Who Is It For?

Ok, so CNN is having another one of their "Special Interest Group" programs Black in America. Did you already know about it? Do you plan to watch it? What segment of the population do you feel it is aimed at and who do you think will actually tune in? Hit the comment button below and make yourself heard. Anonymous comments are great, too.

Did Anybody Hear About This?

SHAQ HELPING HOMEOWNERS FIGHT OFF FORECLOSURE

The following story ran in the Orlando Sentinel on June 17th of this year. Now if he had been speaking bad of a former colleague (something he did that we all heard about), or making some of the other blunders that Black athletes and/or artist have made, i.e. drunk driving, beating or cheating on his wife, getting caught buying drugs or guns, it would have been all over the t.v. and the internet but since he is actually helping people it is very hush, hush.

A week after Shaquille O'Neal started working on a plan to rescue Central Floridians facing foreclosure; he has learned just how widespread the problem is. "He has two or three thousand e-mails," said Curtis Cooper, an Orlando Realtor and mortgage broker working with O'Neal on the project. "There have been a lot of calls from talk shows and radio shows." While some of the calls have been from Good Morning America, Inside Edition and would-be business partners, most have come from people who are days or weeks away from losing their homes. People who have found little help from their mortgage companies and are now looking for help from the celebrity who says he has a plan. People like Belinda Petroccia. "There are so many shysters out there who take advantage of you financially and emotionally," said Petroccia, who saw her income dip with the tumbling real-estate market and now faces foreclosure on her Wedgefield home in east Orange County. "When I saw this, I thought, 'That's what I need -- maybe Shaq can help.'" Last week, an attorney working with O'Neal said the Phoenix Suns center wants to buy the mortgages of people whose homes are in foreclosure, then give the homeowner a new mortgage with better terms. Homeowners would stay in their homes with more affordable payments, and O'Neal would turn a small profit. "He said, 'Let's just go out and help as many people as we can,'" Cooper said. "He's sincere about it."

If you or someone you know would like to request help you can get more information by contacting Cooper by e-mail at uc3n1@cfl.rr.com

You Decide

I am currently taking a summer course at Georgia State University, Black Nationalism. The class meets from 12noon - 4pm Monday and Wednesday. With a class that long grad students tend to talk and mingle. Well there is a lady in the class, of European decent; I'll call her Shelley, about my same age who also happens to be a mother of teenagers. Consequently, we talk about everything from the assignments for class, the department, our children.

Last week another student in the class mentioned the portrayal of Black men in the media. When the above Vogue cover was mentioned my colleague and I had a vast difference of opinion. Shelley didn't see the problem with first, the large black savage gorilla beast used to lure men into enlisting in the military - to "Destroy this Mad Brute" and save the white women’s virtue; nor did she see the correlation of a 6 foot 8 inch 250lb Black man almost carrying a 5 foot 9inch 120lb woman. They even had her wear a green dress to show the connection with the poster. Does anyone see my point here?

This country has had a long and sordid history of using the media to manipulate the perception of Blacks. Why is this not obvious to anyone who lifts a newspaper/magazine or turns on a television set?

My white liberal colleague came off as too sophisticated not to know about racial injustice and too comfortable with her skin privilege to care. And I am sure I came off as an angry Black militant. I suppose there is no such thing as an objective point of view.

Wisdom with Time

I started this day off giving honor and thanks to both of my grandfathers: James C. Patterson and Ardell Hamilton, Sr. What brought this on you might ask? I spent last evening basking in the knowledge of comedian, activist, and writer Dick Gregory. Some of the things he said just made me stop and think of the conversations that I had with my grandfather’s and the stories that my parents and their siblings have shared over the years. These are some points that Mr. Gregory left me pondering:

* The so called spiritual, Amazing Grace was written sometime between 1760 and 1770 by the captain of a slave ship. Wretch, do you know what the word actually means? “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that sav’d a wretch like me!” I did not. I just sang it because that’s what we sang at church. A wretch is a miserable, unfortunate, despicable person.

* Harlem is home to one of the highest concentrations of African Americans, yet Ms. Clinton won the popular vote on February 5th of this year. On February 16, 2008 the New York Times ran a story that indicated that not a single vote was cast for the current Democratic Nominee. Read it for yourself. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/16/nyregion/16vote.html?ex=1361250000&en=f77e8a83729ad389&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

* African-Americans are five times more likely to be poisoned by lead than other groups. A new study finds powerful evidence that lead exposure is a strong predictor of being arrested and a parallel brain-imaging study pinpointed the areas in the brain that are damaged by lead as those controlling judgment, decision-making and impulse control. Listen to an NPR interview http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4697843

This past weekend

So did you enjoy your long holiday? What were you celebrating? The 4th of July? The Independence of a country that has oppressed your peoples for hundreds of years and continues to reap havoc on the Black family?

The 4th of July causes me to stop and think. Now those of you who know me know that I love any excuse to get together with family and friends. The 4th of July, however, celebrates the liberation of wealthy colonial slave owners from the bondage of British taxation without representation. It did absolutely NOTHING for the slaves.

In 1776, a period of monarchy, colonialism, slavery and gender inequality, it certainly was not self-evident that all persons were endowed with fundamental equality and that governments existed to serve the just interests of the people. Martin Luther King Jr. called Thomas Jefferson's document the nation's promissory note; a check that when Blacks attempted to cash, bounced. And I should say here that our country still has not acknowledged the bounced check let alone made restitution. So any celebration of the 4th also needs to be tempered with a sober reflection on our nation's sins: genocide and land theft perpetrated against Native Americans, chattel slavery and Jim Crow against African Americans, second class citizenship for women - both white and Black, internment camps for Japanese Americans, brutal labor practices against Chinese immigrants, imperial aggression in Latin America and the Middle East.

We cannot ignore Frederick Douglass' admonition that the 4th of July does not mark freedom or self-determination for Black Americans. The abolitionist newspaper editor faced a similar dilemma on July 4, 1852, as a speaker in Rochester, N.Y. "Pardon me; allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?”

In the speech, known as “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” the editor/publisher of the North Star answered himself: “But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common.”

How can I or you celebrate a day that our ancestors did not benefit from? July 4,1776was a day that white America declared it was free & independent from Great Britain. The war lasted from 1775 until 1783 when the final peace treaty was signed in Paris. Now, the Blackman in America didn't get his freedom until 1865, almost 90 years later. Even though we helped fight in the Revolutionary war we as a people were nothing but the property and servants of others, and even when "freedom" came free to do what? Without land, skills, resources and education our forefathers weren't really free (but that is for another discussion - which I will get to.

It is obvious that African Americans have come a long way. The Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, is evidence of this. However, in the words of Frederick Douglas,
"This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice we must mourn. What to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelly to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour."

Last Friday I gathered with a group of Black scholars and we ate, drank and enjoyed watching Roots, Alex Haley's best-selling novel about his African ancestors that follows several generations in the lives of a slave family. Originally aired on national television in 1977, the saga began with Kunta Kinte (LeVar Burton) a West African youth captured by slave raiders and shipped to America in the 1700s. The family's saga is depicted up until the Civil War where Kunte Kinte's grandson gained emancipation. Roots made its greatest impression on the ratings and widespread popularity it garnered. On average 130 million - almost half the country at the time - saw all or part of the series.

I certainly hope you made the best of a day that continues to mock people of color, for what was true in 1852 is still true today, there is not a nation, or President, guilty of the atrocities that the United States has and continues to perpetuate.

Book Review - Supreme Discomfort

Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas is written through the lens of race and is an unauthorized biography written by co-authors Kevin Merida and Michael A. Fletcher, who are reporters for the Washington Post. Merida and Fletcher are thorough; Justice Thomas turned down their request for an interview so they talked to hundreds of people who know him. This book is neither a tribute nor a character assassination of the man they say “has turned himself into the most successful victim in America.” The authors tell of his generosity to friends, his serving as a surrogate father to the son of a nephew who is currently serving a thirty year prison sentence, his willingness to help young Blacks, his loyalty, his insecurities, his resentment of light-skinned Blacks, and his ability to hold a grudge. Supreme Discomfort gives a mostly chronological narrative of Thomas’ life, including his upbringing in Georgia, his years at Holy Cross and Yale Law School, his “meteoric rise” in the Reagan Administration, and the searing 1991 confirmation hearings on his nomination to the Supreme Court. As the authors put it, 'This book examines Thomas’ entire life, but it relies heavily on the racial prism. For it is that prism through which Thomas often identifies himself. He is in constant struggle with his racial identity – twisting, churning, sometimes hiding from it, but never denying it, even when he’s defiant about it.” The book revolves around the question of Thomas’ blackness. How can a Black judge issue conservative rulings that go against such black tenets as affirmative action?

Merida and Fletcher report the complexities and contradictions but never quite succeed in getting a handle on Thomas. As the authors put it, “He is not an uninteresting man. Maddening sometimes, but not uninteresting.” It does appear that this man, however intelligent he might be, has been so deeply damaged, both emotionally and psychologically, that his decisions are almost always reflective of his very painful and personal racial experiences and this damage was in place long before the infamous confirmation hearings. What materializes is a picture of a man who has almost always lived a dual life, thus the title of the book. Thomas is according to Merida and Fletcher, “a welter of conflicting personas.”

Justice Thomas’ connection to his birthplace, Pin Point, Georgia is “tenuous at best” notes the authors. This is interesting because during his confirmation hearings there was a great deal placed on the fact the he was born in this poor rural community and had to pull himself up with his boot straps. Yet the authors are careful to point out that he went to live with his grandparents in Savannah, Georgia when he was six and that this afforded him a middle-class upbringing as well as parochial schooling.

A luminous biography of the man many Blacks call an ‘Uncle Tom’ due to his eliminating the equal protection measures that afforded him the opportunity to prosper in a racist society. Supreme Discomfort allows the reader to understand, even if they don’t agree with, this right-wing bureaucrat who was willing to be promoted or placed on display whenever the Republicans needed a Negro yes man and his current willingness to rubber stamp the efforts of his fellow Republicans on the Supreme Court in order to overturn the civil rights decisions gained by people like his predecessor Thurgood Marshall. Thomas insists that he not be judged based on race and is adamant with regards to color blindness. However, according to the authors, Thomas won’t hire blacks as law clerks if they have taken “that Afro-American studies stuff” as undergraduates. It is troubling, though not surprising, to see how many former law clerks to Justice Thomas have ended up in the Bush Administration as authors of policies supporting unrestrained Presidential power [a position Thomas has aggressively endorsed in several Supreme Court decisions].

And what about Anita Hill? Was she telling the truth during his appointment hearings? Was Thomas? Ms. Hill made a very credible witness testifying about sexual harassment she experienced at his hands during the period she was employed by him. The book reports that many of his classmates and associates have heard him make crude sexual jokes and that he has a propensity for pornographic movies, as well as the fact that there was a second woman prepared to testify against him. In the end, the authors go with the argument of Thomas (he) say Hill (she) say.

In any case, Supreme Discomfort is a great read and it offers its readers some insight into Black conservatism. The book will not however change the reader’s perception of the man.