Volume 2 Issue 36..…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race….. September 17, 1999

For two weeks, over the course of the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament, I watched Americans Venus and Serena Williams win their way to the semi-finals. When Serena, the number seven seed in the tournament, upset American Lindsay Davenport to make it into the finals, I joined her in a double fist pump. She was my sentimental favorite. I understand why the commentators seemed torn between Williams and Davenport; after all, both are Americans. On the other hand, I must admit I was surprised when the TV commentators seemed to pull for Martina Hingis in her semi-final match against Venus. Hingis is Swiss! What is wrong with this picture? When Todd Martin was down against Britain's Rudeski, the American crowd and a little white pill spurred him on to victory. Where were they for Venus? How do we explain this difference? More Phantom Scribblings

Mumia Awareness Week is September 19-25, 1999. On Saturday, September 25, 1999, local Atlanta Mumia organizers will converge on Coan Park from 2-6PM for a Mumia Awareness Festival. The afternoon of activities includes speakers from aide to Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and Atlanta city council members to grassroots activists, spoken word artists and musicians. For more information on Mumia Awareness, contact dmm46@earthlink.net or call Millions for Mumia at 770-989-2536. Other ATL Vibes

September 12-16, the 11^th International Conference on AIDS and STDs was held in Lusaka, Zambia. "'Like a thief in the night, HIV/AIDS and related STDs are stealing our mothers, daughters, sisters and female friends away from us,' said Professor Nkando Luo, Minister of Health in Zambia Africa. Luo, wife, mother, doctor and minister is chairing the international conference.

According to the United Nations Children's Fund, last year, AIDS killed an estimated 1.4 million people in eastern and southern Africa and left 6 million children orphaned, overtaking armed conflicts as the number one killer in the region. In the United States, there are upwards of 500,000 people infected with AIDS, the majority of them under 30 years of age and living in the poorest communities. While African Americans only compose 12% of the total United States population, they make up 40% of all AIDS cases. 'Because of ignorance about prevention, reckless behavior, cultural taboos, and the embarrassment of openly talking about sex, HIV/AIDS and other related diseases are wrecking havoc on African communities worldwide. So, while we are being promiscuous, proper and polite, we are killing ourselves softly,' commented Luo.

In the U.S., HIV/AIDS is blind-siding the African American female population and fatally crippling families. According to the Harvard University AIDS Project, two-thirds of all women infected with HIV/AIDS are African American women and it is estimated that in the year 2000, African American women will be twenty times more likely to have AIDS than non African American Women." Email from Cherytalk@aol.com More Hoodnotes

by John Burl Smith

Descendant of slaves and sharecroppers, Yohannes Sharriff Smith's desire to elevate African Americans above the chasm of inequality began his evolution. Developing T.H.I.N.C.'s (Teaching Humanity In New Consciousness) five principles allowed Yohannes to build a responsive mind set, which examines an individual's prospective on the past in order to illuminate their future. The first principle of T.H.I.N.C., Approach Life as a Sphere of Education: Holistic Student, presents learning as life's goal. "One's attitude towards learning determines how readily one takes advantage of the educational wealth of experience." Holistic Students learn to construct positive information/feedback loops.

Learning theorists believe an organism's prospects for survival are directly proportional to its ability to learn. Humans have an amazing capacity for elaborating and visualizing information to guide behavior. The information/feedback loop forms the infrastructure of human learning style. It aids acquisition, retention and recall, while building trust towards the environment.

From what is known about attitude formation, stress induced learning, using aversive stimuli, interferes with knowledge acquisition, retention and recall. For instance, slave learning environments were inconsistent, unfamiliar, highly stressful and hostile. Attention was controlled by immediate survival information and dissociation short-circuited their information/feedback loop. Arbitrary whites made it impossible for slaves to associate behavior with positive outcomes. Unable to trust information gained from experience, insecurity characterized their unpredictable environment.

Conversely, whites learned in minimal stress non-threatening consistently familiar environments. Their attention was directed toward information gathering and evaluation based on possible needs. They trusted their information/feedback loop to guide behavior. Life has predictable outcomes for white Americans.

Dismissing slavery and segregation as significant factors affecting the learning style of slave descendants eliminates all slave descendants' learning except for the last twenty-five years. It is clear whites and blacks learned in similar environments, however they learned completely different lessons. Obviously, whites and slave descendants learned different concepts of fairness, justice and equality, even though they both were exposed to identical theories. Consequently, expecting slave descendants to respond identically to whites, as though both have identical experiences with such concepts, eliminates slavery and segregation as part of their knowledge base. Moreover, it is absurd to assume Selma, Birmingham and Bull Connor were experienced in the same way and taught the same lessons to blacks and whites. T.H.I.N.C. about it! Other Essays by Mr. Smith

Disgruntled says: Not only is the city of Atlanta not investigating how Barton went missing after his killing spree, but apparently police officials are not interested in what was in his blood stream that could help explain his deadly rampage.

Disgruntled wants to know: How do successful women, like Libby Dole and Oprah Winfrey, fornicate for years and never have children? What are their birth control secrets?

Disgruntled feels: like celebrating. Disgruntled Homepage

Comments from the Bat Cave

The Dark Knight-Batman/White Ninja/Zorro is experiencing the profound life changes of a first grader. The Dark One/Ninja/Zorro requested another hiatus. Back to the Bat Cave.

by Mumia Abu-Jamal

" '[N]o country was ever ruled by so mean a class of tyrants as, with a few noble exceptions, are the editors of the periodical press in this country. And as they live and rule only by their servility, and appealing to their worst, and not the better nature of man, the people who read them are in the condition of the dog that returns to his vomit.' - Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and other Essays (1849).

The media is the agency through which millions of minds are formed in our world today. How folks see the world, and how they perceive how lives are led, is mediated through the lens and the newspapers of capital. In the past, media was largely the tool of capital. Today, they are capital; subsidiaries of some of the largest and wealthiest conglomerates of corporate power in the world. With the powerful concentration of media corporations taking place today, more and more such entities are coming under the control of fewer and fewer individuals. The "mass" media is fast becoming a tool of powerfully amassed capital....

In such a social construct, there is no "us;" there is no "we;" there are only THEM. Who does the pointing, the subtle targeting, the social distinction-making? That is the role of the media, who do not actually mediate between free so-called "citizens," but mediates on behalf of the wealthy; those who own the media and those who consume their products. In such a media-generated consumer culture, everything-everything is just another commodity. A thing to be packaged, to be sold, and to serve their interest."

About the Author: Currently, he is imprisoned, awaiting death in his conviction for murder of a policeman. Mumia symbolizes the struggle to end police brutality and the death penalty. A talented journalist, Free Mumia has become a cry being heard around the world, as more and more people join the fight to end the brutality embodied in the death penalty. This is one of Mumia Abu-Jamal's greatest contributions. Other Artists on Venue

Below are excerpts from e-mails authored by M. Brandon Johnson, editor of Uplift Magazine; they concern Phantom Scribbler articles on BET and Tavis Smiley. "Dear Urban Leaders. Has the Urban Leaders Mailing List become a way for the ignorant and paranoid to share their ignorant and paranoid views to us? Please tell me...I would like to know. In reading another email from somebody, who is saying that they received their information from "..the street..." THE STREET...PEOPLE!!! I did not know when THE STREET became the viable place to receive information." (8/20/99)

When the Scribbler responded, Johnson wrote, "Where did you get this from? And who and/or what is this DISH??? I am surprised to see my comments were misrepresented. Now I know how politicians feel. I would like to know who or what you all are, and I want to be given the opportunity to correct what you all have erroneously and incompletely stated." (8/27/99)

The DISH's response: "Where did I get what from? Your comments? They were sent to me. An "urban leader" received them and thought your remarks would be of interest to me, since they specifically concerned comments appearing in The DISH. I am the Dot in Dot's Information Service Hotline. Since you did not send me a copy, I am especially grateful to that "urban leader" who corrected the glaring oversight. When I harshly criticize someone or something, I generally make sure they get a copy and a chance to respond. It is not nice to talk about people behind their backs; this is why, The DISH is known for being up-front in its criticism. If it is misplaced, we publish a retraction based on more accurate information.

Please by all means feel free to offer comments to correct any misrepresentation you feel has occurred. Give me 250 words or less, and I will publish them in The DISH. Thanks, Dot." Needless to say, M. Brandon Johnson has not been heard from again.

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"Does CNN avoid black news? There are three possibilities. First, CNN does not know real news, so they keep showing the same bad stories over and over. Second, CNN knows what real news is, which is why they work so hard to avoid covering it; or, everyone at CNN has their head up the same ass, so they all see the same shit." A CNN viewer- More from the Mailbox

DISHing It Up Hot!

In 1998, The DISH questioned the manner in which the College Board Testing Service looked at test scores to say something useful about the direction in which a school system is headed. The DISH found that by looking at the average of the sum of the changes in the individual school scores, a better feel for the system's direction is achieved. Dr. Tom O'Rourke of the College Board Testing Service thought the concept interesting and promised to get back with me. Never heard from the man again. He probably went on to do bigger and better things with an idea that makes intuitive and mathematical sense.

This year, the Atlanta Journal Constitution embraced the stat, which is included in the local school systems' SAT scores published on 9/2/99. No such stat appeared in its publication of the scores a year earlier, 9/2/98 (JC5). While this way of looking at SAT data originated with The DISH, it received no recognition or compensation for providing the College Board with a logical way of looking at system performance.

Using this now mainstream way of looking at school systems, The DISH contended last year that DeKalb actually experienced a 3-point decline based on its 1997-1998 SAT scores, instead of the 1-point gain it claimed. (See The DISH v1no40). DeKalb officials contend the 1-point gain is a number provided by the College Board Testing Service; if it is incorrect, "talk to the Board," which is what The DISH did in speaking with Dr. O'Rourke last year. More important, with an 8-point decline this year, DeKalb's test scores experienced a two-year 11-point dip. (** The DISH average Fig. 1).

Slipping school scores suggest the system is failing, a situation that should cause alarm among parents and school administrators. Georgia's state school Superintendent Linda Schrenko's solution to declining SAT scores is for fewer students to take the test. This narrow perceptive neglects the principle role of public education, which is to insure all children are equipped to function as intelligent cogs in a civilized society. If SAT is the standard measurement of intelligence being used by our society, public education should be aimed at providing all public school students with the wherewithal to pass it. Doing less does public school children and society a grave disservice.

More DISHing It Up Hot!

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