Keepingitreal

No black jurors in Mehserle murder case

What Obama and Drake Have To Do With Being Black

We're supposedly living in a post-racial society, but these days, "black" is being defined much more narrowly--and it has nothing to do with one's actual racial heritage. To sell out or keep it real? That is the question.

By: Thomas Chatterton Williams

I'm the son of a black father and a white mother. As a child coming up in the 1980s and '90s, I immersed myself in hip-hop style and culture, excelled at sports, rocked aerodynamic hairstyles, and spoke in the same florid body language that the older brothers at the local black barbershop were fluent in.

I played basketball fiendishly, and on the asphalt, other black players addressed me without thinking as nigga. Once or twice, some white person referred to me (also without thinking) as a nigger. I was black back then, period.

As I've gotten older, however, my clothes have started to fit slimmer and my interests have widened. And I can't help but notice that I've become less black to others. Even before Barack Obama's election made ours a supposedly "post-racial" society (the one-drop rule is so 20th century), the truth is that the criteria we use to designate someone as acting, or even being black in the post-civil rights/hip-hop-era often has little, sometimes even nothing at all, to do with a person's actual racial heritage or physical characteristics. Rather, this particular designation is often an assessment of behavioral traits, a judgment of cultural values and a subjective projection of what is "real."

The more I've thought about it, the more I've found it's at the very margins of race, in the shadowy figure of the mulatto, that the notion of blackness can be most poignantly illuminated. This is because mixed-race blacks--while occupying a position in the culture that is at once privileged and cursed--are the physical incarnation of a racial dilemma that all blacks inevitably must confront: To sell out or keep it real? That is the question.

Consider, for example, two of the most visible mulattoes living and working today: the president himself and the rapper Drake. Both of these men are the direct offspring of black fathers and white mothers. They both proudly define themselves as black. And they both have benefited in large and tangible ways from the fact that much of the rest of the world sees them as such--despite the fact that both were raised mostly by the white sides of their families and in staggeringly un-black settings (Honolulu and Toronto, respectively). SOURCE: THE ROOTS.COM

Texas Board of Education Says Hip Hop Is Not a Cultural Movement

By Boyce Watkins, PhD ~ The Texas State Board of Education apparently doesn't believe that hip-hop should be considered a social movement in America. They also decided to remove various areas of civil rights and global politics from their curriculum, to exchange them for conservative historic figures and beliefs.

After deciding that hip-hop should not be taught as a social movement, they also agreed to remove institutional racism and its presence in American society. To make matters more interesting, they chose to eliminate important references to Latino and Hispanic figures.

One Republican, Don McLeroy, tried to pass an amendment that would state that the struggle for Civil Rights led to"unrealistic expectations for equal outcomes." This amendment didn't pass.

I am not sure if you agree, but there are millions who believe that hip hop is certainly a relevant cultural movement and art form. There are universities that teach classes on hip hop, including Harvard University, which is a long way from Texas geographically, socially and intellectually. Hip hop has inspired social and political change, and has been a significant voice for urban America.

Not only does the voice for hip hop ring throughout America, it is a global force. When I traveled to Europe, China and Africa, I saw the presence of hip hop around almost every turn. People of color, despite what they think about commercialized hip hop, should find it offensive that such a significant art form has been ignored by the state of Texas. Additionally, the absence of Latino figures from the Texas educational system is especially embarrassing, given that they represent more than 1/3 of the Texas population. The Texas Board of Education clearly has a diversity problem, and it appears to be a case of arrogance breeding ignorance.

The bickering within the Texas Board of Education reminds us of one important principle: History is taught by the victors and biased by the lens of the teacher. By pinpointing various aspects of history and selectively choosing the angle with which we present the information to our youth, we are giving ourselves a license to control their minds.

When it comes to education, a liberated mind is just as important as an educated one. In fact, there are some cases in which educational institutions stand in the way of being truly educated. When you educate yourself and your children, make sure they learn what they need to know. Take them outside school walls to get the knowledge they need. If you let someone else control your child's intellectual development, you are giving up an unnecessary concession on their future.

To Court Blacks, Foes of Abortion Make Racial Case

ATLANTA — For years the largely white staff of Georgia Right to Life, the state’s largest anti-abortion group, tried to tackle the disproportionately high number of black women who undergo abortions. But, staff members said, they found it difficult to make inroads with black audiences.

So in 2009, the group took money that it normally used for advertising a pregnancy hot line and hired a black woman, Catherine Davis, to be its minority outreach coordinator.

Ms. Davis traveled to black churches and colleges around the state, delivering the message that abortion is the primary tool in a decades-old conspiracy to kill off blacks.

The idea resonated, said Nancy Smith, the executive director.

“We were shocked when we spent less money and had more phone calls” to the hot line, Ms. Smith said.

This month, the group expanded its reach, making national news with 80 billboards around Atlanta that proclaim, “Black children are an endangered species,” and a Web site, www.toomanyaborted.com.

Across the country, the anti-abortion movement, long viewed as almost exclusively white and Republican, is turning its attention to African-Americans and encouraging black abortion opponents across the country to become more active.

A new documentary, written and directed by Mark Crutcher, a white abortion opponent in Denton, Tex., meticulously traces what it says are connections among slavery, Nazi-style eugenics, birth control and abortion, and is being regularly screened by black organizations.

Black abortion opponents, who sometimes refer to abortions as “womb lynchings,” have mounted a sustained attack on the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, spurred by a sting operation by young white conservatives who taped Planned Parenthood employees welcoming donations specifically for aborting black children.

“What’s giving it momentum is blacks are finally figuring out what’s going down,” said Johnny M. Hunter, a black pastor and longtime abortion opponent in Fayetteville, N.C. “The game changes when blacks get involved. And in the pro-life movement, a lot of the groups that have been ignored for years, they’re now getting galvanized.”

The factors fueling the focus on black women — an abortion rate far higher than that of other races and the ties between the effort to legalize and popularize birth control and eugenics — are, at heart, old news. But they have been given exaggerated new life by the Internet, slick repackaging, high production values and money, like the more than $20,000 that Georgia Right to Life invested in the billboards.

Data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that black women get almost 40 percent of the country’s abortions, even though blacks make up only 13 percent of the population. Nearly 40 percent of black pregnancies end in induced abortion, a rate far higher than for white or Hispanic women.

Day Gardner, now the president of the National Black Pro-Life Union in Washington, said those figures shocked her at first.

“I just really assumed that white people aborted more than anyone else, and black people would not do this because we’re culturally a religious people, we have large families,” Ms. Gardner said.

Many black anti-abortion leaders, including Ms. Davis and Alveda King, a niece of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the director of African-American outreach for Priests for Life, often recount their own abortion histories (each woman had two).

Abortion opponents say the number is so high because abortion clinics are deliberately located in black neighborhoods and prey upon black women. The evidence, they say, is everywhere: Planned Parenthood’s response to the anti-abortion ad that aired during the Super Bowl featured two black athletes, they note, and several women’s clinics offered free services — including abortions — to evacuees after Hurricane Katrina. CONTINUE READING...

20-Year Anniversary of Mandela's Release From Prison

South Africans are observing the twenty year anniversary since the country's elder statesman Nelson Mandela walked free from an apartheid prison.  The anniversary is being marked with a symbolic march from the prison, speeches, and exhibits at museums.

It was a day few South Africans expected to see, Nelson Mandela walking down the road a free man and hand-in-hand with his then wife, Winnie Mandela.  He emerged to a rapturous crowd outside the Victor Verster prison not far from Cape Town, with millions across the country and the globe watching the event live on television.

There had been some debate among his ANC handlers that day about where he should make his first address, with many believing it should be in his home town of Soweto.  Jay Naidoo, then general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, tells VOA that Mandela chose otherwise.

"And at the end of all of this debate which he listened very closely to he said, I have been in Cape Town for 27 years, this is the place which has been my home for that 27 years, I will make my first address to the nation here.  And that was the end of the debate," he said.

And so in the fading light of February 11, 1990, Mr. Mandela came on to the balcony of Cape Town's city hall, and addressed the excited, massed crowd.  He reminded them of his words from the dock in the 1964 trial for sabotage in which he was sentenced to life behind bars.

"I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die," said Mr. Mandela. CONTINUE READING...

Is black the new black?

By: Keith Boykin ~ Blame the good people in the fashion industry for creating the endless trend of supposedly cute and catchy phrases about what is "the new black." The black they refer to, of course, is the always useful and timelessly classy color used in fabrics.

Whenever a new color arrives -- magenta, teal, navy blue or whatever -- it quickly replaces "black" as the new "black." In other words, it's the color or look that everyone should be wearing that season, if you believe the hype.

Now blame the pop culture commentators and trendy social critics for cleverly expanding the sartorial sense of color consciousness to race and identity consciousness as well. And with that volatile mix, you have the makings of a new controversy every year or so as each disenfranchised group -- the gays, people with disabilities, those who are overweight -- lays claim to the dubious title of most likely to be oppressed, or in other words, "the new black."Never mind the way in which this discussion trivializes entire cultures by reducing them to mere fashion symbols, the notion of forcibly identifying a vast group of disparate people by a single name makes no sense.

Today's African Americans were yesterdays coloreds, Negroes and blacks, and there's no one term that will satisfy everyone. That's why it's odd that author John McWhorter would suggest in The New Republic this week that it's time to "retire" the term "African American." He argues that using the term "African American" is "illogical" and borderline "disrespectful" to African immigrants. CONTINUE READING...

Reed is sworn in as Atlanta’s mayor

“Thank you for allowing me the privilege of standing before you today as the 59th Mayor of the great City of Atlanta. This is truly the single most important moment of my life, and the gratitude I feel toward all of you who made it possible, is beyond measure. I will forever remember, and have my efforts informed and inspired by the knowledge, that I would not be where I am today, were it not for . . . the citizens of Atlanta. No man or woman is an island . . . and no one rises to leadership without being lifted to such heights by those around him. Such is the moral of my story. Along the path to this podium, I have seen the faces, heard the hopes, felt the disappointments, and found myself deeply moved by the dreams of the people in our communities. (Continue Reading…)

No longer majority Black, Harlem is in transition
For nearly a century, Harlem has been synonymous with black urban America. Given its magnetic and growing appeal to younger black professionals and its historic residential enclaves and cultural institutions, the neighborhood’s reputation as the capital of black America seems unlikely to change soon. But the neighborhood is in the midst of a profound and accelerating shift. In greater Harlem, which runs river to river, and from East 96th Street and West 106th Street to West 155th Street, blacks are no longer a majority of the population — a shift that actually occurred a decade ago, but was largely overlooked. (Continue Reading…)

Arts & Culture: Eunice Walker Johnson

Eunice Walker Johnson
(April 4, 1916 - January 3, 2010)

By Margena A. Christian Mrs. Eunice Johnson, producer and director of the Ebony Fashion Fair and secretary-treasurer of Johnson Publishing Company, died of renal failure at her home in Chicago. She was 93. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art will honor her work on January 11 as a philanthropist and fashion icon. The tribute, planned some time ago, was several months in the making.“Mrs. Johnson elevated the image of Black women being fashion conscious, fashion forward and affluent,” said Kenneth Owen, assistant producer of Ebony Fashion Fair, who was handpicked by the fashion pioneer 26 years ago to work alongside her.  Born on April 4, 1916 in Selma, Ala., Mrs. Johnson came from a prestigious family. Her sophistication and fashion sense wasn’t bought. She was born with it. Mrs. Johnson’s father, Dr. Nathaniel D. Walker, was a doctor who practiced medicine for five decades, while her mother, Ethel McAlpine Walker, taught education and art at Selma University. The institution was founded by Dr. William H. McAlpine, her maternal grandfather, who also founded the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc. and was close friends with Booker T. Washington.Education was important in the Johnson household. She graduated from Talladega College with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and a minor in art. A master’s degree was later earned in social work from Loyola University in Chicago. Mrs. Johnson was working as a social worker when she quit her job to support her husband John’s vision of starting a magazine that focused on Black life. When he was having trouble trying to find a name for a new magazine in 1945, he asked her for guidance since she had a degree in art. She chose Ebony because it means “fine black African wood.” The magazine would go on to define generations. To those on the outside looking in, Mrs. Johnson appeared to be living in the shadow of her late husband John H. Johnson, founder of the Johnson Publishing Company, publisher of Ebony and Jet magazines. Those who really knew Eunice Walker Johnson understood that she was the wind beneath his wings. She stood by her husband in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, in good times and in bad until his death in 2005.

Mrs. Johnson dined with kings and queens, presidents and musical royalty, yet she remained down to earth. To hear her speak revealed a story. When she opened her mouth, her heavy, southern drawl would make people look twice. “She was a shy woman. She wasn’t somebody you could approach and talk to right away,” said Audrey Smaltz, the Ebony Fashion Fair commentator from 1970 to 1977. “She was an astute fashion person who had more than just fashion in her background. She was an interior designer. She was a lover of art. She had the greatest art collection you could imagine. Because of Eunice Johnson, I met Pablo Picasso and Giorgio de Curico. She introduced me to luxury, art and culture way beyond what I went to school for. I graduated with an art degree. She took me to a Ph.D.” Always impeccably dressed and wearing designer fashions herself, everything came back to fashion and education.

What started out as a charity benefit in 1958, turned into the birth of the Ebony Fashion Fair. As the show got underway, the models ran into problems with make-up, unable to find shades to match their skin. The solution? Fashion Fair Cosmetics. At the inception of the Ebony Fashion Fair, Mrs. Johnson would travel to Europe with her husband to buy clothes. They would “beg, persuade, and threaten to get the right to buy clothes,” Mr. Johnson once said. The resistance came, he recalled, because certain designers thought that White women wouldn’t value their designs if they were worn by Black women.

A few of the leading designers finally agreed to sell fashions to the Johnsons for the show. Among the first Blacks to buy from French haute couture fashion houses, they started out spending half a million dollars annually. “She was eventually known in fashion circles as the largest buyer of European haute couture,” said Owen. “As time progressed she would spend a million dollars each year on 200 complete ensembles featured in the hour and a half presentation.”

Mrs. Johnson bought creations from designers that others were afraid to take a chance on because they were unknown and just starting out. Valentino, Roberto Cavalli, Pierre Cardin and Yves Saint Laurent were among the names.

“They were young and in their 20s, just starting out,” said Owen. “They were looking for people to buy their high-end couture. That started her personal relationship with them because she was there before they made a name for themselves.”

Often criticized for not having more Black fashion designers, the Ebony Fashion Fair did showcase throughout the years the creations of Stephen Burrows, Patrick Kelly, Willi Smith and B. Michael. In later years it featured L’Amour, Quinton de Alexander, Kevan Hall, Fusha, Anthony Hankins, and even the Steve Harvey Collection.

Hands on until the end when her eyesight began to fail her, Mrs. Johnson made certain to see a complete run-through of each fashion show with the models before it hit the road. One year when she wasn’t excited about the show’s new direction using rap music, she made the models scrap everything and start all over. Committed to community service, Mrs. Johnson received many honors from the United Negro College Fund, The Boys & Girls Club of Chicago, Alabama A & M, Loyola University and many others. In 1988, Mrs. Johnson returned to her alma mater, Talladega, to receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. She also had an honorary degree from Shaw University.

Fiercely independent, Mrs. Johnson could be seen driving around Chicago in her two-tone Rolls Royce. She let nothing stop her. Like Frank Sinatra, she did things her way. And she did it with style. To date, more than 4,000 shows have been performed in the United States, the Caribbean, London, England, and Kingston, Jamaica. Ebony Fashion Fair has raised more than $55 million for various scholarship groups.

Happy Kwanzaa 2009

 
The Seven Principles (Nguzo Saba) of Kwanzaa are:

• Umoja (oo-MOH-jah): Unity

  Success starts with Unity. Unity of family, community, nation and race.

• Kujichagulia (koo-jee-chah-goo-LEE-ah): Self-Determination

  To be responsible for ourselves. To create your own destiny.

• Ujima (oo-JEE-mah): Collective work and responsibility

  To build and maintain your community together. To work together to help one another within your community.

• Ujamaa (oo-jah-MAH): Collective economics

  To build, maintain, and support our own stores, establishments, and businesses.

• Nia (NEE-ah): Purpose

  To restore African American people to their traditional greatness. To be responsible to Those Who Came Before (our ancestors) and to Those Who Will Follow (our descendants).

• Kuumba (koo-OOM-bah): Creativity

  Using creativity and imagination to make your communities better than what you inherited.

• Imani (ee-MAH-nee): Faith

Believing in our people, our families, our educators, our leaders, and the righteousness of the African American struggle.

Naomi Sims: Cover Girl 1948-2009

On the same day she graduated from Westinghouse High School in Pittsburgh, Naomi Sims set out for Manhattan, leaving behind a city where she never felt as if she belonged. She was like many New York aspirants — creative, ambitious, an escapee from somewhere too small and stifling. Except that her sense of isolation, in the place she left, was extreme. What Naomi Sims would soon experience was a newly arrived New Yorker’s fairy tale: extraordinary and nearly instant success.

Living with an older sister in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and attending the Fashion Institute of Technology, she found herself short on money and decided to try modeling. Without an agency to represent her, she cannily cultivated relationships with photographers and other figures in the fashion industry and, at 19, graced the cover of the August 1967 issue of Fashions of the Times, a supplement to The New York Times Magazine. The next year, she appeared on the cover of Ladies Home Journal — the first black model to be featured on the front of a mainstream women’s magazine.

Nearly six feet tall, with ebony skin and African features, Sims was regal in carriage and intuitive in her sense of style. She projected the rare and alluring combination of sultriness and rectitude. She walked everywhere in Manhattan, and her leggy strides once were described as “enough to sizzle the sidewalks on a cold day.” In 1973, she married the art dealer Michael Findlay and lived in an apartment filled with classical music and fresh flowers. Findlay told me about first meeting her at a party where Timothy Leary was wooing her. “She dissuaded him in a charming but definitive way,” he said. “With such aplomb.”

Such outward self-assurance gave no hint of Sims’s painful upbringing. Her mother, separated from Naomi’s father shortly after her birth, gave her up when she was about 10. Naomi spent time in a group home and then was raised as a foster child by a working-class black couple in Pittsburgh’s Homewood section. She would later recall that a younger foster daughter in the house, lighter in skin tone, was treated “like a daughter” while she felt more like a helper. Naomi’s mother lived about a mile away, where she raised Naomi’s two older sisters. (Why her mother gave her up remains unclear.)

Sims landed in New York at a cultural moment when the city’s aesthetic arbiters were ready to embrace her alongside the doe-eyed frailness of blondes like Twiggy, who came to New York at about the same time. Andy Warhol befriended her, and she was among the crowd at the Factory and Studio 54, but not every night. Sims was known within her industry as someone who showed up on time and prepared, usually having already done her own hair and makeup because few stylists knew how to work with a black woman. CONTINUE READING...

Black Panthers denounce 'new' Panthers

The New Black Panther Party catapulted itself to national attention during the November 2008 presidential election when two of its members, one brandishing a nightstick, were captured on videotape intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place. But the original Black Panther Party, which famously advocated black power and preached self-defense through confrontation in the 1960s and 1970s, is not happy with the new upstart. It has condemned the New Black Panther Party and its tactics, saying the NBPP "stole" the party's name for its "own misguided purposes." The Huey P. Newton Foundation Inc., created in 1993 and co-founded by Fredrika Newton, Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton's widow, said in a statement that the original party was "never a group of angry young militants full of fury toward the white establishment ... but operated on love for black people, not hatred of white people. "As guardian of the true history of the Black Panther Party, the foundation, which includes former leading members of the party, denounces this group's exploitation of the party's name and history," the statement said. "Failing to find its own legitimacy in the black community, this band would graft the party's name upon itself, which we condemn. CONTINUE READING...

New reference book is the A to Z of black theater in the U.S.

On the cover of the new "Historical Dictionary of African American Theater" is a glossy photograph of two young, strikingly attractive actors, Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee, in a scene from the landmark black drama "A Raisin in the Sun," by Lorraine Hansberry.

But flip through this chunky, 500-plus-page volume compiled by two Seattle natives, and you'll find so much more on the subject at hand — from the stage credits of other black movie stars to the efforts of pre-Civil War African Americans to integrate our nation's theatrical life.

Along with an introductory essay and a timeline, the volume contains some 600 entries devoted to performers, playwrights, directors, designers, composers, companies and others engaged in black theater in the U.S. from the early 1800s to the present day.

Published by Scarecrow Press, the reference book is the product of the intensive research of Seattle-bred Anthony D. Hill, associate professor of theater at Ohio State University, and Douglas Q. Barnett, who amid the fervent civil-rights activism of the late 1960s helped start the Seattle African-American troupe Black Arts/West.

A retired theater producer, director and administrator, Barnett, 78, chatted over coffee recently at a cafe near his Capitol Hill apartment about the project that has absorbed him for the past two years.

In some ways, the historical perspective came naturally to Barnett: He was raised with a keen awareness of the historical contributions of African Americans.

"The Barnetts are a pioneering family," he noted proudly, pointing out that his paternal grandfather came to Washington state in 1888, when it was still a territory.

And Barnett's father, the late Powell Barnett, was a respected Seattle civic leader and social activist. A recently renovated city park and playground on Martin Luther King Jr. Way, is named in his honor, in recognition of his service as the first president of the Leschi Improvement Council. CONTINUE READING...

TV One -- FIRST FIVE MINUTES of Michael Jackson Story

Make Your Imprint

A Special Concert to celebrate Nelson Mandela's 91st Birthday was held at Radio City Music Hall on Saturday, July 18.

STEVIE WONDER, ALICIA KEYS, WILL.I.AM, T-PAIN, JESSE CLEGG, GLORIA GAYNOR and EMCEE WHOOPI GOLDBERG were all scheduled to join the Mandela Day concert lineup.  This in addition to Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon, Forest Whitaker, Aretha Franklin, Wyclef Jean, Queen Latifah, Dave Stewart, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, Josh Groban, Angelique Kidjo, Baaba Maal, Jesse McCartney, Zucchero, the Soweto Gospel Choir and a host of African artists who helped kick-off the first Mandela Day Celebration.

Staged by the non-profit known as "46664", with the support of the Nelson Mandela Foundation charitable organizations and backed by world figures including President Bill Clinton, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, President Zuma, Forest Whitaker, Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, Laurence Fishburne, Quincy Jones and many others, the Mandela Day celebrations brought together major music names from the US and Africa to perform under one banner.

Drawing its numeric title from Mr. Mandela's Robben Island prison number (prisoner 466/incarcerated in 1964), 46664 was founded in 2002 when Mr. Mandela gave over the number under which he served 17 of his 27 years incarceration, to Eurythmics' founder Dave Stewart, to use to call attention to finding solutions to critical social issues such as HIV/AIDS and the social injustices that impact the disease such as poverty, gender inequality and the lack of education.

To date, the 46664 campaign has raised millions of dollars applied to supporting projects in South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa where current needs are deemed greatest, particularly in assisting those infected or affected by HIV/AIDS.

Many of 46664's ambassadors formed part of Saturday's multi-artist concert, bringing together leading US artists with many of Africa's foremost performers for a celebration for Mr. Mandela's 91st birthday-- a day which will be remembered as a meeting in music between the US and Africa in a concert for the world.

New York's concert for Mr. Mandela was devised to not only spread the message of 46664 but to have a longer lasting purpose-- to mark a day to reflect on Nelson Mandela's inspiration and guidance and individually strive to make our own contribution.

More information can be found at www.MandelaDay.com.

Looking at Black America, Eyes Fixed on the Future

The first half of “Black in America 2,” a two-night special on Wednesday and Thursday on CNN, begins with a segment in which Soledad O’Brien, the reporter for the series, admonishes some boys in Bushwick, Brooklyn, who ignore their academics to play basketball all day. Good; the unrealistic dream of pro ball as the ticket out of poverty needs to be knocked down. Of course, Ms. O’Brien’s scolding would be more convincing if the next night’s episode did not included a lengthy piece about Tyler Perry. So, kids, let’s review: Don’t aspire to play pro basketball; you’ll never make it. Instead count on becoming a movie star/entertainment mogul. So it goes in this skim-the-surface program, a follow-up to “Black in America” last year. Wednesday’s installment is devoted to “Tomorrow’s Leaders” and Thursday’s to “Today’s Pioneers,” but both are essentially collections of upbeat features, anecdotes without much analysis as to whether these piecemeal efforts are making a long-term difference. The message to viewers is, in effect: “See? Someone in California is helping inmates transition back into the workforce when they’re released, and Chris Rock’s wife is taking those Brooklyn kids on a trip to South Africa to broaden their perspective. So everything’s O.K. in black America.” Not that the initiatives Ms. O’Brien spotlights aren’t worthy. Mr. Rock’s wife, Malaak Compton-Rock, certainly did a fine thing last year by taking 30 Bushwick youngsters to South Africa and turning the tables on them: instead of being on the receiving end of assistance, they were on the giving end, visiting families affected by AIDS. But Ms. O’Brien undercuts any heft this and other segments might build up by shamelessly injecting herself into the proceedings. Do we really need to see her having a heart-to-heart with one of the Bushwick children and personally wiping the girl’s tears? CONTINUE READING...

Is CNN’s Black In America A Sideshow?

Excerpt from Clutchmagazine.com ~ William Shakesphere’s most oft-recited phrase is back with a vengeance with a slightly new twist. What is it like to be Janet Jackson right now? What is like to be an Iraqi insurgent? What is it like to be Bill O’Reilly? What is it like to be an African-American in 2009? CNN is attempting to tackle the last question in the second part of Black in America on July 22nd and 23rd. The first series, which aired last year around this time, elicited many responses from many different sects, but for once, there was a general consensus in the black community: It was inessential, extraordinary (as in extra ordinary) and featured more of the same stories. Stats of despair and poverty, overwhelming amounts of gangsta’ rapping, black women having to cope with copious ills within the black male demographic and the Willie Lynch-inspired light-skinned/dark-skinned divide was a common reminder that we are pretty much doomed. Apparently there’s no fun in being black in America. Perhaps CNN’s target audience for the series are not blacks. Therefore, it makes sense to point out what is highly obvious within. But if other races are the primary audience, then why is it necessary to portray us as a megalithic pathology of woe?

CNN should be applauded for asking these types of questions, for they have the resources to examine the issues of society in-depth. Mass media should seek the truth and ask the hammer-hitting questions. They should be appreciated for endeavoring to figure out this race thing, to make sense of a problem that has been as old as America itself. There are about 39 million African-Americans in this country. There are over 60 million German-Americans. Yet, there is no question of a German-American problem or any series examining what it’s like to be German in America.

And therein lies the rub.

The premise of the show is a noble one, but its execution and practical implications were not so. It’s a safe bet to say that the oeuvres and peccadilloes of Black America provide the seasoning of the Earth. I’m pressed to think of any industry in America that hasn’t been set off by the contributions of blacks, yet, in mass media, there is this nagging depiction of a group who are perpetually embittered and in constant need of attention. Ratings, not to mention revenue, are being generated in spades off such portrayals of Black culture. Last year’s Black In America series drew almost 16 million viewers (for perspective, the Sopranos finale drew just under 12 million viewers), and the CNN website drew nearly 15 million unique visitors. According to Mark Nelson, vice president and senior executive producer at CNN Productions, black viewership “increased almost 900 percent.” So how is one to think that CNN is any different in this regard than this network?

At this point, the answer to what it’s like to be Black in America is no longer relevant. CONTINUE READING...

Malcolm X and Black Women: Struggling For Closure

EXCERPT FROM CLUTCH MAGAZINE.COM ~ Known at his death primarily to the laity as a fastball (fiery) elocutionist with Black Nationalist intentions, Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925) has come to be favored in recent years as a lover of justice and a martyr for human rights. From Chuck D to Spike Lee to the Joe on the street, the rejuvenation of Malcolm as a Black history deity has been propelled to the head of Black freedom fighter lore. In this regard, it turns out that “demagogue” and “race-baiter” were only footnotes in Malcolm’s legacy.Much is known about his peripatetic and felonious past, his recovery in the penitentiary, his autodidactic ways, his conversion to Islam under Elijah Muhammad, and his subsequent re-conversion from a separatist exclusionary to an ecumenical inclusive fighter for human rights. He discovered that the fight for black rights is indeed a human rights fight as well. But perhaps the most understated matter of Malcolm’s legacy was his renunciation of his entrenched sexist attitudes toward women.Sexist attitudes were already pervasive in this era (feminist movement didn’t come until the seventies), but the Nation of Islam was no exception. Despite its claim of deviation from mainstream Christianity practice, the NOI subjugated its women into capes and minimal activity within their sect, with Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm (being the Nation’s most promulgated face) heading the charge. In his book, Message to the Black Man in America, Muhammad wrote that women should be kept off the street because “they are given to evil and sin, while men are noble and given to righteousness.” As to be expected at the time, Malcolm’s notions were not too far behind. CONTINUE READING...

Blacks At Odds Over Scrutiny Of President

Jeff Johnson knows how to make his audiences squirm. The young, black radio and TV political commentator waits for the discussion to turn to the topic being talked about ceaselessly, incessantly, ad nauseam: the meaning of the barrier-breaking election of Barack Obama.  Then, in his laid-back style, he says, "The real issue for me is that history is not enough." That's when the mood becomes tense.  "Black folks, in particular, get irritated," says Johnson, who travels the lecture circuit, hosts a half-hour show on Black Entertainment Television and has a weekly spot for social criticism on a radio program popular with black listeners. Get past "Obama the personality" and see "Obama the president," he says. "Otherwise all you're being is a political-celebrity groupie instead of a citizen. . . . It starts with acknowledging he's my president, and not my homie."  As the nation's first black president settles into the office, a division is deepening between two groups of African Americans: those who want to continue to praise Obama and his historic ascendancy, and those who want to examine him more critically now that the election is over.  Johnson is one of a growing number of black academics, commentators and authors determined to press Obama on issues such as the elimination of racial profiling and the double-digit unemployment rate among blacks. But doing so has put them at odds with others in the black community. Love for the Obamas is thick among African Americans -- 91 percent of whom view the president favorably, compared with 59 percent of the total population, according to a Quinnipiac University poll conducted last month -- and as a result, the African American punditry finds itself navigating new ground. CONTINUE READING

Black Outside of America

By Natalie Nichols ~ Serena Williams, Oprah, and many other stars have started charities and foundations focused on strengthening Africa. For this, many African-Americans have spit sharp criticism that major celebs would donate their funds to organizations outside of America when there are so many needy children within our nation’s borders. The most common notion is Africa is the richest continent with the poorest people. Nothing could be more true. Most African nations, especially those who fought for liberation from European countries who imposed centuries of colonization, have very unstable governments. Instead of Europeans reaping the benefits of Africa’s mineral rich lands, national governments are capitalizing and refusing to reinvest the profits in education, infrastructure and other modern means of creating safety and economic empowerment for citizens. Darfur is a prime example as the entire conflict began with the support of the Sudanese government, whom to this day continue to support tribal groups purporting attacks on ethnic farmers. It is no secret that women in Darfur are being raped, sometimes having their legs broken so they cannot escape; that this happens to women younger than twelve. In quite a few African societies, women experience many forms of cultural, legal, political, economic, religious and social discrimination. These women have no path toward legal recourse they can exercise; many of them take such secrets to their grave as they risk being disowned by their husbands if the crime is ever made public. According to popline.org, 22% of Kenyan women aged 15-19 years are HIV positive and only six percent of young boys are infected in the same age group. These women are blamed for their disease as a result of sexual promiscuity even though it has been widely established that more than 50 percent of women contract HIV/AIDS from husbands or their only boyfriends. Kenyan women do not have insurance, free clinics, AIDS or HIV education, medication, or basic information on how to manage their disease. Meanwhile this disease eats them alive, as they die alone since most are ostracized from their communities once they become infected.CONTINUE READING...

Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. Gamma Xi Zeta Chapter, "Celebrating Our Silent Heroes

Westchester County, NY (BlackNews.com) - Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., Gamma Xi Zeta Chapter invites you to join us in celebrating our silent heroes and the chapter's 46th Annual Finer Womanhood Scholarship Brunch on Saturday, April 4, 2009 at the V.I.P Country Club, New Rochelle, New York.This year's theme, "Celebrating Our Silent Heroes" speaks to those who have gone ahead of us after paving the way for a future filled with possibility and hope. Their now silent voices are heard through spirit and provide strength to those who believe in the power of unity that can affect real lasting change. We also celebrate those silent heroes who remain with us, but whom have chosen to have a gentle and quiet, yet powerful impact on the world. Gamma Xi Zeta will recognize honorees Mr. Samuel Granby Jr. and Mrs. Ayris Evans Granby of Granby's Funeral Service, Inc., in recognition of their outstanding and continued community service. This year's Zeta of the Year is Ms. Jacqueline Beverly, immediate Past President of the Westchester Pan-Hellenic Council. Gamma Xi Zeta will award over $4,000 for various scholarships, including the Elise Crawford Scholarship and the Mae D. Granby Scholarships, as well as Book Awards to high school graduating students in Westchester County. These students are the future of this world and have worked tirelessly to attain success through their academic and personal achievements. Our goal is to assist them in their journey. Live DJ entertainment adds to the ambiance of the afternoon by celebrating the great shoulders we've stood on and continue to stand on. Prizes and raffles will close an afternoon of good food, good fun and celebration of those we hold dear--past, present and future. The Luncheon will begin at 11:30 AM with a cocktail hour and brunch commencing promptly at 12:30 PM. The V.I.P Country Club is located at 600 Davenport Avenue in New Rochelle. For further information, contact chapter president, Ms. Nadia Matthie at [email protected] or Ms. Pittershawn Palmer at [email protected].