folks who held sit-ins and organized marches and protests so that my kids can splash around freely at Cedar Hill’s Uptown Village on a muggy Sunday afternoon with a kaleidoscope of races.

Clearly, Bennett lacks this respect.

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You know what’s sad? Marty B isn’t a bad person. He’s a likable guy with charisma who could be doing something considerably more creative than videotaping what he called a “Black Olympics” – a fried chicken-eating, watermelon-eating and Kool-Aid-drinking contest with his brother – and putting it on YouTube for the world to see.

He’s just young and dumb.

Don’t get it twisted, because I’m not talking about Bennett’s intelligence. He’s a smart guy who does dumb things. This isn’t the first one. Trust me, it won’t be the last.

Cowboys PR director Rich Dalrymple must walk into his office each morning wondering if Bennett has left some mess he’ll be forced to spend a chunk of the day answering questions about.

The Cowboys already fined Bennett once for releasing a profanity-filled rap video on YouTube, but the fine was later reduced.

But when you’re young and rich it’s easy to give folks the finger. When your superior athleticism has caused you to be coddled much of your life, it’s easy to make light of stereotypes.

Now, some of you will ask what’s the big deal with the video because you found it amusing. Or harmless.

You’ll talk about how Barack Obama being the first African-American president is an indication of how far our country has come, which is true but we have so much further to go.

You’ll say Bennett was just having a little fun. You’ll say I just need to get over it.

Whatever.

I’m sensitive to the issue because my parents grew up in Nashville, Tenn., during the height of the civil rights movement. I heard stories about water fountains marked “white” and “colored.” I heard stories about movie theaters with segregated sections.

To me, the civil rights movement is real ­ not something that happened 100 years ago, seen today only on black-and-white images inside a dusty picture frame on a fireplace mantle. To me, the civil rights movement is more than a PBS special or an HBO documentary.

To me, it’s about real people.

Perhaps Bennett doesn’t realize the civil rights movement was just a generation ago for many of us. Two generations at the most.

Maybe he doesn’t realize that forced busing and desegregation were combustible issues in Dallas in the early ’70s when the Cowboys were shedding their reputation as next year’s champions and winning their first Super Bowl.

He probably doesn’t know Hall of Fame cornerback Mel Renfro filed a civil suit against the city of Dallas in the late ’60s because he couldn’t buy a house in a certain part of town.

We’re still talking about a country where many African-American families are celebrating their first generation of college graduates. Is there more opportunity than ever for African-Americans to succeed? Of course, but let’s not act like discrimination doesn’t exist.

That’s just dumb – kind of like Bennett’s video about the Black Olympics.

 

 

Finally Some Good News: Dr. J Has His Day On Court!

Tomorrow is the induction of my grandfather, Dr. Robert Walter Johnson, into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. If you have the Tennis Channel on cable you can check it out. Tennis.Com has rerun an article that I wrote several years ago about Dr. J’s life and my relationship with him. Check out this excerpt and follow the link below:

A Whirlwind Event

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Like millions of others yesterday, I stopped my life’s goings on to take part in one of the biggest celebrations of life that we may ever see for our beloved and sometimes misunderstood Michael Jackson.

Watching the celebration online was totally surreal & I can only imagine what the energy inside the Staple Center must have been like.

I was moved many times almost to tears but I stayed strong plus, I did not want to be all crying in public. I do have a rep to maintain.

Anyway, the point I almost lost it for the first time was when my boo Queen Latifah read Maya Angelou’s poem “We Had Him”

“Beloveds, now we know that we know nothing, now that our bright and shining star can slip away from our fingertips like a puff of summer wind.

Without notice, our dear love can escape our doting embrace. Sing our songs among the stars and walk our dances across the face of the moon.

In the instant that Michael is gone, we know nothing. No clocks can tell time. No oceans can rush our tides with the abrupt absence of our treasure.

Though we are many, each of us is achingly alone, piercingly alone.

Only when we confess our confusion can we remember that he was a gift to us and we did have him.

He came to us from the creator, trailing creativity in abundance.

Despite the anguish, his life was sheathed in mother love, family love, and survived and did more than that.

He thrived with passion and compassion, humor and style. We had him whether we know who he was or did not know, he was ours and we were his.

We had him, beautiful, delighting our eyes.

His hat, aslant over his brow, and took a pose on his toes for all of us.

And we laughed and stomped our feet for him.

We were enchanted with his passion because he held nothing. He gave us all he had been given.

Today in Tokyo, beneath the Eiffel Tower, in Ghana’s Black Star Square.

In Johannesburg and Pittsburgh, in Birmingham, Alabama, and Birmingham, England

We are missing Michael.

But we do know we had him, and we are the world.”

Maya’s (like we’re on 1st name basis) words are always on point and right on time. Her words are magical & legendary!

While watching the event I Tweeted live & it was awesome sharing this experience with others in real time from across the globe. A few of my Tweets:

• I’m sure the Staple Center will be filled with people just ready to jump into MJs casket. I hope they have it on lock down. #casketjumper
• This service would be over the top if Aretha came out singing “Trouble of the World.” That would break all the way down. #imitationoflife
• I’ll never forget when Lionel’s wife beat his ass. I haven’t cared for him since then. But I love the old music.
• When are they gonna open the casket?
• Al Sharpton either has a tapeworm or he got a gastric bypass. No matter what, he keeps it real & the perm is always fully coiffed & spritzed.
• Lets be honest, we’ve never seen a Negro’s funeral run this smooth. NEVER!!!! Its almost unnatural.

You know me, it’s hard to stay serious when things are hectic. I have to resort to bullshitting.

So after work, I jumped in my car to head to Detroit to record the vibe at the Motown Museum/Hitsville USA. Have a look at my completed photojournal, which also includes photos from Harlem’s Apollo Theater. The pictures tell far more than I ever could.

A coworker came by my desk to give me the news.

Hey Peacemaker, have you heard?
Heard what?
Farrah Fawcett died today.
Oh yeah, I heard about it a little while ago when I was listening to NPR.
So did you hear the other part?
The other part?  What’s that?
Michael Jackson had a heart attack and stopped breathing.
Over Farrah Fawcett???

And then I noticed other people in the office were having their own version of the same conversation in the cubes nearby and throughout the office. Michael Jackson was dead. Farrah picked a hell of a day to kick the bucket. The last thing a self important person like Ms. Fawcett needed was to be upstaged by the death of Michael Jackson. I went back to work.

It might be sad to say but I really could not care any less. Michael Jackson was the very worst example of a black person who really hated being black. While most self hating black people would be content to simply say that they have transcended race, Michael Jackson was the one black person that actually decided to do something about it. Michael Jackson stared at the man in the mirror and decided he didn’t like what he saw enough to buy a new white skin tone, a keen nose that stayed on his face most of the time, thin lips, and a drippy jerry curl to exorcise the kinkiness of his natural hair and eventually just had it permed straight and long. This was not a person happy about being black or who wanted to embrace his blackness. Mr. Jackson ran from being black in front of the entire world to see. Being black was much too painful for him to live with.

What is sad for me is that I loved Michael Jackson just as much as anyone else. Who didn’t? Who didn’t love to hear Michael Jackson sing? And I’m sure there were people who didn’t, but to hell with them. Everybody knew this was a seriously talented young black boy. The dude was crooning like a troubadour at five years old. Who shows that kind of natural talent just months after kicking their diapers to the curb? What was there not to like and admire? No doubt the boy was singing about things he truly didn’t understand. But his voice was so strong, so controlled, with such a good range, and so full of emotion that he could give you the impression that he knew exactly what he was singing about when he was singing songs like Got To Be There and Mama’s Pearl and I’ll Be There.

When Michael broke the stranglehold grip of Berry Gordy and Motown, he truly hit the stratosphere of stardom. Off the Wall, produced under the talented tutelage of Quincy Jones and released under the Epic label, was a phenomenal success for a debut album. And although the cracks were beginning to form in his blackness, his Motown roots were shining through.  The songs were soulful modern interpretations of the songs Michael Jackson grew up singing with his brothers. And we all would be talking about Off the Wall to this day if it wasn’t for the even more spectacular success of his follow up album Thriller. Thriller broke just about every record when it was released. But by now Michael’s true colors began to show and black was not one of them.

On a daily basis Michael Jackson got weirder and weirder. And his music started to suffer as well. You use to be able to sing to a Michael Jackson tune. You could snap your fingers and bob your head as you sang Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough or Rock With You. But I couldn’t sing some of his latest stuff if you held a gun to my head. Michael stopped making the kind of music you wanted to hear and focused on the kind of music that had to be performed with a killer iconic dance move. For sure Michael Jackson’s name is associated with some of the most famous dance moves of all time. Everybody remembers the moonwalk and the robot associated with the song Dancing Machine. Everybody liked to see him spin in place like an ice skater doing a pirouette. But the new music began to take a backseat to the new dance moves on the stage and the songs became impossible to simply listen to or sing with over the radio.

The music that made Michael Jackson famous evaporated along with his blackness. The new hybrid Michael Jackson that looked more like a scarecrow from a Japanese anime and his accompanying music could never compete with the older version. And instead of being content to let his greatness lie in the past the King of Pop kept trying to recreate a new phenomenon based on superficial glitz and glamour instead of what really drove his initial success, the raw talent and the music.

Yes it is sad to hear that Michael Jackson died. But the fact of the matter is that to me, the Michael Jackson I came to know and love died a long time ago. The caricature that took the talented Michael Jackson’s place has finally died as well. Maybe in his death he’ll get the peace he appeared to never have had in life. I will miss the Michael Jackson I fell in love with. I will miss the Michael Jackson that I thought I could identify with as an obvious member of the black community. However, I will confess that I will not miss the man that became better known as the King of Pop.

Rest in peace Michael Jackson.

Very shocking statistic.

Dispatches are showing a documentary tomorrow by Sierra Leonean journalist Sorious Samura about the increasing number of GANG RAPE, being committed by young black Men in London.

Samura notes in the Indy today:

In 1999 I witnessed a gang rape in Sierra Leone. I was forced to watch a group of rebel soldiers taking it in turns to rape a young girl in front of an audience of jeering men. It was the height of the civil conflict and rape had become a devastating weapon of war. When I moved to Britain I believed I had escaped such horrific sexual violence. As my Dispatches investigation tomorrow night shows, I was mistaken. Gang rape is happening here – and what I have found most disturbing as an African is that a disproportionate number of these attacks are being carried out by black or mixed-race young men.

Samura also cites the example of a young man who said:

One boy told me: “If she wants to go and meet a bag of boys then she’s probably a jezzie [slut], and if she’s going to a house it’s over – she’s going to get beaten [have sex].”

In other instances, as some of the victims in our film describe, girls can unwittingly walk into a trap, innocently visiting someone’s house to listen to music or watch a film only to discover that a group of boys are lying in wait.

Something as innocent as going to watch a film or listen to music, just kotching at a boys house crosses a thin line for some boys. This kind of behaviour of looking at a girl as a piece of prey, to try and trap her and force her to do something that she does not want, absolutely terrifies me.

Where has the lack of respect for black women’s bodies come from in London?

I have noticed recently in London the diminishing respect that young black men especially in poor boroughs have for girls. It can be something as little as intimidating behaviour at the bus stop, street harassment.

When did women and our bodies become the canvas onto which some insecure men assert their pseudo idea of masculinity?

For UK heads, Samura’s documentary is on Channel4 tomorrow night at 20H.

Someone asked what has the Democrats done for the black community? It is an interesting question to which I really don’t have a good answer. I know that the Democratic Party is more apt to increase minimum federal wages. But I would be hard pressed to identify anything that the Democratic Party has done that really helps the black community.

Then again, I’m hard pressed to point to anything that the Republican Party has done to help the black community lately. The party of Lincoln stood back while a hurricane obliterated the poor black community in New Orleans. I know that the conservative judges appointed to the Supreme Court by the party of the conservatives have given institutions directly opposed to racial diversity and opponents of affirmative action the benefit of judicial decisions that support their arguments regardless of how unsubstantiated reverse discrimination might be. It should be apparent that the party of Reagan supports the heavy handed approach of law enforcement and zero tolerance for people suspected of breaking the law in the black community but look the other way for similar or even worse behavior. While governor of Texas George W. Bush would condemn a man convicted of murder to his fate with the electric chair despite the lack of hard evidence that supports the conviction, but would turn around and start not one but two wars that have our soldiers paying with their lives in order to “protect America’s freedom”. I guess the freedom not to lose one’s life in an illegal and unjustified war isn’t one of those protections our soldiers are fighting for.

I know that the Republican Party, heavily influenced by the big players in the oil industry, is more likely to sit back and let Exxon-Mobile or Texaco earn billions of dollars of profit in a week’s time while the public goes broke paying three dollars a gallon for oil in the off season. And then these people look dumbfounded when the country falls headlong into a recession with a serious depression right behind. I know this is the party that is more likely to deregulate an industry so that their profits can go through the roof while the quality of service and products plummets. I know this is the party that could have corrected the sub prime mortgage mess before it became the bane of the global community but instead decided to let market forces get out of hand. As long as the president’s scope of understanding was limited to individuals losing their homes their attitude was that the whole problem could be fixed with people exercising a little personal responsibility. Who cares about a few dominoes falling? But now that the chain of dominoes has gained speed and has spread to infect the global community and now that we hang on the cusp of financial ruin we can spend the money necessary to correct this much bigger problem. A stitch, in time, would have saved the country hundreds of billions, maybe even in the trillions, of dollars.

I guess in the end the question isn’t so much as to what has the Democratic Party done for the black community. I think what is more pertinent is what has the Republican Party done to the black community. Neither party has done much for the benefit of the black community. Nothing much has happened for the black community since the sixties. But turn the question around and ask which party is likely to do the worst damage to the black community. The answer should pop right out at you like eyeballs in the dark in a caricature of the first black president.

Sherri Goforth, an administrative assistant to Republican State Senator Diane Black of Tennessee, thought it was appropriate and even humorous to distribute a racist image that shows all the Presidents of the United States in official like portraits with the lone exception of the first black president as nothing but a pair of round eyeballs standing out against an all black background. Ms. Goforth confessed that she sent the email to the wrong list of people. The implication is that there is a right list of people who should have received the image.

Of course people have defended the image. I actually read somebody comment that nowhere is it written that it is an image of President Obama, just implied. I guess that makes it okay. I guess that was supposed to be an image of any generic black man in a picture with all the presidents instead of the first black president. That makes sense.

This is on top of former state election director Rusty DePass of South Carolina issued an apology for his comments linking an escaped gorilla from the Riverbanks Zoo with the ancestors of First Lady Michelle Obama. Of course, people defended his racism saying that Ms. Obama believed in evolution so she must believe that the primate was related. And on top of that, Mike Green, an employee with Lexington Republican consulting firm Starboard Communications apologized for an online joke about President Barack Obama taxing aspirin because it’s white and it works.

The era of post racism is getting off to a seriously rocky start. A lot of people want to say that these are nothing more than isolated incidents. But I’m more apt to think that this is a much more realistic example of the true condition of race relations when the mask of political correctness falls away. And these examples are from people who have more than the usual influence on the mechanisms of government. Is it any wonder why we continue to scratch our collective heads in confusion trying to figure out why the state of the black community is in such relatively dismal condition? When people have such contempt for the first black president is there any doubt that there would be contempt for black people in general?

Reserve Bank mandate must be reviewed

26 May 2009

The Young Communist League of South Africa (uFasimba) fully supports NUMSA’s mass action to the Reserve Bank to demand the scrapping of the inflation targeting policy, cutting of interest’s rates and prioritisation of jobs creation, growth and sustainable development.

The YCLSA strongly believes that the strategic mandate and focus of Reserve Bank should be reviewed and be redefined to focus on job creation and to mitigate the impact of the global and capitalist meltdown crisis now being felt by ordinary South Africans. In South Africa, thousands of jobs are being lost and families are losing breadwinners, cars and houses are being repossessed by the Capitalist Banks as a result of capitalist financial crisis. The inflation targeting framework underpinned by capitalist principles and logic has failed to address the developmental needs of our country.

The Reserve Bank should be playing a key strategic role in job creation and meeting the demands of the working class and the poor within the overall political economy geared towards reversing the colonial and apartheid legacy. The growing inequalities and unemployment poses a major social and economic crisis not for new Jacob Zuma led administration, but also for the Reserve Bank.

As the YCLSA we demand that the Reserve Bank should not assume a posture or seek to be a ‘cartel’ to serve the interests of capital, but we need a Reserve Bank that focuses on quality job creation and poverty eradication. The policies of the Reserve Bank must be aligned to the objectives of the developmental State and agenda. This is totally in sync with the policies adopted at the watershed 52^nd National Congress of the ANC in 2007, the various Alliance summits and incorporated into the ANC led Alliance elections manifesto and now adopted by government led by President Zuma.

Issued by YCLSA

Contact:

Castro Ngobese

YCLSA National Spokesperson @ 082 567 3557

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A couple days ago I had a dream.  I was walking through a house with my family.  But across the yard there was an abandoned house.  I crossed the yard to the empty home.  When I walked inside the house and looked outside the window, the previously empty yard I walked through had a few trees with black people hanging from the limbs.  Thinking I was seeing ghosts I ran back outside.  But the vision didn’t go away.  There were even more black people hanging from the trees.  They were not hanging from a noose around the neck.  They were upside down with their feet tied together and arms outstretched to the earth.  As I tried to walk back to my family, I saw a white man in white robes looking like the pope sentencing more black people to their deaths.  I woke from my dream after that. I spent the rest of that day, and the next, thinking of our African ancestors.

Today is the day that Americans are supposed to spend in remembrance of our fallen ancestors who were drafted or volunteered to serve this country and paid the ultimate sacrifice to help make this country great. I think more of us ought to spend more time remembering all the unremembered enslaved ancestors who were forced at the end of a whip to serve this country and make it great without so much as a dime in compensation. Where is our national memorial to recognize the sacrifice of all the enslaved Africans and all the Africans who died in the middle passage?