Overcoming the Black Church's Tradition of Homophobia

Homophobia is hardly unique to the African-American community. It’s a social malady that's due largely to the influence of fear based-theologies, particularly fundamentalist Christianity, Islam and Judaism, all of which grow out of the Abrahamic tradition.

When something or someone is perceived as being despised by someone’s God, the worshippers of that God tend to despise and hate that person or thing as well. When given the opportunity, adherents act out against them with the same violence they presume God would use. That can happen through literal violence or in other ways - including the use of comedy.

Read more here

Open Letter to Creflo Dollar

Dear Rev. Dollar, 

I hope this letter finds you well. I know you are very busy, so I won't take up much of your time. I recently watched your sermon from last Sunday when you addressed the Eddie Long case. I commend you on your adamant calls for forgiveness. Love and forgiveness are indeed characteristics that all should seek to cultivate.  

However I fear your comments on Sunday (particularly those addressed to visitors from New Birth), conflated two very important, yet distinctive issues: forgiveness and accountability. 

You see, Long’s case was not simply, as you suggest, a “wreck” or a car “accident,” but a case of DUI: Driving/Pastoring under the influence of unchecked power and accountability. This continues to be a historic problem with commercial celebrity preachers, and given your status and peer group, I’m sure you know this all too well. 

Read more here

Are minority and poor kids disciplined more harshly in Georgia schools?

One of the most volatile topics on this blog is school discipline and whether there’s too much of it, too little and whether it’s applied equitably and sensibly.

The Georgia Appleseed Center for Law & Justice released a report Wednesday called “Effective Student Discipline: Keeping Kids in Class.”

The study examined state Department of Education discipline data and interviewed 200 people to see how discipline is used, particularly out of school suspension (OSS) in Georgia schools. Confirming other research, the study found that African-American students, poor kids and children with learning disabilities are more likely to be disciplined.

Some of you will respond that the higher rate of discipline and suspensions mirrors higher rates of infractions. But major studies suggest that offenses by minority kids are treated more harshly.

“And Justice for Some, ” a 2000 study by the U.S. Justice Department and six major research foundations, reviewed all phases of the nation’s juvenile justice system — from arrest to sentencing — and found that minority youth face more severe treatment at virtually every turn. The national data reveal a system in which children can expect to endure harsher outcomes if they’re black or Latino.

Read more here

The Negro Motorist Green Book

From: rhankins@library.tamu.edu

From: Earles,Phyllis [mailto:plearles@pvamu.edu]


The Negro Motorist Green Book is the subject of today's "Little-Known
Black History Fact."

The Negro Motorist Green Book was a publication released in 1936 that
served as a guide for African-American travelers. Because of the racist
conditions that existed from segregation, blacks needed a reference
manual to guide them to integrated or black-friendly establishments.
That's when they turned to "The Negro Motorist Green Book: An
International Travel Guide by activist Victor Green and presented by
the Esso Standard Oil Company. Originally provided to serve
Metropolitan New York, the book received such an alarming response, it
was spread throughout the country within one year. The catch phrase was
Now we can travel without embarrassment.

The Green Book often provided information on local tourist homes, which
were private residences owned by blacks and open to travelers. It was
especially helpful to blacks that traveled through sunset towns or
towns that publicly stated that blacks had to leave the town by sundown
or it would be cause for arrest. Also listed were hotels, barbershops,
beauty salons, restaurants, garages, liquor stores, ball parks and
taverns. It also provided a listing of the white-owned, black-friendly
locations for accommodations and food.

The publication was free, with a 10-cent cost of shipping. As interest
grew, the Green Book solicited salespersons nationwide to build its ad
sales.

Inside the pages of the Green Book were action photos of the various
locations, along with historical and background information for the
readers' review. Within the pages of the introduction, the guide
states, There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide
will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have
equal opportunities and privileges in the United States ."

The Green Book printed its last copy in 1964 after the passing of the
Civil Rights Act.

Here is the 1949 book in its entirety

CLICK BELOW

http://www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/Race/R_Casestudy/Negro_motorist_green_bk.htm
http://www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/Race/R_Casestudy/Negro_motorist_green_bk.htm>

Ten Professions For Blacks Seeking Greater Opportunities

African-Americans have been working hard from the first days our ancestors saw these shores, yet we have yet to reach full representation in many of our nation’s leading industries. Forty years after the civil rights movement, our level of representation in many fields lags severely behind our percentage of the general population. The good news is that more leaders in these fields are taking diversity seriously, which can be a boon for blacks in the coming decades. Industry watch dogs, political organizations and professional groups are pressuring hiring managers to step up minority recruitment and retention efforts.
Black have been underrepresented in the following fields for years, but now there is an emphasis on rectifying the problem. The top ten careers in which African-Americans are underrepresented ironically point the way out of limiting employment scenarios onto new paths:
Read more here

Black Unemployment At Depression Level Highs In Some Cities

In the decade leading up to the Great Recession, Wanda Nolan grew accustomed to steady progress.

From an entry-level job as a fill-in bank teller, she forged a career as a commercial banking assistant, earning enough to become a homeowner. She finished college and then got an MBA. Even after the recession unfolded in late 2007, her degrees and her familiarity with the business world lent her a sense of immunity to the forces ravaging much of the American economy. Nolan was an exemplar of the African American middle class and the increasingly professional ranks of the so-called New South.

But in September 2008, everything changed.

A bank human resources officer called her into a private conference room. “All I heard was, ‘Your position has been eliminated,’” says Nolan, 37, who, despite being one of the more than 13 million officially unemployed Americans, still spends most days in her self-styled banker’s uniform of pearls and pants and practical flats. “My mind started racing.”

More than two years later, Nolan is still looking for a job and feeling increasingly anxious about a future that once felt assured. Her life has devolved from a model of middle class African American upward mobility into an example of a disturbing trend: She is among the 15.5 percent of African Americans out of work and still looking for a job.

For economists, that number may sound awful, but it’s not surprising. The nation’s overall unemployment rate sits at 8.8 percent and the rate among white Americans is at 7.9 percent. For a variety of reasons -- ranging from levels of education and continuing discrimination to the relatively young age of black workers -- black unemployment tends to run twice the rate for whites. Yet since the Great Recession, joblessness has remained so critically elevated among African Americans that it is challenging longstanding ideas about what it takes to find work in the modern-day economy.
Read more here

Criticizing Obama and the Established Order: Complexity, Compromise and Consequences

Dr. Maulana Karenga

If there is one lesson to be lifted and learned from the storm of enraged and relentless attacks on the motive, commitment and character of Professor Cornel West, it is that Black people are /in no ways/ ready for any public criticism of President Obama by other Blacks. But no one can honestly argue an immunity from criticism for any person, organization, ethnic group, or country, if they have even a modicum of familiarity with moral reasoning, the human tendency to err, miss the mark and do evil and unworthy things, or the indispensable role criticism and challenge play in holding leaders and governments accountable.

The expression of our right and responsibility to hold those who govern accountable is as ancient as the sacred teachings of the /Husia/ of ancient Egypt in which the sage Djedi tells Pharaoh Khufu that he can neither kill nor experiment on even a nameless prisoner, for he too is a noble image of the Divine. It is also expressed in the /Husia /by the peasant, Khunanpu, who tells the governmental official, Rensi, "Hold back the flood in order to do justice. The true balancing of the land is the doing of justice. Do not tell lies for you are great. Do not act lightly for you have weight. Do not speak falsely for you are the balance. And do not deviate for you are the standard." Indeed, "Doing justice is breath to the nose."

Likewise, it is as recent as Martin Luther King's criticism of the country's imperial war in Vietnam and the unconscionable waste of human lives and resources for human good; Fannie Lou Hamer's courageous questioning of America's hypocritical and empty claims to be the home of the brave and the land of the free; and Malcolm X's criticism of America's imperial rampages and /herrenvolk /(master race) democracy that makes us victims instead of beneficiaries. It is, then, part of our ethical self-understanding and social justice tradition as a people to criticize the established order, hold it accountable, and challenge it to live up to its campaign promises and progressive talk, its claimed highest values and vision for a just and good society. Thus, Prof. Cornel West, like Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who came under similar attacks for criticizing the established order, fits well within this social justice tradition, especially the Black Christian dimension of this larger tradition called "prophetic witness."

But the response to West was a result of a complexity of factors which begin with the deep commitment Black people have for Pres. Obama as a Black person, a symbol of achievement and hope, and their fear that anything said critical of him undermines his office and chances for re-election and that if he "fails," it will be used to indict all of us. Moreover, there is a general reluctance to inadvertently add to the vicious and relentless campaign against him by the right-wing. Furthermore, the concern was heightened by the harshness and public expression of the criticism and its violating the unspoken community protocol of immunity from criticism for Obama.

In another case, few would deny Cornel West's integrity, commitment to Black people and the struggle or deny the relevance of the social justice issues he raised of: inattentiveness to the vulnerable; unemployment; mass imprisonment; warmongering and waste; Guantanamo; bailout for banks rather than homeowners; and inadequate advocacy for everyday and working people. But weighed against the importance attached to Obama, West is considered both grossly wrong and woefully out-of-line. Consequently, he is redefined from prophetic witness to wayward brother of questionable commitment and character.

It is said that Obama is working within structural constraints that the presidency and public office impose and thus he has to compromise and sometimes "go along to get along." But he is a moral agent and must be principled and set boundaries for such so-called "pragmatic politics." Nor should he and his supporters use this tactical adjustment as an excuse or "reason" for him not to act justly and not to act in defense and furtherance of the interests and aspirations of the masses of people of this country or not to respect the rights of the peoples of the world. And he should not let the right-wing lend him a language for defining patriotism or America, making laws, engaging labor, or approaching life, or let them prescribe borders and boundaries of race and class he dares not cross in speech or action.

But to both cherish the achievement and challenge the wrong and unjust, we must rebuild our Movement and join with other movements to organize broad-based constituencies and communities in a larger national and international thrust for real and radical social change and good in and for the world. A serious movement would see the White House, regardless of its occupant, as one field of struggle, support progressive policies generated from within it and put forth policies it should embrace and implement.

Even Obama has asked us and all progressives to challenge and support him by building and sustaining a movement that puts forth an agenda of change we want and will work and struggle for. In his better and beginning days, he declared, "Change doesn't come from Washington, it comes to Washington." But in the euphoria of the moment, many mistook the man for the movement and the occupation of the office became the central and to some, the only issue. And it is this, among other things discussed, that has led to an unpromising and precarious self-silencing that leaves us without the hope and agenda we can take in our hands, mull over in our minds, and use to generate a progressive and even radical practice worthy of our history and our social justice tradition as a people.

When HarryBelafonte, an important and respected critical voice in the interest of social justice, peace and struggle, was asked whether or not criticizing Obama publicly and now would undermine him, hurt his re-election chances, and bring on a worst alternative, he answered in the negative. He said, "I think we will not undermine him, but undermine the hopes of this nation, if we don't criticize him." Indeed, he said, "nothing will happen but good for Barack Obama and the United States of America and indeed the world, if everybody stepped to the table and said 'this is the course we must be on'." And this, of necessity, will be a fundamentally different and new course for the country, dedicated to realizing unfulfilled promises and possibilities of freedom, justice, peace, well-being and flourishing for everyone, here and throughout the world.

Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor of Africana Studies, California State University-Long Beach; Executive Director, African American Cultural Center (Us); Creator of Kwanzaa; and author of /Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture /and /Introduction to Black Studies, /4^th Edition/,/www.MaulanaKarenga.org.

Lupe Fiasco - Words I Never Said ft. Skylar Grey [Music Video]

Dr. Boyce Watkins; Hip Hop Artist Lupe Fiasco vs. Barack Obama: At Least a Black Man is Taking a Stand

The rapper Lupe Fiasco is not your average hip-hop artist.  He doesn’t buy into the buffoonery that has come to define the industry that makes itself into one of the hottest minstrel shows in America.  He’s thoughtful, empowered and everything that rappers and black men are taught not to be.  That is one of the reasons that I truly fear for his life.
Read more here

African-American News Sites Thrive, Despite Their Independence

Content is a lucrative business and not just for the big shots like CNN, eHow or TMZ.  In the infinite landscape of online information, there is an abundance of content to choose from, even when you’re considering African American news.

The major players in the Black news genre include The Root, The Grio, and AOL Black Voices, but what these three have in common is not simply their focus on the Black perspective but the fact that they are all backed by robust networks. The Root has the Washington Post behind it; the Grio has the power of MSNBC behind it; and Black Voices has media giant AOL pushing its content.

“Mainstream media primarily powers their black stepchild publications by being a major traffic referral source,” said Darrell L. Williams, founder and publisher of TheLoop21.com. “That serves to inflate their traffic numbers.  But how does that serve the black audiences that these publications are targeting?”

Read More Here

Black Unemployment Crisis: Loss Of Government Jobs Hurts African Americans Hardest

Kenneth Mathis is the kind of man who values stability.

More than three decades ago, when he was 19, Mathis was hired by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, a government position that seemed to confer assurance of middle class comforts.

As an African American, he figured a job with a government agency would be a way around "the good old boy networks" that seemed to preclude his employment at many private businesses. He reckoned that a government job would spare him from the volatility faced by private companies, meaning his paycheck would continue through good times and bad.

Mathis later took a job that kept him at home in Houston, joining the city’s Housing and Community Development Department, a position that he figured would last until retirement.

But his vision of a steady career culminating in a farewell cake and a pension came to an abrupt end last August, when his boss summoned him into his office, closed the door and told him that his job was being eliminated.

Within minutes, a pair of plain-clothes police led Mathis to another office, where he was forced to surrender his government identification card and city-issued-cell phone. He grabbed his bag and a picture of his wife before being escorted to the elevator door.

Read more here

Dr. Boyce Watkins; Hip Hop Artist Ja Rule Prison and Misplaced Priorities…

I noticed that the rapper Ja Rule is headed to prison this week to begin a two-year sentence on a weapons charge. Being caught with a gun in New York is no joke, especially when you’re black. The NYPD stops and searches black males at alarming rates, and the state has no problem locking you down for a very long time
Read more here