Monday, June 23, 2008

RACE, PREJUDICE AND THE MAGIC NEGRO

This is the response I posted to an article on the carpetbagger report about racial prejudice.



36.
On June 23rd, 2008 at 9:20 am, gentlerabbit said:

How is Obama’s candidacy supposed to make race relations better and why should it hinge on that? Why can’t we be friends now, instead of when he’s president? Why should it take that to get whites and blacks together? His presidency is not going to help that if you are not talking to blacks already, believe me. If you’re not talking to me now, what will make you talk to me if he becomes president? Some wonderful, magical powder? What?

Hey Mr. Bus Driver, stop to think a moment that black boys are not a precious commodity in this country, which has spent decades telling them so. They are nothing and nobody, and who wants and cares for them? This country, this world, considers white children the most precious commodity on earth, and it spends all it’s time telling people that. It tells black children that they are worthless and not worth a thought, and that what they were doing on your bus is as far as they will get.

This is why race relations aren’t any better in this country, because you people had to wait for the “magic Negro” before you could even begin to “see” blacks in this country. Weird. You “talk to” Obama and act as if he should be able to convey whatever message it is you have for blacks to them instead of speaking to us directly. I don’t understand this at all. Race relations isn’t going to change one iota in this country if that man is elected. You will continue to live in your segregated hoods, with all that it affords you, while we live in our hoods with all that they don’t. You will continue to avoid blacks and in fact not even “see” us unless they’re like the kids who get on the bus needing attention in their lives and getting it anyway they can.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

FEMINISM AND WHITE WOMEN

















I find white feminism to a very strange thing. This past primary, a woman ran for president, one of the most qualified in the world, and you would have thought white women would have been happy with that, but they weren't. There was a bunch of articles written by white women, moaning and groaning about how unfeminine Hillary Clinton was, unfeminine! One woman wrote an article about how she was so disappointed that Hillary did not give an interview to Vogue because she stated that it might make her look too soft. Most of the respondents agreed that Hillary was not feminine enough, that she was too ballsy, too nut cracking, too emasculating. What the hell did they want, a presidential candidate who would declare Vladimir Putin, a cold eyed killer(?) his friend, a man who's soul he had read as good and honest?

When the feminist movement came along I was a young lady, well able to consider what it all meant. Being a black woman is far more different than being a white woman. They could afford to be feminist because the world was built around them, geared towards them, laid at their feet. Just because they now decided to work for a few years, delay getting married and having families, get higher degrees, and all that went with breaking out of that married/mommy mold, didn't mean that when they decided to seek all those things they wouldn't be there for them. In general black women have always had to work outside the home, always had to help bring money into the household to make ends meet and provide those extras for their families, things taken for granted by whites with their greater earning power. Black women have always had to be feminist because of the way they had to live their lives, with the racism and hatred of whites.

Being a feminist is a mindset. It has nothing to with the clothes you wear, whether or not you can cook or bake cookies, raise six kids, or any of those other things white women opined that Hillary did not do. There were so many sort of "unspoken" wishes that Hillary would bake and serve a plate of cookies. What's up with that?! I don't want a president who gets up in the middle of the night to bake a batch of chocolate chips. Unless it's at my house. She wore pantsuits, she looked manly, not feminine at all. O.K. So you're in a pool full of pants wearing men. If you were to wear skirts and dresses and show leg, what would have been the first thing out their mouths? She's playing the sex card, looking too sexy and feminine! She quelled one thing only to have them open fire on her on another front.

From the time I was fifteen, until the time I was forty-six, when my mom finally passed away, I was her caretaker. Why? Because that poor woman was mentally deranged. She passed away in the house we were living in at the time, and I was totally scared. I had never handled death in any way shape or form, and didn't know what to expect. I didn't want her to be in any pain, but I wanted to grant her wish of not dying in a hospital. I dealt with the funeral arrangements, the church, the arrangements for the services at Arlington, and with my sister. I failed in some things, passed in others. That's life. I have always considered myself a feminist, maybe because I have always considered myself a seeker of civil rights. The two go hand in hand with each other, except I would say that civil rights come first. I was too young by about two years to run away from home to join the movement, but I did my part. The same for the feminist movement. I have always cast my vote for those who would promote and protect my rights, and as a young woman fought for Roe vs. Wade.

The clothes that you wear don't make you a feminist. The cookies that you bake don't make you feminine. Being a feminist for me has meant that I participated in votes, in studying candidates who had my best interest at heart, adding my voice to keep the supremes from overturning Roe vs. Wade, and eroding so many of our other reproductive rights. Trying to see to the educational rights of young girls in this country, as well as all children. Equal pay for equal work, which we don't have yet. It simply means looking after the needs of women. I've raised a child on my own. How tough is that? Tough. I would never chose to do it again because I'd want my child to have a father. But does that necessarily make me feminine? A woman? Every woman who has a womb has the potential to give birth, but does that mean she will make an excellent mother?

It was strange, but none of the women who wrote that Hillary seemed too mannish for them didn't really note the finely honed and intelligent mind this woman has. Did you see her on Bill O'Reilly, keeping him in his place, all the while speaking on the questions he tossed at her? I listened to her intently, wanting to see how she would answer those questions, and according to him she gave not one wrong answer, except the one he didn't like about the troops, I think. Her poise and skill at handling all types of situations were hardly discussed. The author of the article that set me off talked about the fact that Hillary did not do a Vogue interview. So that she could appear softer, more feminine. Wtfiuwt?! What about appearing knowledgible before other nations of the world? For the past eight years we've had a male president who is as dumb as a door knob, and who dragged this country into a war for oil. Yes. A war for oil is what this man allowed Americans to be killed over. Could Hillary Clinton do better? I think so, but at this time I will have to wait to find out.

Is there anything such as a feminine feminist? I'm one. Being a feminist doesn't mean you lose your femininity. Those "journalists", or posters on the cesspool, wrote that as a dig against Hillary and set their brand of feminist back 40 years. Because you have bothered to educate yourself, as so many white women do, hone your mind, your intellectual skills, doesn't make you mannish. It simply makes you a well rounded woman. Does wearing a dress or a pair of Prada shoes make you more lady like? If so, what does that make the pope and his red wearing shoe self? Feminine? Am I less feminine because I'm a football freak? Was totally into the Lakers during the Magic years? (I'm so glad they went down in ignominious defeat, lol). Am I feminine because like most women I love clothes? I love fabrics, textures, bright colors, patterns? Am I mannish because I dealt with all the trials and tribulations that went with dealing with a ailing mother, siblings and a child of my own with no outside help from a man whatsoever, much less my own relatives?

The glass ceiling will not be broken this year. It may not happen in my life time at this point. A black man may become our first president. That's another story. White women seem to be happy with this lot, though I'm not quite sure why beyond the myriad of silly, foolish, stupid reasons they have given, and other white women seem agree with them. I don't know where they will find this strange mix of feminist/feminine woman they seek, except to say that she already exist. In me, my sister, your mother perhaps, an aunt, your sister, Hillary Clinton. If we seek the highest office in the land, I don't think that we will need cookie baking skills, or any other "feminine" skills we might have at our beck and call. What we will need is the ability to the best women that we can be when the next opportunity comes to shatter that glass ceiling.

Cookie bakers need not apply.


Thursday, June 12, 2008

TRIFFLING RACIST TRASH





O.K., you know I am not a fan of hip hop in way, shape, or form, but I found this post on hatepocesspool(huffingtonpost) to be very racist and disturbing. I ain't even an Obama supporter and I found this mess disturbing. This is the article of some white woman on the cesspool, Mary Battiata.

Lately I've been wondering what an Obama White House might mean for the future of bling. For the fate of heavy gold, medallions, below-the-butt denim, the whole hip-hop gangsta fashion habit. What if January 20, 2009 turned out to be not just a cultural and clothing pivot point for adults -- a return to the minimalism of sleek, 60s-era sharkskin suits, the containment of golf-ball sized Barbara Bush costume pearls -- but a watershed fashion moment for teenaged boys? Picture it. On Inauguration Day next year, thousands and thousands of young men and boys from city street corners to suburbs, look up from their X-Boxes and catch a glimpse of the impeccable President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama climbing the steps of the Capitol and suddenly feel... unfashionable. Out of it. Old. What if they are overcome by the same stunned, something's-happening-here feeling that teenagers in the early 60s, their closets full of sock hop regalia, felt when they first laid eyes on The Beatles in 1964, on the nationally televised Ed Sullivan Show. For adults, this kind of moment is, at most, something to take note of. To a teenager, it's a gale force warning of imminent social tsunami, an urgent prod from the eyeballs and the amygdala that to everything there is a season, and now is the time to change, change, change. Ask not what you can do for your closet, but what your closet, if ignored, can do to you.

This week in the nation's capital, Washington Post's Metro columnist Courtland Milloy wrote about the street scene in the mostly African-American, inner-city neighborhood of Trinidad, where D.C. police have set up a Balkans-style traffic checkpoints in and out of the neighborhood in an effort to stem a recent spate of drug related murders. Sitting on the front porch of 67-year-old Willie Dorn, a retired corrections officer, Milloy noted the antics of a group of teenaged boys "shirtless, pants below their behinds," who, as Milloy and Dorn watched, launched a plastic bottle at a passing scooter, nearly causing an accident. "Maybe a President Obama could help restore some pride in the black community," Dorn said.

The relationship of clothing to behavior is real. Clothes may not "make the man," but they shape the mind in ways large and small. Ask any stay-at-home parent, freelance writer or invalid who has spent one too many days in baggy sweats and stained T-shirts and begins to notice (in a semi-alarmed, detached sort of way, of course) a dwindling of discipline and energy. The well-known Rx for this condition is a shower and a change into grown-up clothes, the kind with seams that may pinch the body, but can help focus the head.

Until Barack Obama came along, the most visible pop culture exemplar of 1960s suit-and-tie style was the tightly-wound Rev. Louis Farrakhan. But Farrakhan, for all his former high visibility, was never mainstream. It's no surprise that he failed to inspire a national craze for slim suits and buffed oxfords.

Barack Obama is different. Barack Obama is the suit next time.


I wrote Huffingtonpost requesting them to take this article down.

Monday, June 9, 2008

LAWLESSNESS BEGINS IN THE HOME

I don't know what the area you live in is like, but the county that I live in borders on Washington, D.C., an unfortunately crime ridden area. It's not like we don't have crime where I live, just not a whole lot of it at this time. Most of the counties which border the district suffer from spill over crimes. The county I grew up on shares a border with the district, and I once worked in that corner. Some of the stories to come out of that area are sad, to say the least. Many of the areas I'm familiar with and grew up in have now become crime ridden, drug infested areas, some into which I would never venture today.

Why aren't the police doing more people ask, what's happening with the police and why aren't they able to bring the number of crimes down? I'm never sure why people ask these questions instead of looking at the sources of the crimes, and more particularly why these crimes are happening. If you are anything like me you were raised right. You were taught right from wrong, how to make good moral and ethical decisions, never to harm others, don't take what doesn't belong to you, never follow a bad crowd, and always obey the law. Back in the long ago day, we couldn't roam our neighborhood, such as it was, without being known by somebody. I remember being stopped one day by some old man out in his yard raking leaves. He asked me if I was so and so, to which I answered no, even though I knew who he was talking about. Then he asked me if I was so and sos daughter, and once again I told him I wasn't, but I had to admit that I was his granddaughter. We were not allowed to back sass our elders or that meant a whipping. We had to answer to any adult who spoke to us because if we didn't they would hear about it. My grandparents, while not very strict, kept us under close watch, and we were not to break the rules. Cursing? One day, one of my sisters made me so mad that I decided to lay her little butt out and damned the consequences. So I told her off and cursed her, and said now, go tell that. That little hussy went flying down those rows of cabbages my grandmother had planted and was working on and told on me. I just waited on the porch for the whipping I knew was coming, and sure enough, my angry grandmother picked up a long handled coal shovel and beat my behind with it. She probably knew that although I had paid a price I was still pleased with myself.

These were my lessons growing up, along with so much else. I came from a large extended family who loved and cared for us and showed it. I passed these same lessons down to my own child, and used the same rules to help keep brothers and sisters in line when I had to. That I know of there are no jailbirds in my family, not one male in my family has ever spent time behind bars. They were way too afraid of my grandfather to have done anything to land them in jail. This is the problem of today's youth; there aren't enough authority figures in the home, not enough adults with the family training raising some of these kids, giving them the kinds of foundations they need to get through life without resorting to something like this.

Any day now we're going to see the parents of the four teens who beat this man to death, crying and sobbing into the cameras about how their children were good children, how they would never do something like this, and about how they, themselves, were good and loving parents. Doesn't it always go this way? Unfortunately, that's not really the way it is. All too many of these homes may be one parent homes, low income, drug addicted, and far too many have parents who were not trained by their parents to become parents. Somewhere along the line we stopped training our children for parenthood, something that used to be a natural part of life. In all too many households there are no father figures, needed by boys and girls. Mothers aren't passing down any lessons that they might have learned about wrong and right, making moral choices, choosing the right friends, and how to stay out of trouble. There's no one reinforcing the idea that there are consequences for their actions. When children have rules and goals set for them things like this don't happen either. Young people don't feel as if they have to rob and steal from each other or strangers, murdering them.

Lawlessness doesn't begin in the streets, it begins in the home, and it begins with the interactions between parent and child. Too many parents don't have the skills it takes to be a good parent, and too many parents aren't involved in their children's lives. One of the things I wish television stations would do is cut the stupid 911 calls, done only for drama, and explore some of the stories of the arrests of people, talk to some of the perpetrators of crimes, get a synopsis of their lives and what led them to commit the crimes they committed. Maybe there should be a program in the schools concerning crime and how to stay out of trouble, to give them a better foundation for adhering to rules and regulations. It's a well known fact that the majority of kids want rules in their lives to keep them from going over the edge, for knowing how they can't go.

Rules and regulations are meant to keep kids safe. In D. C. there's a school curfew and a summer curfew, one of 10 p.m. and the other midnight. I think this incident happened during the school year, when a mother allowed her son to stay out past curfew as a reward for completing an internship. He would have graduated that year. He and a group of his friends had stopped at a local teen spot and were on their way home when he was shot to death. He was not the target, nor were his friends, they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Celebrations and rewards are well and good, but if the child had been at home where he was supposed to be he might not be dead now.

Parenting classes might be one thing, especially if the child has a brush with the law, and parent/child classes, where parents learn to to interact with their children could be another. Lawlessness begins in the home and is then taken to the streets.


Tuesday, June 3, 2008

WHY DON'T THE SOUTH JUST STAY DEAD?

Huge Confederate Flag to Fly Over Tampa

50-by-30-Foot Symbol of Southern Cause to Fly at Private Site by Highway Crossroads

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The i's are dotted, t's are crossed and a 139-foot flagpole is ready to fly the Stars and Bars over one of the busiest highway interchanges in Florida.

Confederate Flag
The Sons of Confederate Veterans in Tampa, plans to raise what they claim is the world's largest Confederate flag on a private triangle of land tucked near where Interstates 75 and 4 meet. The flag measures 50 feet by 30 feet.
(www.florida-scv.org)

The Sons of Confederate Veterans in Tampa plan soon to raise what they claim is the world's largest Confederate flag on a private triangle of land tucked near where Interstates 75 and 4 meet. The flag measures 50 feet by 30 feet.

John Adams, commander of the organization's Florida division, has spearheaded the flag project, which includes plans for an accompanying memorial park. And he wants to make sure that the only objections the group faces are based on opinion, not the law.

"You're going to hear some complaints about it for sure," Adams said. "But it's a free country as far as I know."

To some, particularly across many Southern states, the rebel flag represents a rich heritage that includes fighting and dying for the Confederate cause during the Civil War. To others, the flag represents dark memories attached to slavery and racial inequality.

One of those people is Curtis Stokes, president of the NAACP in Hillsborough County, who hopes that a groundswell of opposition to raising the flag might convince the Sons of Confederate Veterans to reconsider.

That's an unlikely scenario, according to Adams. Nearly a decade ago, the 220 members in the state's Sons of Confederate Veterans group launched a project called "Flags Across Florida" in response to a decision by state officials to remove the Confederate flag from a place of prominence near the state capitol in Tallahassee.