Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
Being the son of a professional Historian, having a degree in History myself; I am both, amazed and appalled, by the blatant historical revisions and ignorance that is on display by the TeaBirchers© and their fellow travelers. From outright editing and distribution of Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists as a whole document, so as to support their dubious claims of the Founders being against the existence of a Wall between Church and State; to Fox News editing Obama's public exchanges so as to diminish and marginalize his presidency.
Surely, if one has to lie to support an argument, the argument must not be very sound. What if we "edit" the lie out these discourses? What do we get? How about an honest assessment of where we came from:
What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors. It's astounding to me, for example, that so many people really seem to believe that the country was founded by a band of heroes who wanted to be free. That happens not to be true. What happened was that some people left Europe because they couldn't stay there any longer and had to go someplace else to make it. They were hungry, they were poor, they were convicts.
-- James Baldwin
"A Talk to Teachers," Oct. 16, 1963
It is true that a Dream arose out of the disaffection experienced by those hungry, and poor, and convicted. It is true that tragedies and dangerous compromises occurred to make that Dream of America a possibility. Just let us not lie about where it was we came from and how it is we came to be who we are; let us look honestly to where our present is and where our future could be; let us not lie to make the Dream true. It is said, Knowledge is Power; and that is a sad truism when taking account of the axiom's terrible permutations. Ignorance though, masking itself as Knowledge, is not real Power; but real Ruination.
The only real course to stem this ruination then, is to embrace Knowledge and not Ignorance; to arm our minds and soul and activism against those corporate armies of propaganda, against those mobs of malice and hate; who in either, ignorance or guile; or both, would go to any means necessary than...
Let America Be America Again
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.
O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!
-- Langston Hughes
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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A Story Of The First Black Gold Medalist.
Black Voices: 'The Olympian'
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Craig Williams walked through the gates of Eden Cemetery, the oldest African American cemetery in the U.S., one fall day in 2007. Even though the Collingsdale, Pa., cemetery contains the bodies of several black luminaries -- including civil rights leader Octavius Valentine Catto and opera singer Marian Anderson -- Williams didn't come for any of these big names.
He was there to see John Taylor, the first African American to win Olympic gold.
Taylor was a college graduate and a star athlete, recognized for his success even by then president Theodore Roosevelt. But in 1908, the same year he medaled at the Olympic games in London, he died of typhoid pneumonia.
And with his death, much of Taylor's story was lost.
Since then, his Olympic feats and much of what we know about his life have been relegated to history books and university archives. Even in this famous cemetery where he is buried, Taylor's legend remained unknown. An index card in the cemetery’s file helped Williams find Taylor's grave -- where his family's tombstone leaned crookedly in the unkempt grass.
"They weren't aware that he was buried there," Williams said. "Subsequently they have absolutely recognized that he was someone to be remembered but he was lost in history. It's not a reflection of the cemetery, but a reflection of society and culture and how someone can be forgotten."
Who is John Taylor? He was a member of the 1908 Olympic relay team. He won a gold medal in the 1600 meter race. He was an Ivy League student who graduated with a degree in veterinary studies. His stride measured 8 feet 6 inches, the longest of any runner at the time. His 49.1 seconds time in the 440 yard race broke the world's interscholastic record. Four years later he did it again with a time of 48.6 seconds.
In 1908, The New York Times called Taylor the “world’s greatest negro runner.”
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A Utah woman who braids hair to supplement her family’s income has won a federal lawsuit against the state over its licensing process for her craft, arguing state regulations violated her right to earn a living. TheGrio: Hair braider wins lawsuit challenging Utah rules.
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A federal judge ruled this week that the state’s requirement that Jestina Clayton get a cosmetology license to braid hair was “unconstitutional and invalid” because regulations are irrelevant to Clayton’s profession.
Clayton, 30, sued last year after she found it would be illegal to run a hair-braiding business without a license, in part because of public health and safety concerns. Clayton said she learned how to braid hair as a 5-year-old in her West African home country of Sierra Leone, and she was doing it at her suburban Salt Lake City home to support her three children — ages 7, 5 and 1 — while her husband finishes school.
“I’m excited. I can’t believe it,” Clayton said of the ruling. “You go in with the hope, but sometimes things don’t go your way.”
U.S District Judge David Sam in Salt Lake City said Utah’s cosmetology licensing requirements are so disconnected from hair-braiding “that to premise Jestina’s right to earn a living by braiding hair on that scheme is wholly irrational and a violation of her constitutionally protected rights.”
Sam said the state couldn’t prove a cosmetology license for hair-braiding is needed to protect public health. He also said Utah has never investigated whether any health or safety threats are associated with the practice.
Jestina Clayton braids the hair of her daughter, Esther Clayton, 5, at her home in Centerville, Utah. Clayton a part-time hair braider has won her federal lawsuit against Utah, claiming the state's requirements to obtain a cosmetology license are irrelevant to her job and an unconstitutional infringement on her right to earn a living. (AP Photo/Jim Urquhart,File)
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For a four-day event that began as a small assortment of screenings, there were plenty of major moments at Philadelphia’s inaugural BlackStar Film Festival last week ColorLines: A Lesson from Philadelphia’s Little Film Festival that Could.
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Curated in less than a year by producer and filmmaker Maori Karmael Holmes, this new celebration of film by and about people of the African diaspora featured more than 40 works from four continents including the Philadelphia premiere of Byron Hurt’s Kickstarter-assisted Soul Food Junkies; the U.S. debut of Berlin filmmaker Oliver Hardt’s The United States of Hoodoo, a sold-out screening of Nelson George’s Brooklyn Boheme, and a candid talk about African American filmmaking outside of the Hollywood system by Sundance-prize winning director and organizer Ava DuVernay.
“As far as my friends and I knew there was no black film festival in the city. I just wanted to screen films here that I’d heard of in other cities and hadn’t gotten a chance to see. Somewhere along the line it became a festival,” says Karmael, also founding artistic director of the woman-centered Black Lily Film & Music Festival and the associate director of the Leeway Foundation. “I realized I wasn’t interested in ‘Black Hollywood.’ I wanted to use the platform to bring attention to films that might never make it to a theater, cable or online streaming channels.”
Karmael and her mostly female team of volunteers chose the name BlackStar as a pean to self determination. “It emanated from Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Shipping Line as a symbol for Black economic independence, and [Ghanaian prime minister*] Kwame Nkrumah’s use of the black star as a symbol for African independent nationhood,” says Karmael, a self-described feminist and post-Black Arts baby. “All of the associated lyrics from the Yasiin Bey/Talib Kweli Black Star project started playing in my head and then name just seemed perfect.”
While the biggest crowds filled Philadelphia’s International House for screenings of nationally publicized works such as Brooklyn Boheme and Soul Food Junkies, lesser known films also attracted audiences. For me, the highlight was a German import, Audre Lorde: The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992.
One of many rare images in Dagmar Schultz’s “Audre Lorde: The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992” Photo: Dagmar Schultz
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FX Networks new series "Totally Biased With W. Kamau Bell" a new politically-charged late night show. ColorLines: Getting Serious About Jokes with the Writers of FX’s ‘Totally Biased’.
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Bell’s success is well-earned—anyone who’s witnessed his perpetually updated Powerpoint-driven solo show “The W. Kamau Bell Curve,” or who’s caught his “Laughter Against the Machine” tour across the red states, can attest to the dude’s skills and voice. In context of the status quo, however, “Totally Biased” is an outlier. Bell will be the only black person hosting a late night show at present; in interviews, he makes it clear that he wouldn’t be here without the advocacy of comedy superstar Chris Rock, one of the show’s executive producers.
Bell’s politics aren’t just liberal; they’re unabashedly progressive, as he uses comedy to expose and examine the structural ties between race, class, gender, and sexuality. He will be co-hosting our Facing Race 2012 conference in November and is a member of immigration artist-activist group CultureStrike. So “Totally Biased” isn’t just the “Daily Show” with a black guy hosting; it’s something an audience this size may have never been exposed to.
Bell tells me about the hatemail he’s been getting for his yet-unaired show (“Proof that the advertising is working!”). Most of it concerns inaccurate phrasing in a joke he makes about Spiderman in the TV promo, which he improvised from an audience question: What did he want to be when he grew up? “Either a comedian or Spiderman…but they don’t let black people be Spiderman!”
To Bell’s core audience, it’s clearly a reference to Donald Glover’s #donald4spiderman campaign, and Bell was fully aware of Marvel Comics’ new black-Latino Spiderman reboot (the source of the letter-writers’ contention) when he said it. But in a 15-second ad, there’s no space for footnotes or hyperlinks.
It mirrors what is perhaps the biggest challenge facing standup comedy today: in an artform in which every first-draft punchline has to be tested in front of real live people, what happens when those real live people each have a tiny video camera in their pocket? According to many comics, it means any joke, at any stage of its development, can get snipped away from its context and be used to start a publicity nightmare.
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Transportation Security Administration officers at Boston’s Logan International Airport are alleging that a program intended to help flag possible terrorists based on passengers’ mannerisms has led to rampant racial profiling, a newspaper reported Saturday. TheGrio: Racial profiling allegedly ‘rampant’ at Boston’s Logan International Airport.
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The New York Times reported on its website that in interviews and internal complaints it has obtained, more than 30 officers involved in the “behavior detection” program at Logan contend that the operation targets not only Middle Easterners, but also passengers who fit certain profiles — such as Hispanics traveling to Miami, or blacks wearing baseball caps backward.
The TSA told the newspaper on Friday that it is investigating the officers’ claims. At a meeting last month with the agency, officers provided written complaints, some of them anonymous, from 32 officers.
The officers said their co-workers were increasingly targeting minorities, believing the stops would lead to the discovery of drugs, outstanding arrest warrants and immigration problems, in response to pressure from managers who wanted high numbers of stops, searches and criminal referrals, The Times reported.
“The behavior detection program is no longer a behavior-based program, but it is a racial profiling program,” one officer wrote in an anonymous complaint The Times obtained.
The program, which has been billed as a model for other airports across the country, is intended to allow officers to stop, search and question passengers who seem suspicious. Specially trained “assessors” observe security lines for unusual activity and speak individually with each passenger, looking for inconsistencies in the passenger’s responses to questions and behavior such as avoiding eye contact, fidgeting or sweating.
Passengers considered suspicious can be taken aside for more intensive questioning.
At least one passenger has filed a formal complaint with the TSA. Kenneth Boatner, a black psychologist and educational consultant who was traveling to Atlanta on business last month, said he was detained for nearly half an hour as agents examined his belongings, including his checkbook and his patients’ clinical notes.
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