Negrophile. One who admires and supports Black people and their culture. (via Mowser)

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Claude Allen's Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed essay "Untold tales of achievement"

Anthony Violanti's TimesDaily article "Still the King: Even 30 years after his death"

The mighty, mighty Harrison Chastang's BeyondChron essay "A Story of Two Black Men"

Kenneth Cooper's New America Media article "Mainstream to Ethnic Media â€“ A New Career Direction"

Joe Strupp and Greg Mitchell's Editor and Publisher article "Papers Respond to Bonds' HR in Varying Ways"

Diane Majeske's Post-Tribune article "19 black authors traverse region to promote novels"

PR Newswire (via CNN Money) release "Procter & Gamble Unveils 'My Black Is Beautiful' - Inspires National Conversation On Beauty Among African American Women"

Posted August 9, 2007 2:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

August's austere and lonely offices

It's time for this year's Black Weblog Awards! Vote carefully, thoughtfully and without any attachment to an outcome, and you might learn something and find a few new folks to add to your own list of regularly read sites. (See any good ones? Pass them along, please.) The best part of blogging is not about glory or gain, but knowing your own mind more truthfully over time, not to mention deepening worthwhile connections and forging new and fruitful ones.

Meanwhile, back in my browser?

Scott Jaschik's Inside Higher Ed article "Should AP Add African-American History?"

Jose Antonio Vargas' Washington Post article "A Diversity of Opinion, if Not Opinionators: At the Yearly Kos Bloggers' Convention, a Sea of Middle-Aged White Males"

Tom Zucco's Tampabay.com article "When all the banks say no: Many African-American business owners are underserved by banks. That's where the Black Business Investment Corp. steps in"

Jim Galloway's Atlanta Journal-Constitution article " Candidates duel over Georgia's black votes"

Casey Lartigue Jr. and Eliot Morgan's Washington Post op-ed essay "Talk Radio Can't Handle the Truth"

Dionne Walker's Associated Press (via Washington Post) article "More Black Women Consider 'Dating Out'"

Susan McCord's Albany Herald article "Minority buying power up: Black buying power nearly doubled in the Albany area since 1990"

DeNeen L. Brown's Washington Post article "A Filmmaker's Attempt To Peel Off the Labels: 'What Black Men Think' Tackles Stereotypes"

Gregory Stanford's Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel column "Empathy needed for immigrants"

NPR's News and Notes clip "Inside the Black Literary Imagination"

Vanessa E. Jones' Boston Globe article "Race, the final frontier: Black science-fiction writers bring a unique perspective to the genre"

GateHouse News Service's Somerville Journal story "Tufts mourns passing of Gerald R. Gill, historian of Bostonâ€™s Civil Rights movement"

Eve Conant's Newsweek article "Black and White: A new study finds that blacks who kill whites are more likely to face execution"

Jennifer Parker and Lindsey Ellerson's ABC News article "
Strategist Says Blacks Are Obama's 'Base': Top Strategist Says Obama Alone Can Mobilize Democratic Black Voters"

Talea Miller's Online NewsHour article "Iraq War Impacts Enrollment of Blacks in Military"

Monica Davis' Kansas City InfoZine article "No Land, No Power for African-American Farmers in the United States"

Deirdre Williams' Buffalo News article "Obamaâ€™s candidacy sparks mixed views in Western New York's African-American community"

Carly Zakin's NBC News article "Michelle Obama plays unique role in campaign: Not an adviser, she openly mocks her husband on the stump"

The mighty-might J. Douglas Allen-Taylor's Berkeley Daily Planet article " NPR Initiative Coming to East Bay to Collect Historical African American Stories"

Patti Bond's Atlanta Journal-Constitution article "Georgia's black consumer market booms"

Sue Schultz's Baltimore Business Journal article "Afro-American to open newspaper archive with aid of grant"

Eugene Robinson's Washington Post column "Obama and the 'They' Sayers"

Kevin Boyle's Washington Post op-ed essay "The Fire Last Time: 40 Years Later, the Urban Crisis Still Smolders"

Scott Eyman's Palm Beach Post article "The keepers of black culture: For two African-American bookstore owners, their specialty shops are more than just a business. They are an expression of pride, history and identity"

Afi-Odelia Scruggs' Washington Post essay "What Kind of Black Are We?"

Sharon Mizota's special to the Los Angeles Times "For Charles Gaines, crisis is clarity: In probing disaster, the artist reveals the nature of human truth"

Alec MacGillis and Perry Bacon Jr.'s Washington Post article "Obama Rises in New Era Of Black Politicians: Most Have Similar RÃ©sumÃ©s, Ideology"

Nikita Stewart's Washington Post article "D.C. Official Proposes Black Caucus"

Posted August 1, 2007 12:11 PM | Permalink

Multi-tab pileup incapacitates browsers, takes days to untangle

Howard Kurtz's Washington Post column "A Question of Bias"

Ann Hornaday's Washington Post article "Waiting for 'Action!': Instead of Making Films About the Civil Rights Era, Hollywood Has Made Excuses"

Ellen Gray's Philadelphia Inquirer article "Seeking a superhero" (via the mighty Negro Please)

BBC reader John ole Kisimir's "Identity: Who do you think you are?"

Edward Iwata's USA Today article "Companies ramp up diversity like never before"

Sharon Waxman's New York Times article "The Ready Return of a True Beleiver"

Wesley Morris' Boston Globe commentary "Locks of controversy
Rumors that Angelina Jolie had cut off her adopted daughter's hair caused an outrage. Why is hair such a highly charged symbol in the black community?"

The Detroit Free Press editorial "Take a tour through Detroit: NAACP should leave Cobo, take in city's lessons" and columnist Rochelle Riley's "Unlock life's touchiest lessons: Young people feel thwarted in their ability to explore other cultures and break down barriers," Dahleen Glanton and Kayce T. Ataiyero's Chicago Tribune article "NAACP buries the hated N-word" and the Free Press' "Republicans cool to presidential forum at Cobo"

Gary Younge's Guardian UK essay "Life on the run: The Autobiography of Malcolm X is the defiant testament of a man unafraid to speak truth to power."

Ruth Mantell's MarketWatch article "Minority families face wave of foreclosures: Consumer groups urge more 'teeth' in laws combating predators"

The Employment Policies Institute press release "Summer Job Drop: African American Teens Suffer as Unemployment Jumps"

Malcolm Moore's Telegraph UK article "Forgotten black soldiers in Spike Lee movie"

Hazel Trice Edney's Amsterdam News article "'All-American' Debate Reveals Stratified Black Constituency"

Posted July 11, 2007 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A ghetto-fabulous conceptualism â€” based on reality and the intricacies of daily life.

Jori Finkel's New York Times article "A Reluctant Fraternity, Thinking Post-Black"

Audra D.S. Burch's Miami Herald article "Afro-Latin Americans: A rising voice" (with comments and related content)

Mike Gross' Lancaster Online commentary "The economics of baseball and race"

Howard W. French's International Herald Tribune article "Tattered French African empire looks toward China"

Warren Brown's indispensable Washington Post article "The Potholes of Multicultural Marketing"

Dionne Walker's Associated Press (via Washington Post) article "Loving Reflects on Interracial Marriage"

(special shoutout to Dr. Steve B's DailyKos diary "White Kossacks Should Read Some Black Blogs")

Posted June 10, 2007 9:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Inside the country club and outside the baseline

Phillyburbs has Lee Elder on golf and Black Enterprise has, well, black people on black golf courses, while the Nation and Sacramento Bee have Gary Sheffield.

Posted June 8, 2007 2:38 AM | Permalink

I feel victorious that what I sacrificed myself for is now right in name.

Whatâ€™s in a name? For some, the switch from a department named Afro-American Studies to one entitled African and African-American Studies in 2003 simply reflected the departmentâ€™s growing focus on two separate, although necessarily intertwined, fields of study.

Yet for others, this change represented a dramatic shift in a university administration that has not always been welcoming to the existence of a department focused on â€œblack studies.â€ Throughout the late seventies and early eighties, the Afro-American Studies department had to fight not only to teach courses on African subjects but also simply to stay alive. For these early advocates, this name change was a long time coming. [...]

| Get up on the rest of Kimberly E. Gittleson's Harvard Crimson article "African Studies Survives Rocky Years of Early Eighties"

Posted June 5, 2007 11:21 AM | Permalink

Mes cousins jamais nÃ©s hantent les nuits des Duvalier

[...] My father worked in a Port-au-Prince shoe store at the time, and he recalled how Macoutes would walk into the store, ask for the best shoes, then simply grab them and walk away. He couldnâ€™t protest or chase them or he risked being shot. His boss finally came up with a solution. He ordered a large number of third-rate, non-leather shoes that looked like the real thing but cost only three dollars. Most of the Macoutes who walked in either didnâ€™t care or couldnâ€™t tell the difference. If they asked to try on a pair of shoes, my father was to show them only the cheap shoes. Papa always got a knot in his stomach when a Macoute asked him if there were any other shoes. Heâ€™d try not to shake as he replied, â€œNon,â€ all the while bending and massaging the three-dollar shoes to make them appear more supple. In the end, it was this experience of bending shoes all day and worrying about being shot that started him thinking about leaving Haiti. [...]

| Go read the rest of Edwidge Danticat's New Yorker essay "Marie Micheline"

post title from the Arcade Fire's "Haiti" (via Wikipedia)

Posted June 4, 2007 3:29 PM | Permalink

Steve Gilliard

[image]
photo of Jen and Steve Gilliard from The News Blog and Julia by pnh under Creative Commons license

Slant Truth: You were one of the first outspoken Black political bloggers I discovered.

Skeptical Brotha: His passionate defense of truth and progressive values set him apart as a blogger of heft and of heart. His passing is a tremendous loss for us and I extend my profound condolences to his family and to all those who knew and loved him.

Brownfemipower: His blog was actually the first blog I ever readâ€“I was devastated by Hurricane Katrina and went to their site to get up to date, on the ground coverage.

Political Sapphire: [...] In my three years on the 'Net, I have seen over and over through a variety of dust-ups that a major condition which the Left blogosphere imposes on Black bloggers as a prerequisite for acceptance is that we can't really be "Black"; i.e. cannot state our perspective and attribute it to actually having lived lives as Black people in this world, a state that no matter how utopian your outlook is presently different than it is for "the default", i.e. white people. And certainly not loudly. Indeed, the ready use of the trope that "nobody knows your color on the Internet" by white liberals routinely, even if unwittingly, sends a very real message to many Black bloggers new and aspiring (as it did to me, at first) that our true perspectives are simply not welcome. That the uniqueness of a third eye perspective, or voice may indeed be a strike against us, particularly if our perspectives don't line up with the orthodoxy that passes for progressive thought on the 'Net these days. It's the ultimate message, which bluntly most of us already get in the real world anyway: if you want survive, and succeed, you must be prepared to be absorbed into a Black-less Borg and become "the default". You aren't really Black, anymore. Or at least, you'd better pretend you're not. [...]

J's Theater: [...] One other element of his blog that I enjoyed was the periodic recipes: I never tried any of the ones that he and Jen posted, but I thought the recipe-posting was an interesting idea. Farewell, and safe journeys to wherever the best bloggers go!

Culture Kitchen: [...] Steve not only made blogging look easy with his obscenely long posts of quality news dissection. He made it easy to be black online. And that's what made him so brilliant, that he never, ever gave up on his negritude.

There's a lot of us negros and latinos online but on the political side of the spectrum and 5-6 years ago, not so much. [...]

Baldilocks: [...] When one's ideological opponent dies, it's sometimes difficult, if not impossible, to say nice things about him/her. However, the nicest thing that I can say about Steve is that I wish that he hadn't died so young and suffered so much along the way.

Go with God (hopefully), Steve.

cross-posted from Blackosphere

Posted June 4, 2007 2:10 PM | Permalink

'If you look at the African-American audience, there is room for several networks'

[...] According to a 2005 Nielsen study, African-Americans watch more television on average than the overall population. That appetite for television raises the question of why BETâ€™s ratings are not higher.

â€œBET does not have the ratings it should have with 12 percent of the audience being black,â€ said Leo Hindery, a partner in Intermedia Partners, which owns a majority stake in the Gospel Channel, a cable network. â€œIt has never developed a soul of its own. I would do more sports than they are doing and I would stay with the youth audience.â€

Ms. Lee disagrees. â€œTo say we donâ€™t have a soul of our own: I donâ€™t know what that means,â€ she said, pointing out that the channel did carry black college football games and the ratings were not good.

â€œWhen you look at our shows that really work, we get a sizable percentage of the population. We are the No. 1 show in black households. We did a fund-raiser after Katrina and raised $113 million, so there was a strong connect to our programming.â€ [...]

| Go back for the rest of Geraldine Fabrikant's New York Times article "At BET, Fighting the Rerun"

Also useful: Tom Umstead's Multichannel News blog post "Black Family Channel: Big Loss," which notes that "[n]early one-quarter of all cable revenue comes from African-American homes, according to BET, and yet less than 1% of the industryâ€™s video channels target that audience," and the Center for Creative Voices in Media's take.

Posted May 28, 2007 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

That's what I'm talkin' 'bout: square biz

[...] Blacks, who make up about 12 percent of America's population remain underrepresented among business owners, even though they are better-educated than before and more likely to offer highly skilled services.

Also, blacks more often conduct businesses on a part-time basis in addition to a full-time job, so their revenues can be substantially lower compared to all small firms.

Interestingly, the states with the highest black business-ownership rates are those with very small African-American populations. Vermont ranks first, followed by Montana, New Hampshire and then Maine.

In all of these states, blacks represent barely 1 percent of the population. My guess is that these states, despite their lack of ethnic diversity, have a strong independent entrepreneurial streak. They thrive on smaller businesses and specialized services and products. [...]

| That's what jumped out at me in Leigh Donaldson's Maine Today article "Black-owned businesses thrive in country and state"

Posted May 28, 2007 10:51 AM | Permalink

So many causes lie in how we treat one another

[...] Countless studies show that stressful environments and situations raise blood pressure. And few things are as consistently stressful as being black. By almost every measurable social category â€” such as income, infant mortality, education, incarceration rates and employment â€” blacks fare poorly, making everyday life a constant struggle. Only a buried-head ostrich would say that racial discrimination does not play a role in many African Americans' poor health.

What's so pernicious about this "bad gene" theory is that it attributes current health disparities to actions taken nearly four centuries ago, when the more relevant issue may very well be what is happening today. Reducing health disparities to genes obscures more sensible conversations about the contemporary nature of discrimination, how it affects minority health and how best to improve health outcomes. Racial disparities in health are real. But a bit of caution should be exercised when playing the gene card to explain them. [...]

| Go back for the rest of Center for Genetics and Society director Osagie K. Obasogie's Alameda Times-Star op-ed "Oprah's unhealthy mistake," and then make time for his Bioethics Forum essay "Racial Alchemy: Bioethics and the Skin Tone Gene"

Posted May 21, 2007 9:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

'The symphony is like a big ship, and it takes a while to turn it around.'

[...] Arts groups must reflect their communities, or their very existence is in peril, experts say. The seven-county region is 13 percent African-American, 2 percent Hispanic and 2 percent Asian, based on 2005 U.S. Census Bureau figures. The city, home of Music Hall, is 46 percent black.

"Part of the issue is the pool of people of color trying to get into orchestras has been very small," says Henry Fogel, president and CEO of the American Symphony Orchestra League. "In the 18 years I managed the Chicago Symphony (1985-2003), for auditions that attracted 150 or more applicants, the number of African-Americans was between 0 and 2."

The musicians are the most visible representation of the Cincinnati Symphony, one of the nation's top 25 big-budget orchestras. Seven years ago, the 112-year-old orchestra hired its third African-American.

It's not alone. Nationwide, blacks and Latinos comprise just 4 percent of orchestras. Scores of highly trained musicians compete for few spots. [...]

| Those paragraphs caught my eye in Janelle Gelfand's Cincinnati Enquirer article "Lack of color at the classics," but please don't stop there.

Posted May 14, 2007 6:55 AM | Permalink

They know that a Republican appointed me, but they still donâ€™t know what I am.

"I had to deal with the obstacle of limited expectation on the part of people with whom I interacted and the people with whom I worked. If youâ€™ve never seen an African-American in a certain position, a lot of times people will assume there are no African-Americans qualified to do that. [...]" (Waco Trib)

"We want to have a national footprint. There are no national brick-and-mortar African American businesses. You can go from cable companies or store to store and buy Ebony and Black Enterprise magazines, but I don't know where you can walk into an African American bank in Washington, New York, Boston, Charlotte and Richmond." (WaPo)

[...] The number of people in similar straits is rising today with the shifting populations of a globalized world. The emergence of new democracies is also a factor, particularly in Africa, where the granting or removal of citizenship is used as a political weapon.

By the most common count, there are 15 million stateless people in the world, but by its nature, this is a number nobody can know for certain. [...] (NYTimes)

"It's kind of hard to be out on campus and still be successful. As an out gay man, if I wanted to pledge, that door is pretty much shut to me. That's just the way it is." (WaPo)

"Black children really need black dolls. She wanted us to know there was nothing wrong with the way we looked, that we were just as beautiful as the blonde-haired, blue-eyed dolls." (BosGlobe)

[...] Sunday morning is still the most segregated time for America, but many churches will find themselves temporarily integrated by visits from various candidates of all races and their surrogates during election season. Obama shouldn't be expected to abandon his minister to appease political foes, but at the same time it's important he convince voters his preacher is a spiritual adviser and nothing more.

In the black church, your pastor is the considered the leader of your flock; if Obama wants to get to the White House, he will have to learn how to be a shepherd on his own. (JS Online)

"My first choice would be a minority. Because of the situations we've had, the difficulties with the minority populations, we need to normalize and stabilize that so the minority community feels the Police Department works for them." (Statesman.com)

Posted April 9, 2007 12:50 PM | Permalink

Rounding the bases on a thoroughbred bay

It's a sports kind of day, so check out David Dorsey's News-Press.com article "Not the national pastime" on the dwindling number of black folks in baseball" and Cindy Pierson Dulay's Equestrianmag article "Jockey Cheryl White, An American Missed"

Posted April 2, 2007 2:23 PM | Permalink

In preservation, you don't have the luxury of time.

Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb's Washington Post obituary "Robert DeForrest; Identified Black Landmarks" is about a gentleman I knew and looked up to growing in D.C.
"Hip Hop History: An Interview with Vibe Magazine Publisher Len Burnett" Neely Tucker, Washington Post, "True Unbeliever" Lolly Bowean, Chicago Tribune, "Mentors guide college men" Darryl Fears, Washington Post, "In Diversity Push, Top Universities Enrolling More Black Immigrants" NPR, "Think Tank Makes African-American Issues Its Focus" and Marketplace, Hillary Wicai, "Unemployment of black men at 'crisis' level" Mark Reynolds, PopMatters.com, Negritude 2.0, "Vibe: Hard to Let It Go"

Posted March 8, 2007 10:55 AM | Permalink

Tells us a great deal, but not everything that we would like to know.

Carol Kammen's Ithaca Journal column "Census of 1850 provides a glimpse of African-American life in Tompkins" Caille Millner's San Francisco Chronicle op-ed "The definition of political absurdity" Tresca Weinstein's Albany Times-Union article "Authors speak out on black gender inequities" Aurelio Rojas' Sacramento Bee article "Brown-on-black violence plagues south state" Mike Killian's Utica Observer-Dispatch commentary "Newspaper can play key role in understanding race" Eric Stringfellow's Jackson Clarion-Ledger column "African Americans must begin to 'discuss' HIV/AIDS" Rebecca Baker's Journal News article "Photographer's home could become Greenburgh landmark" Shirley Dang's Contra Costa Times article "A fine line between inspiration and segregation" David Flick's Dallas Morning News article "Ray Charles' style formed in S. Dallas home" Earl Kelly's Annapolis Capital article "Naval Academy struggles to recruit blacks"

Posted March 5, 2007 9:39 AM | Permalink

We come in many different shades. But then again, how many white people are really white.

Shreveport Times: "[...] So if you refer to me as an African-American, I won't be offended â€” maybe a little perturbed. After all, it's just a label. It doesn't define who I am. For that matter, neither does the word black. Now that I think about it, forget the labels. Just call me Sherry!"

Baltimore Sun: "When I searched for ancestors, I learned much about looking at history and telling history in a new way. With greater understanding and knowledge, the new motto for Black History Month should be: 'African American history is world history.' "

USA Today: "This is as close as we can get to an apology in Virginia," says the Senate author, Democrat Henry Marsh III, a civil rights lawyer. 'I feel vindicated.' "

STLToday: "It's not about being thin; it's about health. What we're fighting are choices. We don't want to be thin; and the barriers that keep African-American women from working out, silly stuff ... our hair? Your need to save a hairdo lessens your desire to perspire and perform physical activities? We all want to look good, but to sacrifice your health doesn't make sense."

Reuters: "London â€“ Reuters (LSE: RTR.L; Nasdaq: RTRSY), the global news and information company, today announced the launch of Reuters Africa -- a new commercial website dedicated to pan-African news and financial data."

Posted February 27, 2007 10:53 AM | Permalink

Either wish me well, go to hell or ...

Walking into Sterling Memorial Library wearing socks and sandals last year, folder in hand, Andom Ghebreghiorgisâ€™ â€™07 slim stature â€” 5â€™8â€ and 135 pounds â€” should hardly have seemed threatening. But he had only taken eight steps when a security guard said, â€œExcuse me, sir. Yeah, come here.â€ Students behind and in front of Ghebreghiorgis continued onward as the skeptical guard asked, â€œAre you a student here?â€ The student pulled out his ID.

â€œOh, thank you, you can move on,â€ the guard said. [...]

| That's how Lea Yu's Yale Daily News article "Black Elis face a local challenge" (the first of a three-part "Experiencing Race at Yale" series) starts. (Bonus link? OK. Try on Kelly Chang's Yale Daily Herald article "African-American solidarity: Fact or fiction?")

Posted February 27, 2007 1:42 AM | Permalink

Measuring Mahoning County

"Whether we can win or not, itâ€™s sad we arenâ€™t even participating. Until there is an African American candidate who seeks the partyâ€™s support for county office, that will be the measuring stick. When itâ€™s consistent, if we keep getting the same result, weâ€™ll need to address some things in the party. But we havenâ€™t had that measuring stick."

Warren, Ohio, Safety-Service Director William "Doug" Franklin, quoted in Stephen Oravecz's Tribune Chronicle article "African American politicians ready to take next step"

Posted February 26, 2007 10:54 PM | Permalink

Standing in front of people and asking them to like you

"I grew up a fat kid and was teased quite a bit. I grew up with no self-image at all. I wasn't dealing with who I was. If you were interested in art -- choir, theater -- you had to be around the white kids. It took years to accept me and what I look like -- too tall, too fat, speaks too well, not well enough. I think a person's goal to be happy and content is to be content with themselves. What you think about yourself is extremely important."

| A quote from "The Bluest Eye" actor Adrian Bailey in Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan's Durham Sun article "'Bluest Eye' is play that tries to refute 'American lie'"

Posted February 25, 2007 9:48 PM | Permalink

You can't get a white actor to play Idi Amin. You can't get a white actor to play Ray Charles.

[...] For the first time in more than 25 years, the Friends of the Black Oscars, the secretive group that sponsored the event, decided that the black Oscars have finally become obsolete. Since 2002, when Halle Berry and Denzel Washington took home best actor and best actress statuettes, African-American actors and actresses have consistently had a more significant presence in the race for Oscar.

This year a record-breaking five African-American actors and actresses â€” Forest Whitaker, Eddie Murphy, Jennifer Hudson, Will Smith and Djimon Hounsou â€” were nominated. In the words of a member of the Friends of the Black Oscars board, "This year, the Black Oscars will be at Kodak."

"I often used to enjoy the fact that I could name all the black Oscar winners and do it rather quickly because there weren't that many of them. It's getting harder and harder," said Todd Boyd, a professor of critical studies at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts. [...]

| That's from Rebecca Lee's Associated Press (via ABC News) article "The end of the Black Oscars"

Posted February 25, 2007 9:37 PM | Permalink

Surveyed 1,590 black, white and Hispanic youth nationwide between the ages of 15 and 25

â€œThe Black Youth Project is committed to making the ideas and attitudes of young people our central focus. By asking young people themselves about important issues like sex education, police discrimination, abortion or same-sex marriage, the Black Youth Project is able to provide data that will help build effective policies that can significantly improve the lives and prospects of young black people. This study is about research, not ranting."

| A quote from Cathy Cohen about the Black Youth Project in William Harms' University of Chicago Chronicle article "Empirical data show complex beliefs, attitudes and character of black youth"

Posted February 2, 2007 2:09 PM | Permalink

A moral compass for America, always pointing us in the direction of truth

"I taught for nearly 70 years. And I would like my students to take up where I left off and to carry on the fight to establish history as a powerful force for good -- a constructive force to rectify the ills of our society -- to change the world, as it were."

Ted Landphair, VOA News, "'Revisionist' Historian Franklin Gets America Thinking About Role of African Americans"

[...] Not only has it had the first black president, now it presents the second without even blinking (or commenting, so far, on the Kennedyesque nature of the Palmer family). The non-issue represents a subterranean hipness to "24" that rarely gets mentioned as everyone ponders how superhero character Jack Bauer not only saves Los Angeles and, in turn, the country year after year, but how he does it in 24 hours without ever eating or going to the bathroom.

It's easy to dismiss "24" and the minority president issue as a case of a non-political series choosing action (everything blows up on "24" and the pace is incessant) over making a statement. But that conveniently ignores the fact that "24" has, in the prior two seasons, become surprisingly political, just not about the color of the president. [...]

Tim Goodman, San Francisco Chronicle, "'24' reflects post-Sept. 11 mind-set"

"You can relocate cattle but you can't relocate history. We as a black culture don't have an awful lot to relate to, and now they want to kill one of the only things we do have."

Leslie Fulbright, San Francisco Chronicle, "Battle for piece of black history: Allensworth, a town founded for African Americans, may get new neighbors -- 2 huge dairy farms"

"All of my friends had to buy Pepsi. I kept stockpiles of Pepsi in my house. All the places I went had to have Pepsi. If I was out with someone and they ordered Coke, I might have thrown a glass of water in their face. ... My wife would say, 'I think you're going crazy -- Pepsi, Pepsi, Pepsi!'"

Stephanie Capparell, Wall Street Journal, "How Pepsi Opened Door to Diversity"

â€œThe vision right now throughout the community is all the same vision, which is that the archives are important. Itâ€™s an important way of pulling the community together. Itâ€™s an important way of highlighting African-American history and culture. And itâ€™s something that needs to happen right away.â€

Steve Penn, Kansas City Star, "They'll lead the way"

Also: Conrad Worrill, Chicago Defender, "Searching for an African American electoral strategy;" Monte Whaley, Denver Post, "Black cavalry answered the charge: Buffalo Soldiers troupe brings regiments' history to life;" William Blackburn, Charlotte Observer, "Don't take African American vote for granted;"

Posted January 9, 2007 11:04 AM | Permalink

There was a time

"We have noticed an error which all journalists seem to make. Whether from mistake or ill-intention, we are unable to say, but the profession universally begins Negro with a small letter. It is certainly improper, and as no one has ever given a good reason for this breach of orthography, we will offer one. White men began printing long before Colored men dared read their works; had power to establish any rule they saw fit. As a mark of disrespect, as a stigma, as a badge of inferiority, they tacitly agreed to spell his name without a capital. The French, German, Irish, Dutch, Japanese, and other nationalities are honored with a capital letter, but the poor sons of Ham must bear the burden of a small n.

"To our Colored journalistic brothers we present this as a matter of self-interest. Spell it with a capital. To the Democratic journals we present this as a matter of good grammar. To the Republicans [the party to which most Blacks were allied at the time] we present it as a matter of right. Spell it with a capital. To all persons who would take from our wearied shoulders a hair's weight of the burden of prejudice and ill will we bear, we present this as a matter of human charity and beg you SPELL IT WITH A CAPITAL."

| Glen Ford's Black Agenda Report (via Dissident Voice) dispatch "James Brown: The Man Who Named a People" quotes "Black lawyer Ferdinand Lee Barnett, founder of the Chicago Conservator. In 1878, the newspaperâ€™s first year of operations, Barnett wrote an editorial titled, 'Spell It With a Capital.'"

Posted January 8, 2007 12:01 AM | Permalink

That's the other side of being in the driver's seat.

[...] We are about to become the first large metropolitan area with a majority African-American population. That hasn't happened ever in America before.

If we become the model of a well-managed, safe and prosperous city, then we, and the nation, won't be talking about race in the way that we have so often spoken about it in the past.

| That's the end of Memphis Commercial Appeal editor Chris Peck's "An opportunity for black success"

Posted January 7, 2007 2:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Saddened but hopeful at the same time, just like we are.

I liked Martha Irvine's Associated Press (via Pueblo Chieftain) article "First black U.S. priest unknown to most Catholics"

Ihosvani Rodriguez's South Florida Sun-Sentinel article "Athlete touts an alternative: Record-holding black swimmer promotes the sport to minority children" has a data point: "Statistics from USA Swimming, the sport's national governing body, show less than 1 percent of the 300,000 competitive swimmers in the country are black. In the Olympics, the United States has had only four black participants in aquatic sports: Anthony Ervin in 2000 and Maritza Correia in 2004 in swimming, and in 2004, Genai Kerr and Omar Amr represented the country in water polo."

Rutgers Law School professor Tanya K. Hernandez's Los Angeles Times op-ed essay "Roots of Latino/black anger: Longtime prejudices, not economic rivalry, fuel tensions" has this, and more, to say: "The fact is that racism â€” and anti-black racism in particular â€” is a pervasive and historically entrenched reality of life in Latin America and the Caribbean. More than 90% of the approximately 10 million enslaved Africans brought to the Americas were taken to Latin America and the Caribbean (by the French, Spanish and British, primarily), whereas only 4.6% were brought to the United States. By 1793, colonial Mexico had a population of 370,000 Africans (and descendants of Africans) â€” the largest concentration in all of Spanish America."

Posted January 7, 2007 1:35 AM | Permalink

There's no mourning, no lament. It's all about thanksgiving, joy, anticipation.

[...] Watch Night on New Year's Eve began with 18th-century European Protestants, though today it lives on mostly in predominantly African-American congregations.

Since the Emancipation Proclamation, these late-night gatherings hark back to the long wait for freedom, according to Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan, professor of theology and women's studies at Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C. Kirk-Duggan, a Christian Methodist Episcopal minister, wrote about the services in her book More African American Special Days: 15 Complete Worship Services. [...]

| Go read all of Liz F. Kay's Baltimore Sun story "Looking ahead, looking back, looking inward" even if you're just coming back from church. (Not going? Yeah, me neither.)

Want good, chewy reads to start the new year? "First, do no harm (to whites)," Alexander Zaitchik's San Francisco Chronicle review of Harriet A. Washington's "Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans From Colonial Times to the Present," and "Leading the way: Long before Deval Patrick, Edward Brooke broke racial barriers in state and national politics," Kenneth J. Cooper's Boston Globe review of ex-Sen. Edward W. Brooke's "Bridging the Divide: My Life," sure sound like they're worth seeking out.

Posted December 31, 2006 11:59 PM | Permalink

Has handled hundreds of services, mainly for African Americans in Oakland, Berkeley and Richmond.

Jim Herron Zamora's San Francisco Chronicle article "'They all wonder if they're next'" is sobering.

And speaking of the dead, there's another reason to like George Curry, seen in James Barron's New York Times article "Respect and Regrets at Memorial for Times Editor," is how Curry sticks up for his friend Gerald Boyd and the way his "career was characterized in obituaries about him. 'By any measure, Gerald had an extremely successful career, and we as his friends should not allow those in our field to sully his reputation now that he can no longer speak for himself. It is unfair to act like Blair, that serial liar, was an appendage of Gerald Boyd.'â€

Posted December 6, 2006 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

There was certainly some short-term political calculation in being photographed among smiling black faces.

For your consideration: There is an inverse relationship between the snark in this post's title and my readers' need to consider from where it was ever so lovingly ganked (aka Paul Tough's New York Times article "What It Takes to Make a Student"). I think it was reading Felicity Barringer's New York Times story "Gerald M. Boyd, Who Broke Barriers as an Editor at The Times, Dies at 56" that sent me back to Matt L. Perrone's not-done-with-me-yet PopMatters essay "Everything I Needed to Know About Journalism, I Learned from Jayson Blair" ([...] "I cannot imagine anything I could do, no matter how long I live, that will change that first line of my obituary. I could go on to help thousands more people than I ever would have been able to as a journalist, and it still won't make a difference. You see, there's this assumption that the lives of really talented people follow one arc that just goes up and up and up. But it's not true," he says looking me straight in the eye. "We all go down sometimes." " [...]) You know those people who insist on being obtuse about the term "African American"? Who are almost as bad as the ones who ask "why can't everyone just be 'American,' 'cause that's what matters now"? Seattle Times columnist Jerry Large calls 'em turkeys. (Just kidding!) If you think of any good jokes after reading Mark Sutkowski's balanced, thoughtful Burlington Free Press article "Vermont tied with Maine as whitest state," please e-mail me. All that comes immediately to mind is something about cheap JetBlue fares. *shrug* For the slightest moment I watched you read Anita Creamer's Sacramento Bee (via Modesto Bee) article "Black paper dolls are more than playthings" Let's be cheerful, why don't we? There's always Reuters' "Chad extends emergency to tackle ethnic violence" and Lydia Polgreen's amazing New York Times story "Money and Violence Hobble Democracy in Nigeria" ("Of Nigeriaâ€™s 36 governors, 31 are under federal investigation, mostly on suspicion of corruption, and 5 have already been impeached [...] One in six Africans is Nigerian. Nigeria is the fifth largest supplier of oil to the United States." You don't say.)

Posted November 26, 2006 8:26 PM | Permalink

More prevalent than they were 30 years ago, and the bond among them remains strong.

"I embrace it. A lot of people shy away from that. Being an African American quarterback, as long as you can work hard and as long as you have the ability, you can make it in the NFL.

"I think a lot of people get that mixed understanding of well, you know, they don't want any African American quarterbacks. But all of us now [are some] of the premier quarterbacks, regardless of what color their skin is."

| A quote from NFL Baltimore Ravens quarterback Steve McNair in "McNair Has Been Mentor to Campbell," Rich Campbell's special to the Washington Post

Posted November 16, 2006 9:57 AM | Permalink

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