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Volume
9 Issue9…Dedicated to the Dialogue on
Race…March 3, 2006
Intuit’s Vibe
I Call to My Brothers!!!
By Yohannes Sharriff
From metro ghettos to the bloody Congo,
I call to my brothers!
On the wind with Mandela, Biko,
Dubois, Malcolm, Martin and Nat,
I recognize the shame.
Now, truth’s pain makes me scream
With a voice of reason.
Please hear my impassioned plea.
Shed the shackles of an imprisoned
mind.
Stand freely!
Let your ascension honor the family’s
sacrifice.
For centuries, ancestors gave their
lives
To save their seeds from the same fate.
History has been laid; do not be afraid
Turn the page. Gain your conscious state;
Define your own fate!
Do not accept the reflected
Negative self-image of the European
deviant!
Why hesitate to find strength in aware
intellect?
Let your life represent the sheer
magnitude,
The miracle of your existence!
We have faced seas of time and space,
Rising to swallow us in an endless tide
of sorrow.
While the cracker’s complexion of
culture
Would have crumbled under the pressure
We persevere! Riders of the storm
Finding those dim shallow waters
Of Anglo-Saxon insecurity and
inadequacy
Only lap against our base.
Our summits and peaks
Continually caress infinite possibility.
Comprehend this fact:
Your determined power radiates from
within your skin.
MELANIN is a gift!
Reveal the magnificence of your natural
African attributes,
Emancipating spirit! Unite under this truth:
The beauty we possess and express are
without bounds.
The eternal force is purely exemplified
In children we bring forth. The evolution is our seed
They inherit the richest culture and
most inspiring legacy
That has ever been witnessed.
Even the heavens quake with their
infant cries.
Our BEAUTIFUL BLACK BABIES
Embody such divine energy.
Mary’s son must have raised a BLACK
fist!
Campbell’s Nickels
By Dot
Former Atlanta Mayor Bill
(1994-2002) is on trial for racketeering, bribery and fraud. Federal prosecutors
allege Campbell ran City Hall like a criminal enterprise by accepting thousands
of dollars from contractors seeking to do business with the city and using
campaign funds for personal expenses. Dozens of witnesses claim Campbell took
payoffs, junkets with girlfriends to casinos and either failed or delayed
reporting income from speeches.
Former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, who was called as a character witness,
likened Campbell's ordeal to the double-homicide murder trial of O. J. Simpson.
A high-profile black out of touch with reality on the ground, Young is quoted
as saying, "No one who's black thinks he's guilty"
In the late 1990's, I wrote several opinion pieces (Empowerment
Zones: Where's the Money and Campbell's Nickels) that were less than complimentary
with regard to Bill Campbell. Campbell's administration failed Atlanta's
majority black communities that put him in office. A high-profile black,
Campbell approached elective office from a "what's in it for me"
perspective. While he netted a few nickels, the chief beneficiaries of
Campbell's two terms in office were the white contractors that made millions.
Harold George Belafonte, Jr.
Harold
George Belafonte, Jr. was born in Harlem, New York on March 1, 1927. A cook in
the British Navy, Belafonte's father, Harold George, Sr. came to the United
States of America from Martinique. His mother, a housekeeper and dressmaker,
Malvine Belafonte, came from Jamaica.
At
age eight, Harry and his brother Dennis were sent to boarding school in
Jamaica, where he remained until high school. Until age seventeen, he attended
George Washington High School, where he was a member of the track team. He
dropped out of school and joined the US Navy.
At
the end of his military service (1945), Belafonte returned to New York City and
took a job in maintenance. He received tickets to a play as a tip, used them
and became enthralled with theater. After doing volunteer work as a stagehand
with the American Negro Theater (ANT), Belafonte decided to pursue an acting
career. He studied and performed with the ANT and landed a singing role in a
play. Belafonte went on to sing jazz and pop songs professionally in
nightclubs.
Belafonte
studied black folk music, as well as music from his Caribbean heritage and
produced his first album, Calypso, which sold more than a million copies and
started a calypso craze in the USA. In 1954, he landed a role in the all-black
movie "Carmen Jones." Belafonte became the first black American
television producer; he won an Emmy for "Tonight with Harry
Belafonte."
Belafonte
won a Tony for John Murray Anderson's Almanac (1954), a Kennedy Center Honor
(1989) and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6721 Hollywood Blvd.
Belafonte's films and acting credits include: Bright Road (1953), Island in the
Sun (1957), Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), The World, the Flesh and the Devil
(1959), Buck and the Preacher (1972), Uptown Saturday Night (1974), We Are the
World (1985), The Player (1992), Prêt-à-Porter (1994), White Man's Burden
(1995), Kansas City (1996), Swing Vote (1999), Fidel (2001) and Tanner on
Tanner (2004)
Having
experienced Jim Crow segregation first-hand, Belafonte has long played a role
in the removal of racial barriers. Active in the civil rights movement,
Belafonte has helped people worldwide. In 1985, he produced and sang the
Grammy-winning song "We Are the World." Proceeds from the song
benefited starving people in Ethiopia. Two years later, he became the goodwill
ambassador for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). In 1988, the Peace
Corps gave him its Leader for Peace Award. Twenty percent of his income goes to
the Belafonte Foundation of Music and Art, which helps young black people study
for careers in the arts. He also heads a group called the Urban Peace Movement.
Belafonte
produced a five-CD set called The Long Road to Freedom: An Anthology of Black
Music, which features black American music and music from Africa dating back to
the early 1600s. Belafonte received the National Medal of the Arts (1994) and
the Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement (2000). Belafonte remains active in
entertainment and works for humanitarian causes.
An
outspoken advocate for peace, Belafonte has frequently made news of late for
his pointed criticism of US imperialism under George W. Bush. His criticism
extended to Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, two high
profile Bush administration blacks that Belafonte characterized as slaves out to
please their master.
Reflections :
The Chisholm Trail
By
John Burl Smith
Saturday (2-25-06), like millions
of people around the world, I watched the 7th annual State of Black
America presented by Tavis Smiley on C-SPAN. This year's event featured an impassioned
and eloquent statement by elder statesman Harry Belafonte and an equally fiery
and execrable condemnation of the US for it treatment of black people by the
Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan. However, what made the State of Black
America symposium remarkable this year was it went beyond rhetoric and offered
a plan called The Covenant With Black America to address issues the
confab raised.
The last time such a bold strategy was put forth was in 1971 at the National
Black Political Convention held in Gary, Indiana. Frustrated with Democrats
following the 1968 convention and the way blacks were ignored during delegate
selection, blacks from across the US gathered in Gary. A grassroots movement
that grew out of the 1968 Poor Peoples' Campaign, blacks were determined to
change the status quo by developing a National Black Agenda to address issues
affecting blacks in the US.
Once the agenda was drafted and ratified, black leaders spent several months
holding town hall meetings. Afterwards, they realized, for the Black Agenda to
be taken seriously by politicians, it had to become a political document.
Consequently, US Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm entered the 1972 presidential
race and the Black Agenda became her platform. As a presidential candidate's platform,
the Black Agenda's issues forced Democrats to consider blacks in the delegate
selection process and include its issues in the national platform.
The campaign was organized from remnants of the Poor Peoples' Campaign. Lead by
Rev. Hosea Williams, the Poor Peoples' mule train started in Marks,
Mississippi. Meandering through the South, it looped back across the Mid-West
before finally arriving in Washington DC on the 4th of July. Like, the
aftermath of hurricane Katrina, the poor peoples' mule train exposed deep
pockets of poverty across the US and the government's refusal to deal with the
problem. Dubbing her campaign trek to Washington DC, "the Chisholm
Trail." Rep. Chisholm followed the same route as the mule train.
An organizer with both the Poor Peoples' and Rep. Shirley Chisholm Campaigns, I
see parallels between the Covenant and the Black Agenda. Making the Black
Agenda a political document as her platform, the Chisholm Trail came alive with
enthusiasm. Huge crowds came out to rallies and black people turned out to vote
in primaries across the South in huge numbers. A black woman running for
president gave them a reason to go to the polls.
Black Agenda issues forced all Democrats to talk about what Shirley talked
about and the media had to report it. Concepts such as full employment, early
childhood education, fair and open housing, greater support for black
businesses, student loans and summer jobs for youth found their way into
legislation after the campaign was over. If the Covenant with Black America is
going to have any real impact, it must become an instrument for action by
gathering the force of black votes behind its issues and driving them home at
the polls.
Disgruntled wants to know:
The very foundation
of US wealth was largely built on the institution of slavery. Moreover, cheap
labor, whether domestic, imported (legal and illegal immigration) or
outsourcing jobs to relatively low wage Third World countries, continues to aid
the creation of wealth in America. We can pretend or even attempt to dismiss
its significance in the creation of US wealth by saying the vast majority of US
citizens had no slaves, but the truth remains. Recently, the Church of England
apologized for its role in the slave trade. After watching several installments
of the PBS series "Slavery: The Making of America," one wonders, when
will the US apologize for its role in that dehumanizing institution?
Disgruntled says: The White House rejected the call for a
special counsel to investigate the warrantless wiretaps. Whether or not a
special counsel is appointed to examine the legal implications of the domestic
eavesdropping program should not be determined by the Bush administration. If
there is no congressional oversight, then the US may as well eliminate the
legislative branch of government; it is largely a waste of limited funds and
serves no useful purpose.
Disgruntled
feels: Classic! Divide and
conquer is an old effective strategy for a vastly outnumbered aggressor. An
excellent contemporary example is Iraq. US-coalition forces, which number less
than 150,000, cannot control 20 million people. Enter sectarian division and
conquest becomes possible. Divide and conquer! It is classic!
A Homecoming (Excerpt)
By James Carroll
America has had a difficult time reckoning with its racist past. Slavery was a
defining part of the cultures and economies out of which the nation grew, and
for most of its first century the ownership of humans by other humans was taken
for granted. A pseudo-Darwinian ranking by ''race" justified that order,
which stood on pillars of skin color and ethnic origin. When that blatant
structure of denigration was overthrown by the Civil War, implicit assumptions
of white supremacy remained so lodged in the national psyche that slavery
became a half remembered shadow, with heirs of slave-holders in contented
denial about its brutality and descendants of slaves locked in punishing
marginality by means of legal insult and economic short shrift.
Failure to reckon with slavery and its consequences is still the American
problem, which is manifest not only by the unyielding grip of white racism that
impossibly burdens one generation of African-Americans after another, but also
in the permanent cultural divide that so curses the nation. An inch below the
surface of every political debate, from questions of law-and-order to the
proper role of government to tax policy to educational reform, lies the hidden
reality of race - or, one should say, of white racism. North-South, Red
State-Blue State, Democrat-Republican, urban-suburban, local- cosmopolitan,
state-federal--these inhibiting dichotomies all split along the primordial
fracture of slavery and its aftermath.
As the mixed history of the affirmative action shows, even the most
well-intentioned attempts to deal with this central conundrum get sidetracked,
with the result, for example, that women and various immigrant groups defined
as ''minority" have made impressive strides toward equality, while
obstacles blocking such advancement for African-Americans, even after 50 years
of civil rights, remain largely in place.
This is the heart-rending background to last week's welcome good news. The
Smithsonian Institution announced the selection of a site for The National
Museum of African American History and Culture. It will stand on one of the
most prominent spots in the nation's capital, near the Washington Monument at
the corner of Constitution Avenue and 14th Street, the boulevard of entrance to
the city.
Most significantly, the museum will be on the National Mall....Over the years,
it was African-Americans who most forthrightly claimed the National Mall as
sanctuary for the nation, beginning in 1939 when 75,000 people showed up (the
largest Mall gathering ever until then) to hear Marian Anderson sing after she
had been barred from Constitution Hall for being black. The radio broadcast of
her concert was heard across the country, linking racial justice and that place
in the American mind. That was what brought the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
there in 1963, and it was why he aimed to return in 1968. Even without him that
spring, the many thousands of his Poor Peoples' Campaign showed up on the Mall,
claiming it as their Resurrection City. But, trekking through the dozens of
monuments and museums that line the National Mall today, you would not know any
of this. That will change now.
At the edge of the tidal basin, near the memorial to Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
ground will be broken this year for a stand-alone memorial to King, whose words
sacralized what Lincoln's gaze beholds. And across the Mall, at the gate of the
city, will rise the National Museum of African American History and Culture,
where the full truth of American history and culture can finally be told --
precisely because now it can include its African element. How we remember the
past determines the future. The brutality of slavery, bold resistance of
slaves, assumptions of white supremacy,
triumphs of civil rights, and injustices yet to be reckoned with -- the full
story told at last, completing the place that enshrines the national
conscience.
About Me:
Carroll's column regularly appears in the Boston Globe. Read "A
Homecoming" in its entirety at www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/02/06/ahomecoming/.
The Dark Knight-Batman/White
Ninja/Zorro has always been a young man of few words. Despite the brevity of
his comments, his remarks have been filled with mystery and meaning. Readers
over the years have been quite complimentary. As he slaved over his latest
school project on tessellation, he was asked for comments. With patience
stretched thin and without preamble, the Dark One/Ninja/Zorro declared, "I
give the Bat Cave to my sidekick-Boy Wonder!"
Mailbox:
E-Mails, Faxes and Telephone Calls
E-mail dcooper@freepress.com When Comedy
Central phenom Dave Chappelle walked away from a $50-million contract in May
2005, people wondered if he was having a nervous breakdown. Without
explanation, he resurfaced in Africa. On the "Oprah Winfrey Show," he
explained that he was doing a sketch involving a character in blackface; it
elicited an unnerving laugh from a white person on the set. He sensed something
was wrong. Chappelle told Winfrey, "I was doing sketches that were funny
but socially irresponsible. I felt I was deliberately being encouraged and I
was overwhelmed." Chappelle did not need a therapist so much as a ghost-buster.
He was being haunted by Jim Crow.
E-mail edgeofsports@zirin.com For
most sports fans, heaven would be to play in the National Football League
(NFL). We see money, fame and no expectations of social responsibility beyond
showing up on Sunday ready to play. In the mind of the fantasy sports fan, it
means a big house, a garage full of cars and the promise of sexual
gratification. The last thing any fan would believe - or want to believe - is
that racism is endemic to the culture of the NFL. That's the contention of NFL
veteran Anthony Prior, whose new book, "The Slave Side of Sunday,"
invokes an explosive metaphor to describe life in the NFL.
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