Unbossed
and unbought news and information you can use
Vol.
13 No. 37…Dedicated
to the Dialogue on Race…September 13, 2010
Intuit's Vibe
Deception
By Jesse Tampa
Strewn along to believe the lies of the unjust
Put faith into the wrong accord, I have misplaced my trust
Through rusted pipes of lies there lay dead dreams below us
Never connecting webs together, they say I shouldn't fuss
I'm confused, angry, turned upon my very own foundation
If I could paint a canvas there would be negative illustration
I was on a path to a future with a strong hold
Now I stand on this new plain if I may be so bold
I question why I've been betrayed by the leaders
I am derailed from my path by the corporate bottom feeders
Enough, I demand answers till my breaking point is reached
Life,
I feel as if a giant dam has broken and we cannot float
Instead of rising to the top, Titanic is our boat
There is no letting up by the officials in the ton
Pull yourself up by your boot straps they tell us again
I say enough is enough my friends, open up your portals!
Or we will be mislead again by these lying mortals
So as we are sinking deeper, you along with I
Will we sit back together and watch our country die?
Who will stand up for the people and fix the results of lies?
We cannot take this sitting down; they won't catch us by surprise!
We deserve better for our working every single day
And in the end it
isn't us, but it's you that should pay.
John Henrik Clarke
(1915 - 1998)
Little black
A self-educated intellectual, who
helped establish an Afrocentric perspective, Dr. John Henrik Clarke documented
the histories and contributions of Africans and those in the African diaspora.
Born, the eldest of 9 children to sharecroppers John and Willie Ella Mays Clark
on January 1, 1915 in
Clarke's family moved to
The search for answers led Clarke to a copy of The New Negro and an essay
called "The Negro Digs up His Past" by Arthur A. Schomburg, which
convinced him that he came from a people with a history even older than that of
World War II interrupted Clarke's
quest but the unexpected stint in the army provided him with valuable
experience in administrative control while a clerk in an all black unit. Clarke
returned to the states and was mentored by many of the great 20th century black
historians of the day including Arthur Schomburg, William Leo Hansberry, John
G. Jackson, Paul Robeson, Willis Huggins and Charles Seiffert. Clarke joined
study circles such as the Harlem History Club and the Harlem Writers' Workshop,
where he met such future luminaries as Kwame Nkrumah, Langston Hughes and
Richard Wright.
Clarke began to teach black
history and said of the experience, "I learned very early that knowing
history and teaching it are two different things. I had to understand that
young blacks had been so brainwashed by our society that they could see themselves
only as depressed beings. I had to realize that they had, in many ways,
adjusted to their oppression and that I needed considerable patience, many
teaching skills, and great love in order to change their attitudes."
Clarke became a co-founder of many
organizations such as The Harlem Writers Guild, Presence Africaine, African
Heritage Studies Association, the Association for the Study of Negro Life and
History, the National Council of Black Studies, the Association for the Study
of Classical African Civilizations, the African-American Scholars' Council and
the Black Academy of Arts and Letters. Prominent during the black power
movement, Clarke advocated for studies on the African-American experience and
the place of Africans in world history. Challenging academic historians, Clarke
helped change the way African history was studied and taught.
Dr. Clarke wrote over two hundred
short stories, best known is The Boy Who Painted Christ Black. His other
writings include six scholarly books, many scholarly articles, and the editing
of anthologies of black writing and articles of general interest. He was
co-founder of the Harlem Quarterly (1949-51), book review editor of the Negro
History Bulletin (1948-52), associate editor of the magazine
Dr. Clarke did the necessary and tedious editing and organizing work on
anthologies of Malcolm X and Nat Turner, providing an alternative outlook from
that of the mainstream views of Malcolm X and Nat Turner as militant hate
mongers. He understood the necessity for blacks to affirm their belief in and
respect for such radical leaders.
Clarke had three children with
his first wife, Eugenia Evans, Lillie, Nzingha Marie and Sonni Kojo. At his
death on July 16, 1998, he was survived by his second wife Sybille Williams
Clarke and two of his children. He is buried in
Proudly proclaiming he was
"self-taught," Dr. Clarke was a remarkable, teacher, historian,
writer, editor and researcher. Most of his accomplishment occurred before he
returned to school to get his PhD. His contributions to knowledge about African
people are a rich legacy, but unlike riches, his search for knowledge was not squandered
on future generations. His example of dedication, scholarship, perseverance and
innovative approaches to history lifted the veil of secrecy surrounding African
history and its diaspora. Leaving such a treasure trove, Dr Clarke insured that
future generations' search for knowledge of their history will not begin in
poverty.
A Search for Identity
By John Henrik Clarke
(May 1970)
Heritage, in essence, is the
means by which people have used their talents to create a history that gives
them memories they can respect and that they can use to command the respect of
other people. The ultimate purpose of heritage and heritage teaching is to use
people's talents to develop awareness and pride in themselves so that they
themselves can achieve good relationships with other people.
My first teacher was my great
grandmother whom we called "Mom Mary." She had been a slave first in
My great grandmother had three children with Buck--my grandfather Jonah, my
grandaunt Liza, who was a midwife, and another child. With Buck, Mom Mary had
as close to a marriage as a slave can have--marriage with the permission of the
respective masters. Mom Mary had a lifelong love affair with Buck, and years
later after the emancipation she went to
Mom Mary was the historian of our
family. This great grandmother was so dear to me that I have deified her in
almost the same way that many Africans deify their old people. I think that my
search for identity, my search for what the world was about, and my
relationship to the world began when I listened to the stories of that old
woman. I remember that she always ended the stories in the same way that she
said "Good-bye" or "Good morning" to people. It was always
with the reminder, "Run the race, and run it by faith." She was a
deeply religious woman in a highly practical sense. She did not rule out
resistance as a form of obedience to God. She thought that the human being
should not permit himself to be dehumanized. And her concept of God was so pure
and so practical that she could see that resistance to slavery was a form of
obedience to God. She did not think that any of us children should be enslaved,
and she thought that anyone who had enslaved any one of God's children had
violated the very will of God.
I think Buck's pride in his manhood was the major force that always made her
revere her relationship with him. He was a proud man and he resisted. One of
the main reasons for selling him to a man to use on a stud farm was that he
could breed strong slaves whose wills the master would then break. This
dehumanizing process was a recurring aspect of slavery.
I am convinced that when the intellectual history of our time comes to be
written, the idea of "race," both the popular and the taxonomic, will
be viewed for what it is: a confused and dangerous idea which happened to fit
the social requirements of a thoroughly exploitative period in the development
of Western man. The idea of "race" was developed as a direct response
to the exploitation of other peoples, to provide both a pretext and a
justification for the most unjustifiable conduct, the enslavement, murder, and
degradation of millions of human beings.
A Great and Mighty
Walk: John Henrik Clarke
Groundbreaking Harlem film-maker
Saint Clair Bourne died in a
A student activist during the
1960s, Bourne was thrown out of school as many times as he was thrown into
jail. However, his radicalism did not overpower his brilliance, which mitigated
his selection as a producer for "Black Journal," the first black
public affairs series on PBS in 1971. Feeling constrained by the limited
format, Bourne left the series to start his own production company, called
Chamba Mediaworks.
Bourne's artistic vision and
activism merged into an unconventional and controversial career that produced a
string of outstanding documentaries highlighting the African-American
experience. Commenting on the philosophical bent of his work Bourne said,
"A film about
Saint Claire Bourne was
particularly proud of his 1996 documentary, John Henrik Clarke: A Great and
Mighty Walk. This video chronicles the life and times of an
John Henrik Clarke: A Great and Mighty Walk was underwritten and narrated by
Wesley Snipes, a Hollywood star in his own right. Producing this film of Dr.
Clarke, Bourne and Snipes have preserved the legacy of one of
By Bill Quigley
Since September 11, 2001, fear
has been the main engine of change in the
Who would have thought that the
US would allow, much less pay for, the National Security Agency to intercept
and store 1.7 billion emails, phone calls and other communications - every
single day - and pay for 30,000 people to listen in on phone conversations in
the name of fighting the fear of terrorism?
Who would have thought that
people across
Who would have thought that
people across the
Who would have thought that some
of the highest lawyers in the land would write memos illegally authorizing the
torture of people in the name of making the
Who would have thought that
Democrats would compete with Republicans to try to keep the globally shameful Guantánamo
prison open so that people inside the
Who would have thought that
people in
Who would have thought that in
the US, where people take pride in the constitutional independence of the
judiciary, those judges would turn down the case of Maher Arar, who was
captured in the US and flown out to a Syrian prison to be tortured, because they
fear that even looking at the case would interfere with national security?
Who would have thought that the people of the
Who would have thought that the people of the
Who would have thought that there once was a
About
Me: Quigley is Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights
and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. He can be reached at quigley77@gmail.com.
Unfulfilled Promises
John Boyd Jr. has had it! Boyd,
president of the National Black Farmers Association, has worked for the past
quarter-century to win some semblance of justice for African American farmers,
who for decades were denied government loans because of the color of their
skin. Yet something goes wrong every time Mr. Boyd and his constituents think
they have made headway.
That was the case in 1999, when
the government settled a class-action suit brought by black farmers only to
find that bureaucratic foul-ups left tens of thousands of farmers out of the
money. Congress passed a well-meaning fix in 2008, but it was flawed also; that
made necessary the $1.25 billion settlement this year between the farmers and
the Obama administration. Now the farmers are unable to collect their money
because Congress has repeatedly failed to approve the measure.
"It's almost like 40 acres
and a mule," Mr. Boyd says, referring to the government's Reconstruction
Era promises to former slaves.
Native Americans have had an even
tougher time securing remuneration for past injustices. Native American
landowners have been cheated out of billions of dollars in oil and gas
royalties by the government since the late 19th century. Late last year they
entered into a $3.4 billion settlement agreement with the administration after
an unusually contentious 14-year court battle. The settlement includes $1.4
billion for payments to individuals, a $60 million scholarship fund for Native
American children and roughly $2 billion for the government to buy plots that
will be turned over to the pertinent Indian tribe. This land consolidation is
important because much of Indian country has been subdivided into tiny,
individually owned plots that complicate the calculation of royalties and
inheritance rights. But Native Americans have yet to see a penny because of
Congress's intransigence. And their hopes of achieving a payout are likely to
evaporate unless
Congress comes through before a court-imposed Oct. 15 deadline. Some senators
have cited the hefty legal fees -- between $50 million and $99 million -- due
the lawyers for the Native Americans as a reason to reject the settlement. We
share some of their discomfort, especially because the average Native American
will pocket less than $2,000. But the settlement should not be scuttled because
of this. The lawyers have put in two decades of work without being paid and are
slated to receive a contingency fee of only 3 percent -- far less than what is
usually awarded. The reality is that these types of cases would probably fall
by the wayside if advocates did not have a reasonable shot at a handsome
payout. Even if the lawyers agreed to accept less, the difference to the
300,000 Native Americans in line for a payment would be minuscule.
African Americans and Native Americans have been the most persecuted and
exploited groups in this nation's history, and the settlements in question
represent modest, but achievable, efforts to address discrete harms. The White
House and Congress should work diligently to ensure that these most recent
promises become reality. (Source: www.washingtonpost.com
)
Disgruntled says:
Oddly, during the eight years of one of the worst presidencies in the nation's
history, there was no Tea Party. Even stranger, while their hatred of President
Obama is evident, Tea Party subscribers and others that supposedly oppose Obama's
tax and spend policies do not oppose his continuation of the Bush
administration's war on terror. According to several sources, Obama has not
only continued some of the most abhorrent and illegal practices begun under the
Bush administration, he has expanded these operations in Central Asia,
Disgruntled
wants to know: Census figures for 2009 are expected to show that the economic
downturn resulted in an increase in the poverty rate from 13.2 percent to about
15 percent. With roughly one in seven living in poverty or approximately 45
million people, the
Disgruntled
feels: Targeted! As most of you are aware, I have vehemently stated my
opposition to sagging britches. I have gone so far as to label the wearers
"stuck on stupid (SOS)," and I have called on the females in their
lives to stop buying pants too big for their bottoms and/or demand that they
wear belts in the pants' loops that help keep their underwear from public view.
Since my verbal tirade, the sag has become more extreme, as saggers seem to be
trying to outdo each other. It seems they are in a race to be the most
offensive. With that said, I do not agree with the
Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and Telephone Calls
Email http://presstv.ir
...Evidence proves 9/11 story is a lie'...Important evidence has emerged
showing the official story the American public has been fed about the 9/11
attacks is a 'lie,' a group of architects and engineers say. Gregg Roberts, who
is a member of the non-profit organization, Architects and Engineers for 9/11
Truth, say evidence regarding the destruction of the
Email
afro_colombians@afrocolombians.com...More than 70 academics and intellectuals
from different parts of the world and different disciplines sent a letter to
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos on the 17th anniversary of the enactment
of Public Law 70 of 1993, one of the greatest achievements of the Black
Movement in