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Monthly Archives: February 2009

California Mayor’s Racist Email

28 Saturday Feb 2009

Posted by asabagna in African-Americans, AfroSpear, California, Life, News, Politics, Racism

≈ 9 Comments

Sometimes I think I’m living in a really bad movie. 

Dean Grose, the mayor of Los Alamitos, sent an email with this photo of the White House lawn covered with watermelons, under the title: “No Easter egg hunt this year.” It get’s better… he sent it to Keyanus Price, a local businesswoman and city volunteer… who is Black! It get’s even better… Grose stated he  wasn’t aware of the racial stereotype that black people like watermelons, so he had no idea this “joke” would offend her!

Note to “white” people:

  1. Nooses aren’t funny;
  2. Comparing us to crazed chimpanzees needing to be shot numerous times by the police isn’t satire;
  3. Associating us with watermelons (and fried chicken) ain’t a joke;

Grose has apologized for the email and stated that he will step down as mayor on Monday but intends to stay on the five seat city council.

I can almost see my Grandmother shaking her head… and hear her say with that familiar tone of disgust: “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” 

 

So much for the “Obama Post-Racial Beige Revolution”.

Our Own Black Shining Prince!

24 Tuesday Feb 2009

Posted by asabagna in Activism, Black History, History, Leadership, Life, Malcolm X, News

≈ 8 Comments

El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz: 19 May 1925 – 21 February 1965

Although I missed the anniversary of the death of Malcom X, I still feel obliged to pay him homage. Next to Jesus Christ and Rev. Martin Luther King, he influenced me in becoming the man I am today. I think I have read “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” by Alex Haley at least 3 times.  His whole life is an example and an inspiration for always standing up for what you believe in, as well as charting a new course when you come to a deeper level of understanding.

“I always had a deep affection for Malcolm and felt that he had a great ability to put his finger on the existence and the root of the problem. He was an eloquent spokesman for his point of view and no one can honestly doubt that Malcolm had a great concern for the problems we face as a race.” Rev. Martin Luther King.

“Happy Birthday Bob Mugabe” by Nkawzi N. Mhango

21 Saturday Feb 2009

Posted by asabagna in Africa, AfroSpear, Life, News, Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe

≈ 1 Comment

Dear Bob Gabby Mugabe,

I remember. Today is your birthday. You’re 85 years old today Bob. Today I am not engaging in any ad hominem. I’ll hit to the point right away. 

Many think. At this age you’d be as mature as Nelson Mandela, Kenneth Kaunda, Desmond Tutu, and other mature men of Africa who retired before reaching your age. But lo! You’re but an adolescent with all delinquencies that go with it!

Politically you are but an anathema, even a cancer. You verily have nothing to celebrate. The good thing for you to do is to grief for the shame and havoc you brought to your people. 

As you celebrated your 85th birthday, you prove how immature you still are. Firstly, the bitingly truth we got was that you wanted over $ 300,000 to be spending on yum-yum and other lavish and foolish stuffs. How dare you spend such a mammoth amount whilst your people are dying of lack of just fifty cents!

Another thing you did to prove your megalomania and immaturity is the detention of Roy Bennett the junior minister for agriculture. This besides dressing you down proved your chronic insanity and grandstanding.

We wrongly used to dote and revere you as a freedom fighter. We wrongly thought you were a lion of a man. That was then. We now know you are but a bloody old kicking ass waiting to kick the bucket. If you’re an animal, indeed, we’d call you a mongrel or mandrill. You behave like a chicken that eats its chicks. Shame on you time and again!

Continue reading →

Another Instance Of Racial Insensitivity

19 Thursday Feb 2009

Posted by brotherpeacemaker in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

delona

Some have interpreted a New York Post cartoon as comparing President Barack Obama to the fed up chimpanzee that went berserk and was gunned down by police drew criticism from racially sensitive civil rights leaders, elected officials, and others who said the cartoon reflected racist stereotypes of blacks people as monkeys and lower primates by people in the dominant community. The cartoon by Sean Delonas refers to the chimpanzee that was killed by police in Stamford, Connecticut, after it mauled a friend of its owner. Some added the fact that the cartoon suggests that Mr. Obama should be or would be assassinated. Some urged a boycott of the New York Post and the companies that will continue to advertise in it without voicing some kind of outrage.

Civil rights activist Reverend Al Sharpton described the cartoon as troubling given the history of racist attacks on the black people as being synonymous with monkeys. T-shirts portraying Obama as the children’s book character Curious George, a monkey, made occasional appearances among audience members at Republican rallies during last year’s election campaign, and a similar stuffed doll continues to be advertised online.

However, Col Allan, editor-in-chief of the Post, defended the work saying, “The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut. It broadly mocks Washington’s efforts to revive the economy. Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist.”

Maybe Mr. Sharpton is doing nothing but looking for more work because issues of racial disparity have shriveled up like the rest of the economy. But if the American people would take a more sensitive approach towards matter of race then we wouldn’t have this problem. Instead, so many people want to excuse even the most disgusting forms of racial insensitivity as just a prank or a joke or a private matter.

In the recent past we’ve seen people come out the woodwork to defend the bounty hunter who refers to his son’s black girlfriend as little more than a gold digging nigger out to take everything the bounty hunter has worked for. We’ve seen people come out to defend senators who stand in front of campaign rallies who point to the lone black person in crowd and very publicly used a racial slur in reference to the minority to a roar of applause. People defend white students hanging nooses off of school trees as little more than fun loving scamps. People jump to the defense of the talk radio program host who refers to black women as nappy headed ho’s. And people jump out of this same woodwork to defend portrayals of Mr. Obama as a derivative of Curious George because it is nothing more than the nature of the political campaign beast.

And that’s just the recent racial disparity that we tolerate. There are years, decades, even centuries of racial disparity, racial hypocrisy, racial subjugation, racial inequality, racial caricatures, and so much more that constantly portrays black people as the inferior of white people. We’ve gone through entire eras of institutionalized slavery, Jim Crow laws, separate but far from equal, white only conveniences and facilities, and a very long list of etcetera.

Because we as a national collective choose to avoid issues of race we can never meet the challenges of our racial dysfunction that continues to percolate beneath the surface. Black people can deal with a lack of education and employment and the like. For years, black people have dealt with issues of foreclosure and the lack of employment in the black community. But as soon as these conditions hit the broader, racially generic dominant community so thoroughly controlled by white people then we have to have a stimulus package. What’s good enough for the black goose is never good enough for the white gander.

If we were to ever make an honest, concerted effort to confront our racism head on we could perhaps get to a point where people wouldn’t feel so free to wear their racist fueled social impairment on their proverbial sleeves and others would not feel the need to wear a racially charged chip on the shoulder.

Unfortunately, to even make the suggestion that we should take the time to confront this issue as a nation of people with a common goal for a better future is to invite ridicule. Mr. Obama said as much last year when he gave his first speech to distance himself from Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Mr. Obama’s call for racial healing was met with derision from people like ultra conservative Pat Buchanan who responded that black people should be on their knees thanking white people for our perpetual state of racial inequality. And true to form, people from the dominant community defend other people from the dominant community who defend the racial disparity of the status quo.

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New York Post’s Racist Cartoon

18 Wednesday Feb 2009

Posted by asabagna in African-Americans, Barack Obama, Life, News, Racism

≈ 17 Comments

Those of you who are regular visitors here know that I rarely… very rarely.. swear in my articles. However sometimes I see and/or read something that makes me say… out loud… “this is fucked up!”

I caught this story about a cartoon by Sean Delonas in today’s New York Post. It referenced a horrific attack on Monday by a pet chimpanzee against a woman. The chimp subsequently had to be killed by police. The cartoon seen below, draws an obvious inference to President Obama:

It has caused Rev. Sharpton to state rightly, that the cartoon “is troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys.” Delonas called Sharptons comments “ridiculous”, while the Post’s Editor-in-Chief Col Allan said: “The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut. It broadly mocks Washington’s efforts to revive the economy. Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist.”

I simply say: “this is fucked up!”

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“Africa where first ladies wreck heck!” by Nkawzi N. Mhango

17 Tuesday Feb 2009

Posted by asabagna in Africa, African Women, Justice, Kenya, Leadership, Life, Lucy Kibaki, Nkwazi Mhango, Politics

≈ 2 Comments

Lucy Kibaki, the Kenyan first lady, recently caused mayhem. Shamelessly, she demanded written explanations from a minister for Internal Security, George Saitoti after inferno mowed down over a hundred poor Kenyans as they’re scooping petrol from a burning-over-turned-oil tanker.

Always quarrelsome and belligerent, Mrs. Kibaki blamed this calamity on what she referred to as negligence and insensitivity! Her take on the minister left many more questions than answers. Why did Mrs. Kibaki overreact so as to cross the line?  Is it because she takes Kibaki’s presidency as a family matter or the product of being smart?

Mrs. Kibaki raised eye brawls indeed. Many see this as pretending: she loves Kenyans and care for them especially Molo victims. But when you look at the root cause of these deaths, you find that Mrs. Kibaki is among the causes of it thanks to her husband’s complicity in corruption. 

If indeed Mrs. Kibaki loves Kenyans and cares for them as she’d like everybody to believe, why didn’t she advise her husband against stealing elections which act caused many deaths of innocent people not to mention displaced ones? 

If she truly loves Kenyans, why didn’t she face her hubby and tell him to stop being corrupt as he is to date? Isn’t this pure hypocrisy to shed crocodile tears? 

Continue reading →

One Response to “Nkawzi N. Mhango”

16 Monday Feb 2009

Posted by Maxjulian in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Excellent post and welcome to AfroSpear, Nkawzi . I only have a few minor quibbles; one is that we live in a post nation state era. The nation or nationalism is nothing but a spell that is continually cast on us to keep our heads focused on a “Bloods/Crips” scenario or blood feud mentality.  Just like the Jihad/Islam/Christianity dust up: it ain’t nuthin’ but a mind game played on superstitious, gullible “believers” who can’t see outside of their religious shoebox.

The nation-state is a part of this mass hypnosis which manipulates us into continuing to identify with a flag, our particular country’s history, our principles, or our economics. Identify with death, rather than life, with machines rather than people or non-human animals.  Meanwhile, global capital slithers like a snake within, behind, over and underneath borders of every political stripe, seducing the nationalist/scientific socialist/Marxist Leninist/fake communist who has only self-preservation and pocket change on their agenda, forilla.

Actually, globalism is more like Zyklon B, the gas used in the gas chambers in Nazi Germany; as it wafts into the airspace of these alleged “countries, it snuffs out the people on the lowest rung and makes those just above beasts of burden for foreign capitalists.  Their labor does not support the development of their countries own so-called economy, but lines the pockets of some banker who in turn is bailed out and enriched by the poor and middle class of America.

What is an economy but an invention to enrich one at the expense of another? We could simply feed and clothe everyone on the planet without a care for castles and Benz’ and other swag.  Before economies and Ipods, there was land, held in common, respected, tilled, but cared for and available to all. Sure, there was static between tribe or clan; but the bottomline was, we were all tied to the land in a wholistic way. The advent of private property, that first division where someone believed that they had a right to more than another, a greater need than someone else based on their higher status, begat the madness we see. Until we get down to the root of this toxic, mendacious, evil system, we will simply be trying to ensure that we get first class passage on the Titanic. Fact is, we and this European concept of rape dominance and perpetual inequality must die, as Russell Means has so aptly put it, in order for the World to live.

Obama plays the game by making us proud of his and our color-coded achievement, while dragging the wheelbarrow of imperialism for his masters and our enslavers.   All of the hope invested in him is just another part of the slick-ass marketing machine, marketing us “reality” and this “perfect, democrat system”, which is destroying the planet. The world can’t stand anymore of our greedy, myopic, braindead hope?!

“Oh what a rat race!”

“I Will Buy Your Monkey” from Elizabeth Crockett Hicks

15 Sunday Feb 2009

Posted by asabagna in AfroSpear, Business, Economics, Life, News, Politics, U.S.A, Wallstreet Bailout

≈ 7 Comments

Once upon a time a man appeared in a village and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each.

The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest and started catching them. The man bought thousands at $10 and as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort. He next announced that he would now buy monkeys at $20 each. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again.

Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to
their farms. The offer increased to $25 each and the supply of monkeys
became so scarce it was an effort to even find a monkey, let alone catch it!
The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50 each!

However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant
would buy on his behalf. In the absence of the man, the assistant told the
villagers, “Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has already collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.

The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys for 700 billion dollars. 

They never saw the man or his assistant again, only lots and lots of monkeys! 

Now you have a better understanding of how the WALL STREET BAILOUT PLAN WILL WORK !!!!

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