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Tiger Woods and the Writing on the Wall
Today while hanging out with Rev. Al Sharpton in the studio, I found my mind reflecting deeply on the recent drama between Tiger Woods and his wife, Elin Nordegren. In spite of the fact that I was sitting next to the man who epitomizes race relations in America, no one brought up the fact that Tiger Woods is involved in an inter-racial marriage. It wasn’t because we were afraid to go there, it was just that there were more pressing issues to discuss.
Even though Rev. Sharpton and I discussed everything except for the fact that Tiger’s wife is white, one of the callers slammed the issue on the table like a five pound slab of raw chicken. The caller made the old OJ Simpson argument: "Had he been with a sister, none of this would have happened."
While I don’t agree with the caller’s assertion (we know that marital drama knows no racial boundaries), I found it interesting that some of the black women in the studio smirked and looked at the floor, as if to say, "I hear ya girl." These smirks were not built on agreeing with what the woman said, but rather, on the disappointment and resentment that many black women have felt about the fact that Tiger Woods almost never seemed to show any interest in African American females. Unlike guys like myself, who admire Tiger for his achievements, I know a long list of black women who could care less if Tiger were to take his golf clubs and jump off the side of a 10-story building.
Your Black News: Obama Victory Spurs Hundreds Of Hate Crimes
Cross burnings. Schoolchildren chanting “Assassinate Obama.” Black figures hung from nooses. Racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars.
Incidents around the country referring to President-elect Barack Obama are dampening the postelection glow of racial progress and harmony, highlighting the stubborn racism that remains in America.
From California to Maine, police have documented a range of alleged crimes, from vandalism and vague threats to at least one physical attack. Insults and taunts have been delivered by adults, college students and second-graders.
There have been “hundreds” of incidents since the election, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes.
One was in Snellville, Ga., where Denene Millner said a boy on the school bus told her 9-year-old daughter the day after the election: “I hope Obama gets assassinated.” That night, someone trashed her sister-in-law’s front lawn, mangled the Obama lawn signs, and left two pizza boxes filled with human feces outside the front door, Millner said.
She described her emotions as a combination of anger and fear [...]
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Your Black Politics: Barack Obama: The Test Of Black CommUNITY
Barack Obama: The Test of Black CommUNITY
By: Tolu Olorunda
Staff Writer – YourBlackWorld.com
“But we must understand that we are now at a stage of struggle for a People’s Democracy… The mass support of Obama by the national Afro-American movement, especially its progressive sector, will reinvigorate our struggle… We must enter into that mainstream struggle & make our own demands, utilize the pressure of our needs & our numbers. We are almost 50 million people with the 16th GNP in the world… almost 600 Billion dollars a year. We have the muscle and the money. We need to make our move.”
-Renowned Poet and Activist, Amiri Baraka, in a speech earlier this year.
The Black CommUNITY has laid its bed and must now lie in it. To be sure, this author is not particularly pleased with the 95% level of unconditional support from the Black CommUNITY, vis-à-vis Obama’s presidential bid. Nevertheless, Obama’s unpredictable popularity within the Black CommUNITY is a testament to an often glossed over, deep-seated desire/potential for divine unity of the Black CommUNITY. Obama’s candidacy, thankfully, buttressed this reality in unequivocal terms. Many have privately joked, over the past week, about the seeming impossibility of the Black CommUNITY agreeing on any specific agenda, let alone a political one. Some have quipped that the last time such unprecedented levels of support was rendered in favor of anything, O.J. Simpson was on trial for double murder. The comedic value of such statement notwithstanding, its veracity is unquestionable. Having rallied around this man, with unwavering support, let there be no more excuses for our disunity, or inability to remain unified around the ultimate cause: Total liberation.
On at least three key issues, the world will need the assistance of the Black CommUNITY to emerge victorious:
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Your Black Education: Mississippi Students Banned From Speaking About Obama
PEARL, MS (WLBT) – Teachers are prohibiting students from talking about President-Elect Barack Obama. WLBT’s newsroom has been flooded by calls and emails from angry parents in several cities. These parents say their children were threatened with suspension if they said Obama’s name or wore clothing that supports him. [...]
“It’s like they’ve taken their rights way,” said Natalie Taylor. She decided not to show her face because she is afraid of retaliation against her son who attends Pearl Junior High School.
“He told me he was warned by one of the teachers before school started that he could not mention the name because he would get in trouble,” said Taylor. [...]
“Racism at its best, that’s really what it is,” said Paula Loften of Magee. She has two children in the Simpson County School District in Magee. She is angry that students are not allowed to wear any clothing that supports the new President-Elect.
“One student was sent home to change because she had on a Barack Obama T-shirt and on the back it said “yes we can,” said Loten [...]
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Your Black Life: Rampant Racism In LGBT Community Comes To Light
You could see this coming, and this is what I’m talking about when you ignore the elephant in the room. Rod McCullom of Rod 2.0 blogs reports on the escalation of the “blame the blacks” meme that has been swirling about the blogosphere and the MSM.
A number of Rod 2.0 and Jasmyne Cannick readers report being subjected to taunts, threats and racist abuse at last night’s marriage equality rally in Los Angeles. Geoffrey, a student at UCLA and regular Rod 2.0 reader, joined the massive protest outside the Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Westwood. Geoffrey was called the n-word at least twice.
It was like being at a klan rally except the klansmen were wearing Abercrombie polos and Birkenstocks. YOU NIGGER, one man shouted at men. If your people want to call me a FAGGOT, I will call you a nigger. Someone else said same thing to me on the next block near the temple…me and my friend were walking, he is also gay but Korean, and a young WeHo clone said after last night the niggers better not come to West Hollywood if they knew what was BEST for them.
The backlash is upon us, and it’s going to get uglier unless our organizations step forward and say something. The desire to scapegoat blacks for Prop 8′s defeat has exposed the now not-so-latent racism in our movement [...]
Your Black Politics: The Obama ’08 Phenomenon — Lessons Learned
The Obama ’08 Phenomenon: What Have We Learned?
By: BAR executive editor Glen Ford
“This generation will have to learn from damn near scratch what a real social movement looks like.”
Without question, the nation has experienced an election of historical significance, for reasons that go beyond the obvious “first Black” aspect of race. This has also been the most-hyped presidential campaign in U.S. history, if for no other reason than the simple fact that every presidential campaign is more hyped than the last, since hype is what corporate media sells. But what has the experience taught us?
We have learned that a large and decisive national minority of whites can be persuaded to vote for a certain kind of Black man for president if that Black man possesses the following characteristics:
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Your Black News: White Journalists Blow Race Coverage: A Review
White Journalists Blow Race Coverage: A Review
By: Tolu Olorunda
Staff Writer – YourBlackWorld.com
The stage theatrics performed by the corporate press in analyzing the dynamics of Race vis-à-vis Sen. Obama, has been abysmal, at best. To put it bluntly, they suck. When Barack “Hussein” Obama, a Black man, initially announced his bid for the presidency, it was clear that the predominantly White media was unprepared, to say the least, in tackling the indomitable beast of RACE. The first revelation of this reality came, early 2007, when White pundits began asking the question: “Is Barack Obama Black enough?” It took an unprecedented level of effrontery for the grossly unenlightened conglomerate of White journalists to pose such a question, but, to paraphrase Sinatra, they did it their way.
Before long, the same group of overfed self-congratulators would declare, with such temerity, the dawn of a “post-racial” era. Considering the ground-work of “post-racialism,” it came as no surprise when the White, New York Times columnist, Matt Bai, declared Obama’s candidacy to be “the end of Black politics.” Upon Bai’s preposterous assertion, numerous Black bloggers/Writers asked a simple question: What the heck is going on? Unfortunately, their reluctance to curtail mass media’s long-tradition of re-defining race-discourse had begun to bear fruit [...]
Full Article At Your Black News
Your Black Politics: Many Blacks Remain Sceptical Of Obama On Race
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Despite Barack Obama’s message of change and hope, fears persist in the black community about what his election as president could mean for the legacy of racism in America.
Namely, that it might mean nothing at all.
“America is still one of the most segregated countries by race and by class in the industrialized world,” said Dedrick Muhammad, research associate at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, a think tank for social justice.
Muhammad pointed to research showing that black Americans remain far behind the rest of the country economically, with median wealth one-tenth of that in white America, and one in three black children born into poverty.
Like most black Americans, Muhammad supports Obama’s historic bid to become America’s first black president.
However, he said the Illinois senator’s campaign tactic of largely avoiding discussion of race in his campaign has “driven me crazy.”
“What saddens me today is that we don’t talk about black-white inequality,” he said. “I see in Obama a winning strategy, but it is sad to me.”
For the 47-year-old son of a white American mother and black Kenyan father to gain the lead he currently holds over his Republican rival John McCain, Obama has had to tip-toe around any potential racial controversy, analysts say [...]
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Your Black Power: CNN’s New Hughley Show Reinforces Black Stereotypes
CNN’s new Hughley show reinforces black stereotypes
By: Christopher J. Metzler
In just eight days, America may well elect its first black president. Throughout the long campaign, race has been an omnipresent issue with many asking whether whites and some blacks would reject Senator Obama because of his race.
Most news outlets and commentators have discussed race in a vacuous way for fear of being called racists. In fact, if this election taught us anything about the media and race, it is that most journalists — including white liberals — simply lack the vocabulary to discuss and analyze race, choosing instead to engage in a cacophonous politically correct gab fest.
As the election draws to a close, one major cable news network decided to discuss race in a mephitic way, reminiscent of Amos and Andy, a situation comedy based on reinforcing stereotypes about blacks and widely popular in the United States from the 1920s through the 1950s.
The show’s anchor warned that the election of a President Obama would lead to a health plan with grills for all. Grills are shining metal caps worn on the teeth of blacks while they drink malt liquor from a paper bag. His guest, “Freddie Mack,” attired in the traditional pimp attire complete with hat and bling, described Obama’s fund raising prowess as “Big pimping.” In fact, Freddie Mack went on to say, “Politicians are pimps and the electorate are their hoes.” Thus, he reasoned, “bitch better have my money.” In a response dripping with racism and misogyny, he reminded Americans that the financial crisis was about his sister Fannie May or Fannie may not again, utilizing the hoe moniker for black women [...]
Full Article At Your Black Power
Your Black Scholar: Race Has Affected The 2008 Presidential Election
Race Has Affected the 2008 Presidential Election
By: Prof. Michael Eric Dyson
Educated white voters followed suit, though Obama has had a far more difficult time effectively wooing working class white voters.
That has to do in large part with the effective, if cynical, effort of conservative activists to falsely paint Obama as an unpatriotic figure who pals around with terrorists because he is secretly a Muslim. The manipulation of the public image of Obama as a subversive presence who hates the nation rests on racially coded inferences about unreliable blackness as it tinges the face of American politics. Few quarters in American life have been tolerant of the complex black identities that constitute African American communities.
As a result, a punishing and narrow range of stereotypes have obscured the fact that black struggle for social equality and racial justice was never antithetical to the best interests of the nation [...]
More At Your Black Scholar
Your Black Politics: Sen. McCain On Barack Obama: “That One”
Apparently, Sen. McCain’s memory herbal-supplements are as worthless as Howard Dean for President bumper stickers. For he must have forgot his campaign strategist’s many warnings to avoid any racially-stoked or condescending remarks toward Obama. In addition to referring to Obama as, “That one,” Sen. McCain stunningly informed the Black questioner, pictured above, that, “I’ll bet you, you may never even have heard of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before this crisis.”:
Your Black Politics: Obama Insists Race Not A Factor In ’08 Election
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is pointing to the success of his presidential campaign as a sign that voters won’t reject him based on race.
“The fact of the matter is people have been continually looking for how race will impact this campaign,” Obama said in a satellite interview Friday with Washington’s WJLA ABC 7. “And yet, I’m here, 30 days out, competitive in Virginia.”
The former Confederate state looked safe for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), but Obama is now pressuring him or beating him in polls of commonwealth voters…
Obama told WJLA’s Leon Harris and Rebecca Cooper that he’ll be able to win over even more undecided voters in Virginia: “I think that it’s just a matter of people getting more familiar with me and knowing what my track record is.”
Obama added that he will do more than big rallies to make the sale. “If you don’t do some retail politics and people can see up close and lift the hood and kick the tires, a lot of times, they’re not going to trust you,” he said…
Your Black Politics: If Obama Loses: One-Third Of White Dems Have Racist Views
Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks – many calling them “lazy,” “violent,” responsible for their own troubles.
The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004 – about two and one-half percentage points.
Certainly, Republican John McCain has his own obstacles: He’s an ally of an unpopular president and would be the nation’s oldest first-term president. But Obama faces this: 40 percent of all white Americans hold at least a partly negative view toward blacks, and that includes many Democrats and independents.
More than a third of all white Democrats and independents – voters Obama can’t win the White House without – agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks…
Your Black News: How Black America Shaped Michelle Obama
Michelle Obama may be the pride of the South Side, but her undergraduate years at Princeton also helped shape her worldview.
A new biography, Michelle (Simon & Schuster), by Washington Post reporter Liza Mundy, delves into Obama’s years at the elite university, in particular Obama’s senior thesis, “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community.”
“The question of what upper-income blacks owe to the less fortunate was a major preoccupation,” Mundy writes. [...]
Her thesis found that when African Americans are at Princeton as students, they tended to identify more with their race, but after graduating, less so. Obama, now 44, pledged not to forget the black underclass [...]
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