Commentary
Robinswing, Black Kos Editor
The blackwoman thought it was time she addressed the issue of Michael Steele. He of embarrassing ineptitude, he of shameless pandering.
He pretends that he is being wily and is in total control. He knows he is not. He has only one card to play if the repugs try to dump him. He will play it without hesitation. He will play it without shame.
When they make their move, he will cry foul. He will say it is because the repugs have no respect for a black man. I predict he will then see if fortune will deal him a better hand as a Democrat. He has already made his set-up moves.
In his mind, his position at the RNC is equivalent to the Presidency of the United States. He even allowed himself to say as much. I kinda understand where he is coming from. After all the butts he kissed and the secrets he’s kept he knows the struggle of a black man in the repug party. All that scrapping and bowing. Hardens a brother on the inside.
He telegraphed his agenda to me almost from the start. Grinnin’ damn near shuffling while trying to sound connected to Black Urban Youth, he had Michelle Crazywoman Bachman screaming "You be da man". At this point he really did want to do for the RNC what Obama did for the Democratic Party. Problem was that never was there an opportunity ‘cause brotherman could only fool old white men who know nothing about Black folk. Old white men who see black men as interchangeable. And women. Hell, everyone who isn’t an old white man.
Until Steele decided to expose himself I thought that Alan Keyes was the supreme self-hating black man. I was wrong. Keyes is just plain old batshit crazy. Steele doesn’t have that excuse. He’s just greedy. His eyes give him away. They are hungry. They want more than live has given thus far. It’s sad really. Sad.
While our President is naturally cool, Steele fakes the funk. He is cool compared to the old white men, who scent his breath with ass, but he was never cool or he would not have become a repug. Simple as that.
At first I thought they would get rid of him through investigations. May still be an option. I suggest they start looking for and finding some real awful shit. Stealing campaign funds probably won’t be enough.
He knows what an insult it is to him for them to not want him anywhere near the money. He will scream like a stuck pig when they make their move. It will be interesting to watch.
See he’s figured it out. Leave him alone or he will stink up the place.
Meanwhile the rest of the black community ignores him. He is not our business. Never was.
Part of me feels sorry for him. He can’t catch a break. Unlike Obama who seems to me to be the luckiest politician ever, Steele seems stuck in a hole with a shovel.
So far whenever there has been a need for something to break his way, it does for our President. If physicist are right and everything is energy and energy operates on frequency then Obama operates on a frequency where those who oppose him end up looking like fools and failing in their mission to overcome, overtake and oversee the outcome of their interaction. Not so with Steele.
Steele is one person with white folk, another with black. Lots of black folk are. Being black in America requires a degree of this as part of survival strategy. It was understandable he would speak with D.L. Hughley differently than sean hannity. He just forgot that there were observers to his act. Why does it seem so difficult for repugs to remember about cameras and the Internet? Like the rest of those fools he keeps getting caught being stupid and duplicitous.
He, who would be king, has had to bow down to rushbo and everyone else. Up until then he had done his groveling privately. Publicly having to bow down was a blow to his fragile sense of self. Couldn’t happen to a nicer person. One way or another he’s going down. He will not take any of us with him.
Now run and tell that.
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Treasures Lost to Time
Dan Klores’s stunning four-hour documentary film, "Black Magic," which will receive a Peabody Award on Monday, opens with a scene from America in 1944 that will seem for some people as ancient and backward as the Middle Ages.
It was a Sunday morning in March in Durham, N.C. A team of white basketball players from the Duke University Medical School who had bragged that they were the best players in the state had agreed to play an illegal game against an equally proud team from the North Carolina College for Negroes.
There is no way to overstate the danger of such a meeting. Black people in Durham were not even supposed to look too closely at white people. Some would step off the sidewalk into the street as a white person approached. For these two teams to play a basketball game was considered improper contact of the highest order.
As the white players walked toward the North Carolina College gym, they pulled their jackets over their heads. The game was to be kept as secret as a meeting of criminal conspirators, which is what the participants actually were. In addition to the coaches and the players, there were two referees and a timekeeper. No spectators. No cheerleaders. Just two teams going at it in an otherwise empty (and securely locked) gym.
North Carolina College won 88-44, but the participants needed very little urging to keep their lips sealed. The fact that the game was played was kept secret from the public for half a century.
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Kappa Alpha’s ‘Old South’ celebration under fire in Alabama.
A fraternity that traces its roots to the Civil War and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee is again facing complaints over its antebellum-themed events.
This time, some University of Alabama alumnae are upset after Kappa Alpha Order members wearing Confederate uniforms and carrying battle flags paraded past a historically black sorority as the women celebrated the group’s 35th anniversary.
The fraternity has been forced to halt its "Old South" festivities on some campuses because of claims of racial insensitivity, and Alabama members have apologized for pausing in front of Alpha Kappa Alpha’s sorority house during this year’s parade.
Alpha Kappa Alpha members said there was no confrontation or taunting, but they were shocked to see fraternity members in rebel uniforms and white women from another sorority in hoop skirts.
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Black Comic Book Artists Gather in Philadelphia for Annual Confab.
African-American graphic artists from around the country are meeting in Philadelphia this weekend for an annual convention.
The East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention gathers African-American comic book artists every year to share their work and techniques and the latest in the genre.
Yumy Odom is a Philadelphia-based graphic artist and founder of the convention:
"This annual reunion of us really is a chance for the public to get to know who is writing these comic books. We have people writing for DC, for Marvel, and a whole lot of independent comic creators."
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Big Bosoms and the Big Bang: Did the Human Condition Really Emerge in Europe??
John Noble Wilford at the Times notes the fascination over the "inspiration and symbolism behind the rather sudden flowering" that figurines of this period, plus the cave drawings so well known, supposedly suggest. Cool idea indeed, especially since we don't know what caused the mutation in question. There have even been linguists arguing that this mentality was the one that allowed language to emerge.
However, the fetishization of artistic tokens dug up in Europe from a few tens of thousands of years ago has always struck me as socially unsavory, for a very simple reason - so simple that this sort of thing perplexed me long before I was even a scholar of any kind.
To wit: Homo sapiens is known to be about 150,000 years old. According to the latest evidence, humans started their spread out of Africa as long as 80,000 years ago: the source to consult is Stephen Oppenheimer's magnificent The Real Eve. Uncontroversial is that by 30,000 (or even 50,000) years ago, humans were not only in Europe, but already coating Asia and Oceania, as well as still thriving down in Africa.
Okay: but if this "Big Bang" happened in Europe, then presumably this dramatic mutation did not happen to people beyond Europe. And yet, it is assumed that all human beings are equal in basic mental endowment - and among linguists, that no languages are "primitive."
The Big Bang idea has always seemed peculiar to me, then, in an implication surely none of the scientists intended but which stood there anyway: a Victorian idea that only Europeans became truly civilized while everyone else in the world remained "natives" chanting around cooking pots in forest clearings.
Is the idea supposed to be that other groups of humans had their own "Big Bangs" independently? Researchers seem to have little interest in charting such: you never read about a "Big Bang" over in New Guinea in the Times or Nature.
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Another week of sublime blackness in the White House. That’s Whassup!
Never has a president so effortlessly dispatched an adversary as President Obama did last Saturday night, with his single-word "Whassup?" dismissal of RNC Chair Michael Steele and his self-proclaimed "hip-hop makeover." By the time Steele jumped out of his seat to be "recognized," the only thing missing from the scene at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner was a Punk’d camera crew. Ashton Kutcher was, as they say, already "in the heezy."
Does Steele really want to play this game with the president? Obama grew up black in a white household, went to school overseas, his middle name is "Hussein," and he plays pick-up basketball in his free time—he’s been training for that monologue his whole life.
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The youth violence consuming Chicago is an opportunity for us to start talking about how we save poor communities. Guns Kill, But Poverty’s the Trigger.
Recently, longtime Catholic priest and freedom fighter Father Michael Pfleger and members of his parish—the Faith Community of St. Sabina in the South Side of Chicago—made an eloquent plea for justice by flying the American flag upside down in front of his church. Hoisting a flag with the union down is done very rarely and usually only as a call of deep distress. Pfleger and St. Sabina’s are trying to call attention to the "dire emergency" of unprecedented levels of gun violence in their community: Over 36 teens and children, mostly black and Latino, have been murdered so far in 2009.
The flag hanging immediately attracted more media attention than the 36 dead youngsters. National media outlets came calling. Some veterans were offended. Critics speculated that this was another one of Pfleger’s stunts intended to generate more notoriety for Pfleger than solutions to the problem. Mayor Richard M. Daley, Chicago police superintendent Jody Weis and Chicago’s former superintendent of schools Arne Duncan were sympathetic but are confused by the problem.
Regardless of your personal opinions of Pfleger, we should all be saddened by the excessive gun violence by young people in our communities. And we should at least collectively heed the powerful call of St. Sabina’s flag raising: We must begin to ask what might be done about this complicated and distressing problem.
Common knowledge suggests that the sad economic conditions in their neighborhoods are some of the fundamental reasons for the gun violence. For example, in 2007, 24.4 percent of African Americans and 21.5 percent of Hispanics lived in poverty in the U.S. (compared to 8.2 percent of whites). Thus, most gun violence comes from those who are worse off economically in our society. The issue Pfleger is raising is, on the surface, about gun violence, but in a more fundamental way, he is calling our attention to issues of class and economics.
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I'm speaking for myself (dopper0189) here. I think Rep. Cohen has done a fine job. While I'm sympathetic to the needs for more Minorities in congress*, I don't believe it should be achieved by challenging fellow progressives Democrats based solely on race. Hopefully this race will be conducted on the issues and above board unlike the last primary against Cohen. *(The Senate is a joke, Democratic insiders still don't believe minorities can win State wide races, all open appointments were going to go to non-minorities until Richard Burris pulled his hi jinks, even in a states like Colorado and Illinois that have elected minorities to state wide office) Tennessee: Another black-white congressional contest
Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton (D) announced on April 21 that he was forming an exploratory committee to run for Congress against two-term US Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) next year. "The mayor’s challenge was a first greeted by the media and the public at large as a bombshell," says Memphis Flyer columnist Jackson Baker, "then as an absurdity -- long time Numero Uno going to Congress as a one-in-435 grunt. Then as a gambit of some kind" -- by running for Congress, Herenton might increase his ability to influence the choice of a US Attorney, important to hizzoner because of a federal investigation into his personal business affairs while in office. Indeed, the investigation has the potential of hurting his congressional campaign.
Now the word is that Herenton, 69, is indeed serious and will make a major bid for Cohen’s job. "Initially, I though [Herenton’s announcement] might be a whim. Now, I’m virtually certain he’s going to run," says Rhodes College political scientist Marcus Pohlmann.
Herenton has had a strong organization and solid following in the past. He was elected this city’s first black mayor in 1991 and has since been elected four more times. As a result, he is well-known in the core of the district, the African-American inner-city of Memphis, which he has always carried by large majorities. The question is whether this base will stick with him against incumbent Cohen. "He must think so," says Pohlmann, adding that Herenton "proved in the last mayor’s election (in 2007) that he came rouse that base." He says, "It’s hard to believe that Herenton is going to put himself out there and not go all the way."
While race may not get a lot of public play in the campaign, it is the major factor under the surface. In comments to the Memphis media, Herenton said "Memphis is a race-conscious city, I didn’t create it." In an op-ed in the Memphis Commercial-Appeal, he also noted that the 9th district "provides the only real opportunity to elect a qualified African-American to the all-white eleven-member delegation representing Tennessee in Washington." Both comments zero in on the main reason for opposition to Cohen, that he is white in a district drawn to facilitate the election of a black candidate.
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Why soul food is actually good for you. True Grits.
Mention "soul food" and you will hear scores of health and medical professionals claim that it is the downfall of the health and well-being of African Americans. It is true that African Americans have some of the highest rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and some cancers of any group in this country. But frankly, I'm getting sick of soul food being held partially responsible for this. The majority of people imagine the traditional soul food diet as unsophisticated and unhealthy fare comprised of high-calorie, low-nutrient dishes replete with, salt, sugar, and bad fats. Rather than vilifying traditional soul food, let's focus on the real culprit, what I like to call instant soul food.
In reality, soul food is good for you. In order to understand why, you have to understand grits. As seen with instant grits, mass production and distribution has diminished the product's superb quality and has obscured the distinctive characteristics that make down-home hominy so darn desirable in the first place. The taste of instant grits boxed up in a factory can never compare to the complex nutty flavor of grits stone-ground in a Mississippi mill. So it's understandable that those who have only had that watered-down stuff (read: many of my friends in the Northeast) scoff at the mention of grits.
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May 16th was the anniversary of the landmark Brown V. Board of Education Supreme Court case. It brought these two "odd couple" together. Gingrich, Sharpton Finally Teammates: Close Education Gap
Politics often produces strange bedfellows. But yesterday, on the 55th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision that integrated the nation's schools, when former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich shared the stage at a boisterous rally in front of the White House with the Rev. Al Sharpton, even Gingrich called the two the "Original Odd Couple."
What unites the conservative Gingrich and the liberal Sharpton, Gingrich said, is the urgent mission to close the persistent achievement gap that divides students along racial and socioeconomic lines and to make educational equality the civil rights issue of the 21st century.
"I know it's possible to educate every child from every background," Gingrich said to loud applause from the largely African American crowd that had come to Washington in 70 buses from 22 cities. "We're not telling you what the answer is. But we're telling you to keep changing until you find a solution."
Gingrich and Sharpton said that despite their differences, coming together, as they did in a recent meeting with President Obama, is the first step in calling more attention to the gap and creating a nationwide grass-roots movement to close it.
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Minority Dealers Hit Hard by Auto Crisis.
Minority car dealers are expected to be hit hard as General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC trim their retail networks, undoing years of work by the auto makers to bring more African-Americans, Hispanics and others into the car business.
Chrysler on Thursday said it would drop 789 of its 3,200 dealers as part of its bankruptcy restructuring. GM plans to eliminate 2,600 of its more than 6,000 dealers as it reorganizes.
The National Association of Minority Automobile Dealers estimates that 140 of Chrysler's 170 to 175 minority-owned franchises could be closed, and at least 174 of GM's 300 minority-owned dealers could shut their doors.
The organization said Chrysler's minority-owned dealerships are at risk because many are small stores that offer only one of the company's three brands, Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep. Fewer than half have converted to the company's "Genesis" format that puts all three makes under one roof, NAMAD said. That compares to the approximately 60% of all Chrysler dealerships that have the three-brand format
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Race: No Qualification Necessary? by usreeb
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Ten Dollars an Hour: Ole Miss, Segregation, and the Economics of Racism by Pierro Sraffa
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Today I was told that I suffer from "white guilt." by SheLawyer
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