Friday, September 28, 2007

BECAUSE THE RACISM JUST KEEPS ON COMING


Does it ever stop? What's up these days with white people and racism? What is it that they just don't get? I don't know what it is, but here is an article from Town Hall, before somebody sees it and takes it down. It's very long, I know, but maybe you could just read the pertinent parts, you know, the six points, the good ones about slavery, but this just needs to be seen to be believed.

Six inconvenient truths about the U.S. and slavery
By Michael Medved
Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Those who want to discredit the United States and to deny our role as history’s most powerful and pre-eminent force for freedom, goodness and human dignity invariably focus on America’s bloody past as a slave-holding nation. Along with the displacement and mistreatment of Native Americans, the enslavement of literally millions of Africans counts as one of our two founding crimes—and an obvious rebuttal to any claims that this Republic truly represents “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” According to America-bashers at home and abroad, open-minded students of our history ought to feel more guilt than pride, and strive for “reparations” or other restitution to overcome the nation’s uniquely cruel, racist and rapacious legacy.

Unfortunately, the current mania for exaggerating America’s culpability for the horrors of slavery bears no more connection to reality than the old, discredited tendency to deny that the U.S. bore any blame at all. No, it’s not true that the “peculiar institution” featured kind-hearted, paternalistic masters and happy, dancing field-hands, any more than it’s true that America displayed unparalleled barbarity or enjoyed disproportionate benefit from kidnapping and exploiting innocent Africans.

An honest and balanced understanding of the position of slavery in the American experience requires a serious attempt to place the institution in historical context and to clear-away some of the common myths and distortions.

1. SLAVERY WAS AN ANCIENT AND UNIVERSAL INSTITUTION, NOT A DISTINCTIVELY AMERICAN INNOVATION. At the time of the founding of the Republic in 1776, slavery existed literally everywhere on earth and had been an accepted aspect of human history from the very beginning of organized societies. Current thinking suggests that human beings took a crucial leap toward civilization about 10,000 years ago with the submission, training and domestication of important animal species (cows, sheep, swine, goats, chickens, horses and so forth) and, at the same time, began the “domestication,” bestialization and ownership of fellow human beings captured as prisoners in primitive wars. In ancient Greece, the great philosopher Aristotle described the ox as “the poor man’s slave” while Xenophon likened the teaching of slaves “to the training of wild animals.” Aristotle further opined that “it is clear that there are certain people who are free and certain who are slaves by nature, and it is both to their advantage, and just, for them to be slaves.” The Romans seized so many captives from Eastern Europe that the terms “Slav” and “slave” bore the same origins. All the great cultures of the ancient world, from Egypt to Babylonia, Athens to Rome, Persia to India to China, depended upon the brutal enslavement of the masses – often representing heavy majorities of the population. Contrary to the glamorization of aboriginal New World cultures, the Mayas, Aztecs and Incas counted among the most brutal slave-masters of them all --- not only turning the members of other tribes into harshly abused beasts of burden but also using these conquered enemies to feed a limitless lust for human sacrifice. The Tupinamba, a powerful tribe on the coast of Brazil south of the Amazon, took huge numbers of captives, then humiliated them for months or years, before engaging in mass slaughter of their victims in ritualized cannibalistic feasts. In Africa, slavery also represented a timeless norm long before any intrusion by Europeans. Moreover, the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch or British slave traders rarely penetrated far beyond the coasts: the actual capture and kidnapping of the millions of victims always occurred at the hands of neighboring tribes. As the great African-American historian Nathan Huggins pointed out, “virtually all of the enslavement of Africans was carried out by other Africans” but the concept of an African “race” was the invention of Western colonists, and most African traders “saw themselves as selling people other than their own.” In the final analysis, Yale historian David Brion Davis in his definitive 2006 history “Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World” notes that “colonial North America…surprisingly received only 5 to 6 percent of the African slaves shipped across the Atlantic.” Meanwhile, the Arab slave trade (primarily from East Africa) lasted longer and enslaved more human beings than the European slavers working the other side of the continent. According to the best estimates, Islamic societies shipped between 12 and 17 million African slaves out of their homes in the course of a thousand years; the best estimate for the number of Africans enslaved by Europeans amounts to 11 million. In other words, when taking the prodigious and unspeakably cruel Islamic enslavements into the equation, at least 97% of all African men, women and children who were kidnapped, sold, and taken from their homes, were sent somewhere other than the British colonies of North America. In this context there is no historical basis to claim that the United States bears primary, or even prominent guilt for the depredations of centuries of African slavery.

2. SLAVERY EXISTED ONLY BRIEFLY, AND IN LIMITED LOCALES, IN THE HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC – INVOLVING ONLY A TINY PERCENTAGE OF THE ANCESTORS OF TODAY’S AMERICANS. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution put a formal end to the institution of slavery 89 years after the birth of the Republic; 142 years have passed since this welcome emancipation. Moreover, the importation of slaves came to an end in 1808 (as provided by the Constitution), a mere 32 years after independence, and slavery had been outlawed in most states decades before the Civil War. Even in the South, more than 80% of the white population never owned slaves. Given the fact that the majority of today’s non-black Americans descend from immigrants who arrived in this country after the War Between the States, only a tiny percentage of today’s white citizens – perhaps as few as 5% -- bear any authentic sort of generational guilt for the exploitation of slave labor. Of course, a hundred years of Jim Crow laws, economic oppression and indefensible discrimination followed the theoretical emancipation of the slaves, but those harsh realities raise different issues from those connected to the long-ago history of bondage.

3. THOUGH BRUTAL, SLAVERY WASN’T GENOCIDAL: LIVE SLAVES WERE VALUABLE BUT DEAD CAPTIVES BROUGHT NO PROFIT. Historians agree that hundreds of thousands, and probably millions of slaves perished over the course of 300 years during the rigors of the “Middle Passage” across the Atlantic Ocean. Estimates remain inevitably imprecise, but range as high as one third of the slave “cargo” who perished from disease or overcrowding during transport from Africa. Perhaps the most horrifying aspect of these voyages involves the fact that no slave traders wanted to see this level of deadly suffering: they benefited only from delivering (and selling) live slaves, not from tossing corpses into the ocean. By definition, the crime of genocide requires the deliberate slaughter of a specific group of people; slavers invariably preferred oppressing and exploiting live Africans rather than murdering them en masse. Here, the popular, facile comparisons between slavery and the Holocaust quickly break down: the Nazis occasionally benefited from the slave labor of their victims, but the ultimate purpose of facilities like Auschwitz involved mass death, not profit or productivity. For slave owners and slave dealers in the New World, however, death of your human property cost you money, just as the death of your domestic animals would cause financial damage. And as with their horses and cows, slave owners took pride and care in breeding as many new slaves as possible. Rather than eliminating the slave population, profit-oriented masters wanted to produce as many new, young slaves as they could. This hardly represents a compassionate or decent way to treat your fellow human beings, but it does amount to the very opposite of genocide. As David Brion Davis reports, slave holders in North America developed formidable expertise in keeping their “bondsmen” alive and healthy enough to produce abundant offspring. The British colonists took pride in slaves who “developed an almost unique and rapid rate of population growth, freeing the later United States from a need for further African imports.”

4. IT’S NOT TRUE THAT THE U.S. BECAME A WEALTHY NATION THROUGH THE ABUSE OF SLAVE LABOR: THE MOST PROSPEROUS STATES IN THE COUNTRY WERE THOSE THAT FIRST FREED THEIR SLAVES. Pennsylvania passed an emancipation law in 1780; Connecticut and Rhode Island followed four years later (all before the Constitution). New York approved emancipation in 1799. These states (with dynamic banking centers in Philadelphia and Manhattan) quickly emerged as robust centers of commerce and manufacturing, greatly enriching themselves while the slave-based economies in the South languished by comparison. At the time of the Constitution, Virginia constituted the most populous and wealthiest state in the Union, but by the time of the War Between the States the Old Dominion had fallen far behind a half-dozen northern states that had outlawed slavery two generations earlier. All analyses of Northern victory in the great sectional struggle highlights the vast advantages in terms of wealth and productivity in New England, the Mid-Atlantic States and the Midwest, compared to the relatively backward and impoverished states of the Confederacy. While a few elite families in the Old South undoubtedly based their formidable fortunes on the labor of slaves, the prevailing reality of the planter class involved chronic indebtedness and shaky finances long before the ultimate collapse of the evil system of bondage. The notion that America based its wealth and development on slave labor hardly comports with the obvious reality that for two hundred years since the founding of the Republic, by far the poorest and least developed section of the nation was precisely that region where slavery once prevailed.

5. WHILE AMERICA DESERVES NO UNIQUE BLAME FOR THE EXISTENCE OF SLAVERY, THE UNITED STATES MERITS SPECIAL CREDIT FOR ITS RAPID ABOLITION. In the course of scarcely more than a century following the emergence of the American Republic, men of conscience, principle and unflagging energy succeeded in abolishing slavery not just in the New World but in all nations of the West. During three eventful generations, one of the most ancient, ubiquitous and unquestioned of all human institutions (considered utterly indispensable by the “enlightened” philosophers of Greece and Rome) became universally discredited and finally illegal – with Brazil at last liberating all its slaves in 1888. This worldwide mass movement (spear-headed in Britain and elsewhere by fervent Evangelical Christians) brought about the most rapid and fundamental transformation in all human history. While the United States (and the British colonies that preceded our independence) played no prominent role in creating the institution of slavery, or even in establishing the long-standing African slave trade pioneered by Arab, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and other merchants long before the settlement of English North America, Americans did contribute mightily to the spectacularly successful anti-slavery agitation. As early as 1646, the Puritan founders of New England expressed their revulsion at the enslavement of their fellow children of God. When magistrates in Massachusetts discovered that some of their citizens had raided an African village and violently seized two natives to bring them across the Atlantic for sale in the New World, the General Court condemned “this haynos and crying sinn of man-stealing.” The officials promptly ordered the two blacks returned to their native land. Two years later, Rhode Island passed legislation denouncing the practice of enslaving Africans for life and ordered that any slaves “brought within the liberties of this Collonie” be set free after ten years “as the manner is with the English servants.” A hundred and thirty years later John Adams and Benjamin Franklin both spent most of their lives as committed activists in the abolitionist cause, and Thomas Jefferson included a bitter condemnation of slavery in his original draft of the Declaration of Independence. This remarkable passage saw African bondage as “cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty” and described “a market where MEN should be bought and sold” as constituting “piratical warfare” and “execrable commerce.” Unfortunately, the Continental Congress removed this prescient, powerful denunciation in order to win approval from Jefferson’s fellow slave-owners, but the impact of the Declaration and the American Revolution remained a powerful factor in energizing and inspiring the international anti-slavery cause. Nowhere did idealists pay a higher price for liberation than they did in the United States of America. Confederate forces (very few of whom ever owned slaves) may not have fought consciously to defend the Peculiar Institution, but Union soldiers and sailors (particularly at the end of the war) proudly risked their lives for the emancipation cause. Julia Ward Howe’s powerful and popular “Battle Hymn of the Republic” called on Federal troops to follow Christ’s example: “as he died to make men holy/let us die to make men free.” And many of them did die, some 364,000 in four years of combat—or the stunning equivalent of five million deaths as a percentage of today’s United States population. Moreover, the economic cost of liberation remained almost unimaginable. In nearly all other nations, the government paid some form of compensation to slave-owners at the time of emancipation, but Southern slave-owners received no reimbursement of any kind when they lost an estimated $3.5 billion in 1860 dollars (about $70 billion in today’s dollars) of what Davis describes as a “hitherto legally accepted form of property.” The most notable aspect of America’s history with slavery doesn’t involve its tortured and bloody existence, but the unprecedented speed and determination with which abolitionists roused the national conscience and put this age-old evil to an end.

6. THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE THAT TODAY’S AFRICAN-AMERICANS WOULD BE BETTER OFF IF THEIR ANCESTORS HAD REMAINED BEHIND IN AFRICA. The idea of reparations rests on the notion of making up to the descendants of slaves for the incalculable damage done to their family status and welfare by the enslavement of generations of their ancestors. In theory, reparationists want society to repair the wrongs of the past by putting today’s African-Americans into the sort of situation they would have enjoyed if their forebears hadn’t been kidnapped, sold and transported across the ocean. Unfortunately, to bring American blacks in line with their cousins who the slave-traders left behind in Africa would require a drastic reduction in their wealth, living standards, and economic and political opportunities. No honest observer can deny or dismiss this nation’s long record of racism and injustice, but it’s also obvious that Americans of African descent enjoy vastly greater wealth and human rights of every variety than the citizens of any nation of the Mother Continent. If we sought to erase the impact of slavery on specific black families, we would need to obliterate the spectacular economic progress made by those families (and by US citizens in general) over the last 100 years. In view of the last century of history in Nigeria or Ivory Coast or Sierra Leone or Zimbabwe, could any African American say with confidence that he or she would have fared better had some distant ancestor not been enslaved? Of course, those who seek reparations would also cite the devastating impact of Western colonialism in stunting African progress, but the United States played virtually no role in the colonization of the continent. The British, French, Italians, Portuguese, Germans and others all established brutal colonial rule in Africa; tiny Belgium became a particularly oppressive and bloodthirsty colonial power in the Congo. The United States, on the other hand, sponsored only one long-term venture on the African continent: the colony of Liberia, an independent nation set up as a haven for liberated American slaves who wanted to go “home.” The fact that so few availed themselves of the opportunity, or heeded the back-to-African exhortations of turn- of-the-century Black Nationalist Marcus Garvey, reflects the reality that descendants of slaves understood they were better off remaining in the United States, for all its faults.

In short, politically correct assumptions about America’s entanglement with slavery lack any sense of depth, perspective or context. As with so many other persistent lies about this fortunate land, the unthinking indictment of the United States as uniquely blameworthy for an evil institution ignores the fact that the record of previous generations provides some basis for pride as well as guilt.

Michael Medved, nationally syndicated talk radio host, is author of 10 non-fiction books, including The Shadow Presidents and Right Turns.

Copyright © 2006 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

COTTON COMES TO HARLEM:THE O'REILLY FACTOR













It seems as if talking pundithead Bill O'Reilly has finally gotten himself into some trouble he can't get out of. The right wing apologist, often known for his foolish off the cuff remarks, went to dinner in Harlem with Rev. Al Sharpton and apparently observed blacks in their natural habitat, a famous soul food rectaurant, Sylvia's, owned and run by blacks. He was amazed that blacks can sit down to dinner, order food properly, eat with their knives and forks, and don't have to shout m'fer I want some more tea. Imagine that.

"I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City," he said. "It was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks [and has a] primarily black patronship. It was the same. And that's really what this society is really all about now here in the U.S.A. There's no difference."

He later added: "There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, '[Expletive], I want some more ice tea.' It was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there ordering and having fun and there wasn't any craziness at all."

He also didn't know that blacks also dressed and acted well when they go to concerts.

On the same program last week, O'Reilly also described going to an Anita Baker concert at Radio City Music Hall at which "the blacks [patrons] were well dressed." He added, "This is what white America doesn't know. They think the culture is dominated by Twista, Ludacris and Snoop Dogg."

This is what white America doesn't know? This would be slightly amusing if if wasn't just the biggest piece of nonsense going. I didn't think anomalies like this still existed in the world the way they did when I was growing up. I knew plenty of whites with this attitude, and O'Reilly's not that much older than me. As for his apologists, the man is simply a racist and everyone knows it but him. If they don't know it then let me tell them; when a white man basically says that he didn't know that most African Americans didn't act like backwards African jungle bunnies, actually knowing how to get their feed on using a knife and fork, then he is racist. No if, ands, or buts. Racist.

NOTPREZNITBUSH AND $12,000,000,000

An armed guard poses beside pallets of $100 bills in Baghdad. Almost $12bn in cash was spent by the US-led authority


O.K., I admit that I am lousy at math, always have been, but I can balance my checkbook to a penny, so don't go there. I still haven't managed to formulate in my head what I'm going to write about the digital divide, but this is part of it. If you have ever cruised any of the msb as opposed to the bwb(blogging while brown) you've noticed it. They're almost 100% white, and most of their content deals with political issues, mostly getting their candidates elected into office. Don't get me wrong, sites such as dkos, Atrios and others do good and great works policing politicians and correcting right wing propaganda. The only problem is that we who bwb get left behind, and in essence segregated, our voices not heard in important forums.

Fortunately, with the importance of the Jena 6 and an incredible movement started by black bloggers we may not be left behind too much longer. I know that there is also a convention coming up next summer in Atlanta which I would dearly love to go to but can't. I certainly need to know how to drive more traffic to this lonely planet, lol. At any rate you can find out more about the convention here. I hope the convention is well attended and worthwhile.

Now, on to the subject of my post. Which is the same. Not enough of the msb kept the heat on this subject to my way of thinking, though I'm not sure it would have done much good because NotPrezNitBush has yet to explain where $12,000,000,000 went, which was sent to Iraq on pallets. You can read that story at the Vanguard. I have never understood how our government allowed $12,000,000,000 in cold hard cash to be sent on a plane and unloaded in the open only to have it disappear. $12, 000,000,000. I can't get over it. Look at this;

In the year after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 nearly 281 million notes, weighing 363 tonnes, were sent from New York to Baghdad for disbursement to Iraqi ministries and US contractors. Using C-130 planes, the deliveries took place once or twice a month with the biggest of $2,401,600,000 on June 22 2004, six days before the handover.

Can you believe that? This government, which promotes one of the worst policies ever created, no child left behind, did this with money that should have gone to our children and the school system which needed it desperately, and yet they either can't, won't, or don't know where the publics money went. I haven't figured out yet why none of the republicans and democrats aren't looking harder to see where this money went, what happened to it. Why does NotPreznitBush continually slash funding for educational programs and ask for more war spending, to the tune of $190,000,000,000? What if that money could go to the infrastructure of our school system? How much would such a cash infusion help our children? Still more than a year to suffer the man who isn't president.





Thursday, September 20, 2007

JENA

A mass of protesters makes its way Thursday toward the high school in Jena, La. (AP photo by Frank Franklin II / September 20, 2007)

WHERE IS THE HIP HOP NATION?

The kids did good, they did really good. I know that a contingency from Howard University went down, as well as colleges from around the country. The young people finally took up the march where so many of us left off, and where the death of Dr. King ended it. I give praise where praise is due, to the black youth of this country for stepping up when it counted.

On another front, I heard an announcement this morning that rock star David Bowie has contributed $10,000 to the defense fund for the Jena 6. Rock on with your bad self, David Bowie.

And on this front; where is the hip hop nation in all this? This was the perfect chance for those who write hate lyrics about black women to come out of the closet and ride for the Jena 6. Were their schedules so busy about the business of betraying us to the white moguls they work for that they couldn't take the time to go to such a historic protest as this? Hip hop "artists", tired of being seen as the women haters that they are, always having the spotlight shone on their misogynistic portrayals of women, could have used this time to show another side of themselves, if there is another side. Where was big mouth Kanye West, 50 Cent, MIMS, Nas, Nellie(is he relevant anymore, as if I know), Russell (talking out his buttcrack) Simmons? If anyone knows whether or not any of these "artists" made themselves relevant and available, let me know. I wouldn't want to besmirch any of their good names. Or interrupt any of those minstrel shows they put on.

Monday, September 17, 2007

ANDERSON COOPER:TEARING UP THE SOULS OF BLACK MEN

This is a post from my TerrorCheezeBlog which I decided needed to be here too. After some thought I will preface this that while Anderson Cooper is the host of 360, he is not totally to blame for the take down of Simpson. CNN is owner of the program, and there were plenty of others in on that take down and the hateration. It just seemed to me at the time that I was watching it Cooper's was the most detailed, though I don't doubt there won't be many more to come during this week.


For the last hour, almost without break, Anderson Cooper has been using his 360 in the bashing of O.J. Simpson. Here it is, now into the second hour of a two hour show, and this is still going on. About a half an hour ago they did the ultimate take down of a black man, Jeffrey Toobin and whatever other little black sidekick they had, agreeing that Simpson was guilty and that he was going to get whatever charges they could levy at him, and rightfully so. He was finally going to get his for the murders of his wife and her friend. Then they went on to do a break down of all the money Simpson was earning that they couldn't get at or put a dollar amount on, because, as the man said, none of it was "transparent". Next they went on to tell all the deals he was probably making under the table with his sports memorabilia, and his autograph signings, which everyone knows the athletes do. Oh, they shook O.J. upside down looking for the change in his pockets.

Now, I'm going to admit right here that I am no lover of O.J. Simpson. I don't really care about the man one way the other. He was once one of the greatest to play the game of football, and perhaps all that fame went to his head. Maybe once you taste what it's like to be famous and desired it's hard to get over. I don't really know, and it could be that he has a naturally inflated ego that's making white people scream their fool heads off about the man. They're all over the networks giving O.J. a workout, as we know that this will be the news for the next week. I may not be a fan of O.J., but I hate to see white people get together like a feeding shark frenzy and tear down black men for all the world to see, then turn their stupid asses around and pretend to care about the plight of young black boys while ripping affirmative action prograsms out from under their feet so that they can't attend college and talking about some damn ass boot straps they know we don't have. The parents of ghetto children do not have homes with equity to barrow against for the further education of their children.

It's an unfortunate thing that this has to happen, and worst yet that white folks are getting their hateration on, but they need to stop telling us how much they care, and how much they want to help all the while putting knives in our chests. Then they want to tell us when to and when not to play the race card. Katrina ring any bells, NotPresidentBush? White folks? Oh yes, and Cooper does go to Nawleans, as he tries to pronounce it, to play the reverse card, pretending to keep them honest and play white hero. Well Cooper and crew, CNN, here's hoping that you don't get karma'd for that display of yours tonight, as I understand you have much to be karm'd for should anyone decide to open some of your doors.




GREENSPAN TELLS US WHAT WE ALREADY KNEW






I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil. You can read the entire article here.

WHY ARE WHITES SO UPSET AT THE EMMYS?


It's funny that so many whites are upset with each other about who won and who lost at the Emmy awards. How much more upset would they have been if blacks had won awards they felt they should have gotten? Or would they have just sat there silently, saying nothing, knowing they would get their own back the following year by blocking blacks from getting any awards? How many awards didn't blacks get that they deserved? How many years were we denied? I was watching the night Halle Berry was given her Oscar for Monster's Ball, and if that sister never does another thing in life, or garner's another award, I will always applaud her for that moment when she accepted the statue on behalf of all the sisters who had gone on before her, doing great work in film and yet never being recognized due to racism. I just wish whites would be a little more appreciative of all that they have and can get their hands on than they are while keeping others from getting theirs.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

IT AIN'T OVER















Just because many of the charges against the kids who sat under the "whites only" tree have been dropped doesn't mean it's over. The three white kids who hung those nooses from that tree have yet to be charged with any crime at all, and they need to be charged with a hate crime, and possibly threats of bodily harm. The attorney general for the town needs to be investigated with the possibility that he could be fired. And where is Blanco in all this?

Thursday, September 13, 2007

BOEHNER'S BONER










BLITZER: How much longer will U.S. taxpayers have to shell out $2 billion a week or $3 billion a week as some now are suggesting the cost is going to endure? The loss in blood, the Americans who are killed every month, how much longer do you think this commitment, this military commitment is going to require?

BOEHNER: I think General Petraeus outlined it pretty clearly. We’re making success. We need to firm up those successes. We need to continue our effort here because, Wolf, long term, the investment that we’re making today will be a small price if we’re able to stop al Qaeda here, if we’re able to stabilize the Middle East, it’s not only going to be a small price for the near future, but think about the future for our kids and their kids. (His name is actually pronounced Bayner)

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

WHO'S PARADISE IS THIS ANYWAY?





THIS IS PARADISE

I spent one of the last weekends of summer out on Long Island. People sailing on the bay. Families enjoying the beach. Children swimming in the ocean. Parents trying to catch up on their reading.

I went to the US Open to see Federer take apart his opponents. To watch the Williams sisters bring their particular brand of courage to the court once again. To see Henin hunker down and prevail.

I went to Radio City to hear Tony Bennett sing at a benefit for his arts education charity. Bennett, who brings more talent and musical history to a single performance than any ten artists, sang as beautifully as ever. But to see him at that great venue was a special evening. To be Tony Benett, the real Tony Bennett, for just one night. That would be something.

On Sunday, I attend the Emmys and hope my show fares well there and that we have a good season on NBC.

I live in New York and as 9/11 commemorations approach, I can't help but think that this city, this country of ours, this is paradise. Here. Now. Not some promise of where we may go in some Christian or Muslim depiction of an afterlife. All that one could hope for, that one could pray to God for, all that one could dream of having, without having to lie or steal or hurt another person in order to gain it, all of that is here on this Earth now.

Who is running for president that can remind us of that? Who, among all of these people, can promise to help us get our faith back? Who can promise us that they will lead us out of these horribly cynical times? Who can help us redefine our place in a world of ever shifting political realities? Who can gives us the courage to make the sacrifices we will certainly have to make in order to accommodate nature's new rules? Who can help us to overcome the awful shame we have endured during the past seven years?

My friend told me about a T-shirt she saw. "It's not the end of the world but I can see it from here." Perhaps the Earth possesses a self-purging mechanism. Perhaps we are destined to be purged, as the Earth seeks to balance its systems. In the meantime, I hold that this is paradise. Beautiful to the point of perfection. Well worth fighting for. That fight is on now and its first major battle is 14 months away.

O.K. It's not that I'm against people getting their's, or against white people for that matter, and for the most part I really do think whites severely under appreciate all that they have, but I really didn't want to read this when I'm already looking for the end of the month and the next little pieces of money I get. I desperately need a new car to replace the one I have, frightened to death that it will break down on me, leaving me and my sis without means of transportation at all. That, for me, is a scary thought. The utility bills scare me, that damned broken washing machine has my nerves frayed, along with a whole host of other problems I never thought I'd be dealing with at this point in life.

Whites run the earth, having everything handed to them on a platter, from birth to death, never having to wonder what it would be like if they were in the shoes of a black person, never having to wonder where their next dime is coming from, their next job, nothing. I am at least glad to see that Baldwin appreciates all that he has. May he not come back as a poor black man or woman, for that matter. Perhaps if I were not a poor black woman with health problems, and was the cherished white, blond woman, who could get any job she wanted, or marry a white man to give her what she wanted, I might see things from a different perspective. Otherwise, I am more than happy and content with the skin I'm in, I just wish I could get some of what Baldwin has while I am in it.

Monday, September 10, 2007

AND DEFINITELY BECAUSE IT'S HERE

Residents: Nooses spark school violence, divide town

  • Story Highlights
  • Judge vacates one conviction against a teen accused in a high school fight
  • Attorneys to file emergency appeal to ask for a stay of teen's sentencing
  • Victim's mother: Charges warranted because attack could have killed her son
  • Attack, other violence came after white students hung nooses from campus tree
By Susan Roesgen and Eliott C. McLaughlin
CNN

JENA, Louisiana (CNN) -- A judge Tuesday vacated one of two convictions against a teen involved in a violent, racially charged incident in Louisiana that left another teen hospitalized.

Defense lawyers argued -- and 28th Judicial District Court Judge J.P. Mauffray Jr. agreed -- that a charge of conspiracy to commit second-degree aggravated battery should have been brought against Mychal Bell in juvenile court rather than adult court.

But he left standing Bell's conviction on a second-degree aggravated battery charge.

The teen's attorneys said they would file an emergency appeal and ask for a stay of Bell's September 20 sentencing date until the appellate court rules.

A regular kid

Bell was like a lot of boys his age, his mother says.

The always-smiling 16-year-old often spent weekends on the couch, munching Little Debbie snack cakes, watching football and dreaming of the day he would join his heroes in the NFL.

That was before police arrested the star running back and five other teens -- dubbed the "Jena 6" -- on attempted murder and conspiracy charges after a December 4, 2006, fight at the local high school. Three of the six, including Bell, later had their charges reduced to aggravated battery.

Bell, now 17, sits in a cell in Jena, waiting to learn whether he will spend the next two decades in prison.

"He's not the same. He's grown up a lot since he's been in there. He's not the same ol' smiling Mychal he used to be," his mother, Melissa Bell, says. "I pray that the judge will go easy on him."

Mychal Bell wasn't convicted of attempted murder. The charges were diluted to aggravated battery and conspiracy, but undiluted is the outrage over the fates of Bell and the rest of the Jena 6. VideoWatch deputies subdue Bell's father after the conviction »

Many in this sleepy town of 3,000, where 12 percent of the population is black, are calling Bell's June conviction a case of Jim Crow justice.

They question why Bell's public defender never called a witness in the trial. They question the all-white jury that took three hours to convict him. They question charges they say are wildly overblown. They question why the teen was tried as an adult.

And they say the fight never would have happened if not for the nooses.

A threat or a prank?

In September 2006, as the school year kicked off, a black Jena High School student asked the vice principal if he and some friends could sit under an oak tree where the white students typically congregated.

Told by the vice principal they could sit wherever they pleased, the student and his pals plopped down under the sprawling branches of a shade tree in the campus courtyard.

The next day, students arrived at school to find three nooses hanging from those branches.

"I seen them hanging. I'm thinking the KKK, you know, were hanging nooses. They want to hang somebody. Real nooses, the ones you see on TV, are the kind of nooses they were," Robert Bailey, 17, one of the Jena 6, told the syndicated radio show "Democracy Now!"

The school's principal recommended expulsion for those behind the nooses, according to the local newspaper in nearby Alexandria. Instead, The Town Talk reported, a school district committee overruled the recommendation and suspended three white students for three days for hanging the nooses, a gesture written off as a prank.

"Toilet paper, that's a prank, you know what I'm saying?" Bailey told the radio show. "Nooses hanging there -- nooses ain't no prank."

A series of scuffles ensued over the next three months as racial tension at the school became palpable.

The district attorney was summoned to address the student body. Off-campus fights were reported. Bailey said he had a beer bottle broken over his head in one incident, a shotgun pulled on him in another.

On November 30, someone torched the school's main academic building. The arson remains unsolved, but many suspect it's linked to the discord strangling Jena High.

The attack

Four days after the arson, several students jumped a white classmate, Justin Barker, knocking him unconscious before stomping and kicking him.

Parents of the Jena 6 say they heard Barker was hurling racial epithets. Barker's parents say he did nothing to provoke the beating.

Barker was taken to the hospital with injuries to both eyes and ears as well as cuts. His right eye had blood clots, said his mother, Kelli Barker. Justin Barker was treated and released that day.

Bell, Bailey, Theo Shaw, Carwin Jones, Bryant Purvis and an unidentified juvenile -- all black teens -- were arrested and charged with attempted murder. The weapons used, according to the charges -- shoes. Their bails were set at between $70,000 and $138,000. Watch Purvis' mother say her son heard the 'lick' that leveled BarkerVideo

On Tuesday, LaSalle Parish District Attorney J. Reed Walters reduced the charges against Jones and Shaw to second-degree aggravated battery, the same charge on which Bell was convicted.

Only Bell remains in jail, on a $90,000 bond, and the judge has refused to lower it, citing Bell's criminal record, which includes four juvenile offenses -- two simple battery charges among them.

The Jena 6 say they are innocent. Bailey told CNN that by the time he arrived at the fight, students and coaches had broken it up.

"When a fight breaks out, all the kids just run to see a fight. That's just how it was," he said. "You really couldn't see nothing. So when I'm running to see what's going on, I got down there to the fight, it was over."

Attorneys ask judge to reconsider

Bell is scheduled for a September 20 sentencing hearing where he faces up to 22 years in prison. The other five await their days in court.

The case is getting international media attention -- a buzz that has drawn the NAACP and civil rights stalwarts such as the Rev. Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King III -- but many in Jena are skeptical the boys can get a fair trial.

"Jena has been a community that has had self-imposed segregation probably since the '50s. They never got the memo," said radio host Tony Brown, who coined the name Jena 6.

Brown, who hosts a statewide radio newsmagazine from Alexandria, where he has lived since 1991, says there are still "righteous people" in Jena. However, he said, there is little commingling among black and white residents and the town often abides by "a Jim Crow mentality."

The mothers of Bell and Bailey concur, but Caseptla Bailey insists, "Jena's a good place to live. It's home. It's something that's in our hearts."

Kristi Boyett, a white resident, is not so nostalgic. She and her family are leaving Jena "because of the racist stuff that's going on here," she said.

She fears for her children's safety in the public schools, she said, and she's not surprised that racial tension in Jena has reached a breaking point.

"That's the way this town's always been. I've lived here for 16 years, and it's been segregated since we lived here," she said.

'We lost Jena'

Other longtime residents, however, paint a more harmonious portrait of Jena and blame the media for casting their town in a negative light. Mayor Murphy McMillan declined to be interviewed, saying only, "The media is making our town look bad."

Paula Brewer, who grew up in Jena, told The Town Talk in Alexandria that "everybody talks to everybody" and there are no racial boundaries in the central Louisiana hamlet.

"Where did Jena go in all this?" she asked the newspaper. "We lost Jena. We aren't what they are calling us -- racist and ignorant. Jena is a good town with good people."

Though some say race drove the decision to charge the teens with attempted murder, Walters released a statement last year saying no one was charged "based on who they are." He has made no public comment since.

The victim's mother says she, too, believes the charges are warranted and not based on race. Had the attackers not been pulled off her son, she said, he could have been killed.

"I wish to goodness it wouldn't have happened," Kelli Barker said. "And I hate it for them parents. I mean, I can only imagine, but I also have to think about my child and my family."

Advocates for the Jena 6 aren't saying the boys should be let off if they indeed pummeled Justin Barker. Rather, they're saying the charges should match the crime -- and that the juvenile court should handle the teens' cases.

Brown said he will use his radio show as a platform to push for justice until an appellate court throws out Bell's conviction and the remaining Jena 6 see a fair trial.

Brown said of his rationale, "My grandma used to tell me, 'You can't hang a thief for murder,' and that's what they're doing in Jena."

This story did not go national as it should have, but we can fix that. Later I will try to have a place where you can donate to the defense fund.

BECAUSE IT'S STILL THERE

6 Arrested in West Virginia After Woman Abused, Held Captive in House for a Week

Monday , September 10, 2007

AP

A woman was sexually abused, beaten and humiliated while being held captive in a home for at least a week, sheriff's officials said Monday after making six arrests and calling the FBI to investigate it as a possible hate crime.

Those arrested, including a mother and son and a mother and daughter, are white. The victim, a Charleston woman who was being treated at a hospital Monday, is black.

"The things that were done to this woman are just indescribable," Logan County sheriff's Sgt. Sonya Porter said.

Deputies found the 23-year-old victim Saturday after going to the home in Big Creek, about 35 miles southwest of Charleston, to investigate an anonymous tip. One of the suspects, Frankie Brewster, was sitting on the front porch and told deputies she was alone, but moments later the victim limped toward the door, her arms outstretched, saying "help me," the sheriff's department said in a news release.

Besides being sexually assaulted, the victim was stabbed four times in the left leg and beaten, Porter said. Both of her eyes were black and blue. Deputies said the woman's wounds were inflicted at least a week ago.

During her capture, the victim was forced to eat rat and dog feces and drink from the toilet, according to the criminal complaint filed in magistrate court. The woman also was choked with a cable cord and her hair cut, it alleges.

One of those arrested, Karen Burton, is accused of cutting the woman's ankle with a knife. She used the N-word in telling the woman she was victimized because she is black, according to the criminal complaint.

Deputies say the woman was also doused with hot water while being sexually assaulted.

"We have called the feds," Chief Deputy V.K. Dingess with the Logan County Sheriff's Department said Monday. "They may pick this up as a hate crime."

A call seeking comment from the FBI was not immediately returned Monday.

The six suspects were arrested Saturday and Sunday. Deputies were still trying to determine whether the victim knew her assailants and how she came to be at Brewster's home, Porter said.

Frankie Brewster, 49, is charged with kidnapping, sexual assault, malicious wounding and giving false information during a felony investigation. Deputies said she was the woman on the porch.

Her son, Bobby R. Brewster, 24, is charged with kidnapping, sexual assault, malicious wounding and assault during the commission of a felony.

Burton, 46, of Chapmanville, is charged with malicious wounding, battery and assault during the commission of a felony.

Her daughter Alisha Burton, 23, of Chapmanville, and George A. Messer, 27, of Chapmanville, are charged with assault during the commission of a felony and battery.

Danny J. Combs, 20, of Harts, is charged with sexual assault and malicious wounding.

All six were held Monday in lieu of $100,000 bond each, and all have asked for court-appointed public defenders.

Don't let anyone tell you that racism doesn't exist anymore.

A CHILD DIES IN MARYLAND












From a toothache

-
For Want of a Dentist
Pr. George's Boy Dies After Bacteria From Tooth Spread to Brain

By Mary Otto
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 28, 2007; B01

Twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver died of a toothache Sunday.

A routine, $80 tooth extraction might have saved him.

If his mother had been insured.

If his family had not lost its Medicaid.

If Medicaid dentists weren't so hard to find.

If his mother hadn't been focused on getting a dentist for his brother, who had six rotted teeth.

By the time Deamonte's own aching tooth got any attention, the bacteria from the abscess had spread to his brain, doctors said. After two operations and more than six weeks of hospital care, the Prince George's County boy died.

Deamonte's death and the ultimate cost of his care, which could total more than $250,000, underscore an often-overlooked concern in the debate over universal health coverage: dental care.

Some poor children have no dental coverage at all. Others travel three hours to find a dentist willing to take Medicaid patients and accept the incumbent paperwork. And some, including Deamonte's brother, get in for a tooth cleaning but have trouble securing an oral surgeon to fix deeper problems.

In spite of efforts to change the system, fewer than one in three children in Maryland's Medicaid program received any dental service at all in 2005, the latest year for which figures are available from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The figures were worse elsewhere in the region. In the District, 29.3 percent got treatment, and in Virginia, 24.3 percent were treated, although all three jurisdictions say they have done a better job reaching children in recent years.

"I certainly hope the state agencies responsible for making sure these children have dental care take note so that Deamonte didn't die in vain," said Laurie Norris, a lawyer for the Baltimore-based Public Justice Center who tried to help the Driver family. "They know there is a problem, and they have not devoted adequate resources to solving it."

Maryland officials emphasize that the delivery of basic care has improved greatly since 1997, when the state instituted a managed care program, and 1998, when legislation that provided more money and set standards for access to dental care for poor children was enacted.

About 900 of the state's 5,500 dentists accept Medicaid patients, said Arthur Fridley, last year's president of the Maryland State Dental Association. Referring patients to specialists can be particularly difficult.

Fewer than 16 percent of Maryland's Medicaid children received restorative services -- such as filling cavities -- in 2005, the most recent year for which figures are available.

For families such as the Drivers, the systemic problems are often compounded by personal obstacles: lack of transportation, bouts of homelessness and erratic telephone and mail service.

The Driver children have never received routine dental attention, said their mother, Alyce Driver. The bakery, construction and home health-care jobs she has held have not provided insurance. The children's Medicaid coverage had temporarily lapsed at the time Deamonte was hospitalized. And even with Medicaid's promise of dental care, the problem, she said, was finding it.

When Deamonte got sick, his mother had not realized that his tooth had been bothering him. Instead, she was focusing on his younger brother, 10-year-old DaShawn, who "complains about his teeth all the time," she said.

DaShawn saw a dentist a couple of years ago, but the dentist discontinued the treatments, she said, after the boy squirmed too much in the chair. Then the family went through a crisis and spent some time in an Adelphi homeless shelter. From there, three of Driver's sons went to stay with their grandparents in a two-bedroom mobile home in Clinton.

By September, several of DaShawn's teeth had become abscessed. Driver began making calls about the boy's coverage but grew frustrated. She turned to Norris, who was working with homeless families in Prince George's.

Norris and her staff also ran into barriers: They said they made more than two dozen calls before reaching an official at the Driver family's Medicaid provider and a state supervising nurse who helped them find a dentist.

On Oct. 5, DaShawn saw Arthur Fridley, who cleaned the boy's teeth, took an X-ray and referred him to an oral surgeon. But the surgeon could not see him until Nov. 21, and that would be only for a consultation. Driver said she learned that DaShawn would need six teeth extracted and made an appointment for the earliest date available: Jan. 16.

But she had to cancel after learning Jan. 8 that the children had lost their Medicaid coverage a month earlier. She suspects that the paperwork to confirm their eligibility was mailed to the shelter in Adelphi, where they no longer live.

It was on Jan. 11 that Deamonte came home from school complaining of a headache. At Southern Maryland Hospital Center, his mother said, he got medicine for a headache, sinusitis and a dental abscess. But the next day, he was much sicker.

Eventually, he was rushed to Children's Hospital, where he underwent emergency brain surgery. He began to have seizures and had a second operation. The problem tooth was extracted.

After more than two weeks of care at Children's Hospital, the Clinton seventh-grader began undergoing six weeks of additional medical treatment as well as physical and occupational therapy at another hospital. He seemed to be mending slowly, doing math problems and enjoying visits with his brothers and teachers from his school, the Foundation School in Largo.

On Saturday, their last day together, Deamonte refused to eat but otherwise appeared happy, his mother said. They played cards and watched a show on television, lying together in his hospital bed. But after she left him that evening, he called her.

"Make sure you pray before you go to sleep," he told her.

The next morning at about 6, she got another call, this time from the boy's grandmother. Deamonte was unresponsive. She rushed back to the hospital.

"When I got there, my baby was gone," recounted his mother.

She said doctors are still not sure what happened to her son. His death certificate listed two conditions associated with brain infections: "meningoencephalitis" and "subdural empyema."

In spite of such modern innovations as the fluoridation of drinking water, tooth decay is still the single most common childhood disease nationwide, five times as common as asthma, experts say. Poor children are more than twice as likely to have cavities as their more affluent peers, research shows, but far less likely to get treatment.

Serious and costly medical consequences are "not uncommon," said Norman Tinanoff, chief of pediatric dentistry at the University of Maryland Dental School in Baltimore. For instance, Deamonte's bill for two weeks at Children's alone was expected to be between $200,000 and $250,000.

The federal government requires states to provide oral health services to children through Medicaid programs, but the shortage of dentists who will treat indigent patients remains a major barrier to care, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Access is worst in rural areas, where some families travel hours for dental care, Tinanoff said. In the Maryland General Assembly this year, lawmakers are considering a bill that would set aside $2 million a year for the next three years to expand public clinics where dental care remains a rarity for the poor.

Providing such access, Tinanoff and others said, eventually pays for itself, sparing children the pain and expense of a medical crisis.

Reimbursement rates for dentists remain low nationally, although Maryland, Virginia and the District have increased their rates in recent years.

Dentists also cite administrative frustrations dealing with the Medicaid bureaucracy and the difficulties of serving poor, often transient patients, a study by the state legislatures conference found.

"Whatever we've got is broke," Fridley said. "It has nothing to do with access to care for these children."

This event occurred last February. Here is the update.

Who Do We Hate?













Need I say more? This noose was hung at the University of Maryland campus, and it took the entire week before it was taken down.

She's Now A Wrinkle In Time

I was ten years old when I first found her book in our school library, took it home, curled up in bed and became transported in time and space. The author of the wonderful book was Madeline L'Engle, who passed away at the 88 this past weekend. Rest in peace Ms. L'Engle. Here is a tribute from someone who knew her as a teacher.

Friday, September 7, 2007

Where Are We?

I am sitting here watching one of the morning news shows and at the end of the program, as they transfer over the the Today show, they have a segment on their coming expanded show, so now there will be four hours of Today. Not a problem as I don't watch them beyond a certain point. Apparently they have added a fourth person for this new hour, a Ms. Hotb. O.k., with the exception of the weatherman, who is black, this is a lily white show, and I suppose this shouldn't bother me really, but it does. Where is the inclusion of sisters? If they could find all these white women, couldn't they find an experienced sister to add to the show. Yes, I know what they would say, that Ms. Hotb is an ethnic minority, but as far as I'm concerned they see her as white, as one of them, so she's not a minority in their eyes.

To me, this is just a reminder that while we have come a long way, we have so much farther to go. Our work is not done and yet we have dropped the ball. That is only part of the story, because to be sure the other part of it has to do with racism. I wonder how many sisters went to that studio for an audition, hoping to get a plum like that, yet knowing they wouldn't even be offered the job? How many brothers went for one of those interviews? This is one of the problems our culture is having at this point in time. Too many of those who "run things" think that blacks have everything they need, all the rights Dr. King won for us through the civil rights movement, but this train of thought is dead wrong. A simple thing like what I just wrote about shows us that this is not so. We haven't come nearly far enough and there is much work to do.

I'm trying to read as many African American blogs as I can, and this weekend I have decided to work on seeking out and adding some of those blogs to a blogroll in my side bar. Some of these bloggers express an interest in trying to create not only and agenda, but also becoming a force to be reckoned with, but I'm not seeing it at this point in time. I don't know what the protocol is for inviting others to read your blog, but I intend to try and find out. I did invite one blogger to come read my efforts and you see where that got me! I've tried everything I could to get my little blog out there and will keep trying, but I still want to know what's on the agenda for other bloggers and just how they think to grow a movement like that of dkos if they aren't willing to try and pull in the readers and other bloggers.

I believe that like the creator of dkos, black bloggers could make a world of difference if they banded together and made their voices heard, if they had a cohesive agenda. This is the only way in which this can be done. I don't know if we can make a difference in this election, but certainly on the local level we can make a difference with our efforts. But we must all be in support of each other, constantly reading each other, and in communication with each other through our blogs. It can be done.

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

TOPS ON THE AGENDA:EDUCATION


This is a story I first heard some months ago, and it is one of the reasons we must keep our eye on the prize of education. Our children remain some of the most under educated in America, along with Hispanics and Native Americans. We need to refocus our efforts on getting our children educated so that they are not left behind in this new millennium, and we need to make sure that they have more options than trying to pin their hopes on the traditional pursuits of entertainment and sports, categories that don't have room for everyone, and for which everyone is not suited. There are more who don't make it in these categories than those who do. In any case, our children need to have an education to fall back on, no matter what they hope to achieve, they can better achieve their dreams with an education behind them. You can read the story of 15 year old Britney Exline here, at msnbc.