Photo Credit: Reuters, Van Jones, former special advisor for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, arrives at the 41st Annual NAACP Image Awards
What eventually will happen, big picture, is that 5% of the country will have an experience like mine, lose a job because of something on Facebook or something.
And then 10%, and then it will be 15% and then it will stop because enough people will have seen it and enough people had it happen to them to too a friend that there will be a completely different level of wisdom that will emerge in society.
That’s the long-term. ~Van Jones
Also present in this Shirley Sherrod saga are echoes of what lead to the “resignation” of Van Jones, the green jobs promoter and former White House adviser after a high tech lynching from Glenn Beck and the right wing/conservative media. (more…)
My grandfather used to say ‘the land don’t know no color, the land never mistreated anybody. It’s the people here.” ~Dr. John Boyd
There are several notable things about the Shirley Sherrod incident worth acknowledging, most involve how much this incident is not about the woman in question. The African American Georgia State Director of Rural Development for the United States Department of Agriculture was forced to resign of from her position after conservative activist and blogger Andrew Breitbart posted a highly edited video of Sherrod’s address at a March 2010 NAACP event to his website that made her look like she engaged in discriminatory practices towards whites. (more…)
A Negro woman has the same kind of problems as other women, but she can’t take the same things for granted.” ~Dorothy Height
I just wanted to draw some attention to the passing of Dorothy Height, women’s, African American rights leader and chairwoman of the National Council of Negro Women. She died on Tuesday at 98 years old. I didn’t want for it to be the case that Dorothy Height would get the Farrah Fawcett treatment when she died the same day as Michael Jackson. She died the same day as Hip Hop legend Guru, born Keith Elam, of Gang Starr.
Note: This post was written before the coal mine explosion in West Virginia. 25 coal miners have died after a huge explosion at a Massey Energy mine in Raleigh County in the worst mining disaster in the US in over 25 years. Read more about that at democracynow.org
The African American Environmentalist Association was asked in a letter should Black people own coal mines in a global warming world? The face of this request was Shane Evans, a mine dispatcher at Arch Coal’s Thunder Basin Coal Company.
Evans even throws in information in the brief video below about his brother fighting for our country in Afghanistan while he tries to do his part here in the states by providing “clean, efficient, low priced energy”. Coal puts out temperature-raising carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, furthering the global warming and climate change that fancy light bulbs won’t be able to save us from. (more…)
I recently filled out my census, albeit late, but I saw something that upset me on the census form. No, it wasn’t the word Negro, that’s the least of my problems here. My issue is in the very first part of the questionnaire where it clearly states “Do not count anyone in a nursing home, jail, prison, detention facility, etc., on April 1, 2010.”
The census form then states these persons may be counted twice so they should be left off your form. My issue here is that persons in prisons are counted as residents where they are incarcerated so they’re not counted where they’re from. (more…)
The greatest rapper of all time died on March 9th” ~Canibus
We all remember that line from Canibus on the anniversary of the day that the Notorious B.I.G. died. Maybe we should take this as a good time to remember Canibus too. He’s still making music that you don’t seem to care about.
Anyway, it’s not his day, it’s Biggie’s, but I take issue with a few things here. (more…)
“Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.” ~Carter G. Woodson, the “Father of Black History”, founder of Negro History Week, a precursor to Black History Month
Every year Black History Month brings up a lot of issues for me. After a few recent conversations I decided to address those issues this entire month!
Firstly even as a child I felt Black History Month was poorly taught. Maybe that’s a given if you’ve ever had to sit through an awkward white teacher trying to make a classroom full of Black kids understand the need for a Civil Rights Movement or benefits of slavery.
Not to be left out, I also take issue with Black adults who don’t offer Black children the same rehashed Black History stuff in sporadic bouts with even less context than what is offered in school. Saying things like “People didn’t march on Washington for you to have your pants sagging” is absurd. “Young people need to read more” also useless unless you’re willing to offer a serious reading list a comment like that should be left out of conversations with young people.
The History of Black people on this planet is too important a subject to be so mishandled every year. Dragging out the old MLK “I Have A Dream” speech for children to see once a year is a criminal. Shaving that man’s life down to one speech does us all an injustice everywhere.
KRS-One- “You Must Learn”
They call this guy “The Teacher”.
Here’s a few of my issues with BHM itself:
All this talk of BHM and more of my peers learned who George Washington Carver was than Carter G. Woodson who started BHM in the first place.
Why does George Washington Carver get to be so popular for all the wrong things?
We were allowed for far too long to perpetuate the idea that BHM was the shortest month of the year because Black people just can’t catch a break in this white man’s country. As kids I doubt we were ever taught how BHM got to be in February in the first place. (more…)
Talk show host Tavis Smiley has decided to end his annual State of the Black Union Conference. In 2005 the conference spawned the book “Covenant with Black America,” about issues in black community.
In more recent times the conference took a very critical tone towards President Barack Obama.
“[The State of the Black Union] doesn’t have the premium that it used to have – and that’s a good thing,” Tavis Smiley, The Associated Press.
Seems to me Obama as the first Black president was such a game changer conference regulars weren’t sure how to react. Which is fine because many of us didn’t, but I find their harsh tone is suspicious. As a nightly half-hour talk show host on PBS Smiley has facilitated many conversations about President Obama not being Black enough, acknowledging Black people, and not standing up for Black people enough.
I think the last criticism is valid because (more…)
