Thursday, November 3, 2011

Racism: A History
A documentary which is exploring the impact of racism on a global scale, as part of the season of programmes marking the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery. Beginning by assessing the implications of the relationship between Europe, Africa and the Americas in the 15th century, it considers how racist ideas and practices developed in key religious and secular institutions, and how they showed up in writings by European philosophers Aristotle and Immanuel Kant.
Looking at Scientific Racism, invented during the 19th century, an ideology that drew on now discredited practices such as phrenology and provided an ideological justification for racism and slavery. These theories ultimately led to eugenics and Nazi racial policies of the master race. Some upsetting scenes.
The third and final episode of Racism: A History examines the impact of racism in the 20th Century। By 1900, European colonial expansion had reached deep into the heart of Africa। Under the rule of King Leopold II, The Belgian Congo was turned into a vast rubber plantation. Men, women and children who failed to gather their latex quotas would have their limbs dismembered. The country became the scene of one of the century’s greatest racial genocides, as an estimated 10 million Africans perished under colonial rule. Contains scenes which some viewers may find disturbing.
The doc indicates that Europe has hidden this aspect of her history creating the idea that the Jewish Holocaust was some sort of ghost of European history, but truly the Jewish Holocaust was a natural progression in the marred history of European colonization, dehumanizing and murdering of ethnic peoples around the world.
The first Holocaust of the 19th Century happened to the Africans who had made Tasmania their home for 10,000 years until white, British, settlers lusted after the land. Watch the doc to learn the rest of the story.


Tuesday, October 25, 2011

White Is Right...?

This is a poingent perespective on the need of white people to uphold the Confederate Flag! A Good read!

 
 

Sent to you by Dora via Google Reader:

 
 

via Why Am I Not Surprised? by noreply@blogger.com (Changeseeker) on 10/11/11

A couple of weeks ago, I saw an article about another White Southerner with a really bad case of "Let-Me-Show-My-Ass-In-Public-Over-My-So-Called-White-Heritage." Apparently, Annie Chambers Caddell feels so strongly about her "White heritage" she has to hang a big Confederate flag in front of her house in a -- get this -- Black neighborhood in Summerville, South Carolina.

Yeah.

And it gets weirder than that.

She has a bunch of drawings on her wall of famous Black men, including among others, Tupac Shakur and Barack Obama (one can only wonder how she made her list of who to...er...hang). And she told a British journalist that she sees no contradiction in the fact that she hung both the pictures and the flag.

I can't imagine why she moved into a Black neighborhood last year with her White-is-right perspective. Maybe somebody left her the house in a will. Maybe she just couldn't wait any longer for her fifteen minutes of fame so she hung the flag a month after she got there. Maybe she's crazy as a bedbug.

But one thing I know for sure: she uses the words "White heritage" without the foggiest clue what they mean. Because if she thought about it, she'd think again.

In his essay entitled "Failing to See", Harlon Dalton tells us that "ethnicity is the bearer of culture," but that Whiteness isn't an ethnicity. It's just a "race" -- what I call "the socially-constructed, political notion of race." Unlike an ethnicity, it's not linked to location or language or tradition. But it's damned sure historical and that's what I want to focus on in this post.

Annie Caddell says with a wistful note in her voice that she wishes she could go back and see what it was really like back in the day when her Southern heritage was functioning the way it was described to her as a child. Now, I don't know exactly what she means by that, of course, but I know the history of "White" people.

Let's start with old Chris Columbus, shall we? I mean, since yesterday was "Columbus Day" and all, shouldn't we talk about who he was, even though, of course, he never really touched the soil of what is now "America" and died convinced he'd landed in India rather than the Caribbean Islands?

According to his ship's log (as copied by Bartholomew Las Casas, one of his companions), on his first voyage, Chris kidnapped a dozen or so natives to take back to Spain as proof that he needed to return -- with 1,200 to 1,500 soldiers, cannons, crossbows, guns, cavalry and attack dogs. Obviously, a diplomatic mission.

In 1493, they arrived in what is today Haiti, demanding food, gold, cotton and anything else the natives had. To make sure the natives cooperated, Chris and his buddies -- all stand-up examples of White heritage -- would cut off the ears or noses of those who resisted, sending them back to their people as a warning. But it doesn't stop there.

Chris liked to reward his merry band with native women to rape. Nine and ten-year-olds were particularly popular (and this is according to the ship's log, remember). Overall and over time, he was personally responsible for sending about five thousand indigenous Caribbeans back to Europe as slaves. Wotta guy. Certainly the kind of man we'd want to celebrate every year with a federal holiday and teach our children commemorative poems about.

And lest we think that the natives were just "primitives" who don't warrant our sympathy (after all, if Christopher Columbus hadn't done it, somebody White would have, right?), consider that Tiwanaku, Bolivia, had 115,000 residents in 1000 A.D., a population Paris wouldn't reach for another five hundred years. In fact, when Columbus landed in the "New World," there were 25 million people living in Mexico and only 10 million in Spain and Portugal combined, but within a few years of the arrival of the White man, 95% of the indigenous population of the Western Hemisphere was dead.  Beginning to get my drift?

By the mid-1700's, when Montesquieu wrote The Spirit of the Laws (the book that laid the groundwork for our august -- and White Supremacist -- legal system), he said of the Africans that Europe so wanted to exploit to accumulate capital: "It is hardly to be believed that God, who is a wise being, should place a soul...in such a black, ugly body...It is impossible for us to suppose these creatures to be men."

It was this mindset, in fact, that caused Thomas Jefferson to write a few decades later, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever...the Almighty has no attributes which can take sides with us [slaveholders] in such a contest." Yet those who tout their "White heritage" invariably wrap their racist ideology in an American (or Confederate) flag while singing songs about having God on their side. And in truth, they may not be wrong. Their God may be on their side. After all, the Baptist church in the U.S. South held more than 125,000 slaves which they rented out to make money and the Catholic church held in bondage far more than that.

It was "Christian" nations, remember, that established empires on the back of the slave trade -- an enterprise responsible for the deaths of an estimated thirty million Africans (more than twice the number of deaths attributed to Adolph Hitler who causes shudders at every mention of his name, except among those most committed to White Supremacy). In all fairness to the principles and practices of Christianity, however, I would agree with Frederick Douglass when he wrote: "[B]etween the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference -- so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt and wicked...I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason but the most deceitful one for calling the religion of this land Christianity."

"I am filled with unutterable loathing," he continues, "when I contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies which everywhere surround me...The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. The man who robs me of my earnings...meets me as a class-leader on Sunday morning to show me the way of life and the path of salvation."

And it is not vastly different today. Church-goers listen to sermons about loving their fellow humans as if people of color are not human, yet continue to let the criminal not-just, not-legal system brutalize men and women of color who, it is reasoned, must have done something wrong or they wouldn't be arrested/arraigned/imprisoned/beaten/or shot forty times by cops. The fact that 500 Black men -- and only 8 White men -- were arrested in New Orleans in 2009 doesn't even raise most White folks' eyebrows. They're busy pretending to be asleep and have drunk the kool-aid of their own "superiority" so long ago now that they honestly claim to be "beyond racism."

Despite the fact that the Ku Klux Klan has used the Christian symbol of the cross to terrify Black citizens of this country for more than one hundred years, I've never heard of a single incident where a Christian has protested this use.  When Martin Luther King, Jr., went to jail in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, White Christian ministers castigated him for bringing unrest and being a bad example until King asked them why they weren't there with him fighting injustice against their fellow Christians.  Subsequently, King referred to Sunday mornings as the most segregated hour in America.

Well-meaning White people who profess Chrisitianity claim not to be racist, but Jane Elliott reminds us that "it's not the intent; it's the impact."  And I would suggest, with the late Eldridge Cleaver, that "if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem."

Far too many White people in the United States in 2011 ignore or even laugh at racist jokes, minimize what Blacks tell us about their experience of life, always think we got the job because we deserved it, always suspect Blacks got hired because somebody had to hire them, walk on eggshells around racist family members so as not to "offend" them, date and marry racists as if such an attitude is not really that big a problem, and don't reach out to make a real difference because we're too busy, too uncomfortable, too unclear about what to do, too few, and too...racist?

The fact is that White people in America still have the power, as well as the power to hold onto it.  And typical of the violence they used to take over the world, they're quick to use it still not only to maim or kill, but to intimidate and terrify.  And the Confederate flag stands for the addle-pated idea that White is right and should be supreme; that holding people of color in bondage is something to be remembered fondly; that an attempt was once made to shatter this nation; and that those who made the attempt were whipped on the field of battle by the Black men they had brutalized.  Is that something to be proud of or celebrate, Annie?  I wouldn't think so.

 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 

Monday, October 24, 2011

Welcome to the Houston Public Library: Linking YOU to the World

Welcome to the Houston Public Library: Linking YOU to the World
This event will be presented by the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. It takes place on Saturday, October 29th from 10-4 at Central Library in Houston, TX, 500 McKinny Street.

ave Our African American Treasures

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Resources

Resources

The attachment is a list of resources regarding the abuses women are facing in some parts of the world. You may ask, why should you care? Well, you should care because women who are abused, oppressed and treated inhumanly are women who do not get to give their gifts, intelligence and creativity to humanity, so in oppressing these women, the whole of humanity is oppressed, and abused and denied what they bring to humanity.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

No Financial Education ? Watch Out for the Sucker Punch.

No Financial Education ? Watch Out for the Sucker Punch.: <p>It’s not everyday that you see drops like this in gold and silver. In fact, it’s been 5 years and 24 years respectively.</p>
<p>The problem with history is that most of us weren’t around when it happened, or at least we weren’t paying much attention. So, in order to know and understand the implications of history, we have to study. We have to increase our financial education.</p>

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Friday, August 12, 2011

Blogs | Black America Web

Blogs | Black America Web

Every time she opened her mouth, the truth fell out!
Every time she spoke, I was healed a little more.
I was awe struck and inspired! I thought, "She's a ROCK STAR!"
When she disappeared from public discourse, altogether, I was beyond disappointed! Who I'm talking about you might ask; none other than the highly intellectual and spiritual Dr. Robin Smith. She was formally the in house psychologist for The Oprah Winfery Show. In case you missed her truth like I did, I found her. Read the attached article from Black America Web to find out how she has been/is inspiring women to STAND UP and be healed so that they can be the whole people they were created to be!

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Shadow and Act | Cinema of the African Diaspora

Shadow and Act | Cinema of the African Diaspora

A new documentary film is coming out this fall! It's regarding how dark skin people, especially women, are treated in America and the world at large. Historically, this racial bias is a direct result of the African Slave Trade that occurred in America in the seventeenth century. Around the world, Europeans have historically and traditionally imbued the human race with this existing skin color prejudice. From America to Africa to India to South America to Mexico, dark skin women are daily slapped in the face with this peril, treated like outcast and generally ignored in public discourse.

What you will learn is that to be light skin and black is to be black and as a result, you endure the prejudices that go along with that, but to be dark skin and black is to be "black and ugly" and there is a wholly different set of hurdles that one has to jumped-stigmas, prejudices, stereotypes, bigotry and overall hatreds (in addition to the ones experienced by lighter skin blacks) that must be endure and overcome only to be on the same level with lighter skin counterparts.

Finally, this group of black people have been given a voice, and for the sake of humanity, The world should listen!

Shadow and Act | Cinema of the African Diaspora

Shadow and Act | Cinema of the African Diaspora

This is a preview of another Tyler Perry flick!

Shadow and Act | Cinema of the African Diaspora

Shadow and Act | Cinema of the African Diaspora

Shadow and Act | Cinema of the African Diaspora

Shadow and Act | Cinema of the African Diaspora

This is a new movie coming out. It's about a black British woman struggling to make it in the world or acting! So what else is new. When isn't a black woman struggling in acting- in America or across the pond.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Carol’s Daughter Inks Major Promo Deal With Cassie, Solange and Selita Ebanks « Clutch Magazine#comments#comments#comments#comments

Carol’s Daughter Inks Major Promo Deal With Cassie, Solange and Selita Ebanks « Clutch Magazine#comments#comments#comments#comments
Question?

Why do blacks in business often seek to never deivate from the norm-employing the same practices as the mainstream (whites) when they are in positions of power? In terms of the marketing of their products and the use of the inclusion/exclusion model, African-Americans generally ascribe to the America way of doing and being.

In essence, African-American people are excluded from marketing campagins, especially those with darker skin. On the other hand, white people are the total focus and are totally included in the American way of doing and being.

The Whiter,
The Lighter,
The Better.

This is the American way-tradition.
This is America's history-speaking!

Carol's Daughter owner Lisa Price promotes the idea that her products are for all African-Americans, yet she bows to the same notion as mainstream America by never using dark-skinned spokes models. Recently she unveiled her new crew of representatives: Solonge Knowles, Selita Eubanks and Cassie. Yeah! they have different hair textures, but that is where the diveserity ends; outside of the fact that they are different humans. I am still looking for more diversity! What's that about??? Realizing the lack of shades in her marketing campagins a few years back, I put the brakes on as far as my support is concerned. I must say that I expect more from an African-American woman. I expect to see the rainbow of African-American women represented. I have the right to do so when I am spending my money and spreading the word about a product. Honestly, I am dark, and I tell friends and associates dark/light about Carol's Daughter. Most of them had no clue, before me, and I had been using Carol's Daughter for two years + prior to my informing them.

Question???

Is it that light-skinned blacks think the darker ones are stupid and can 't see what they are doing? Do they like to assume that we do not exist? Do they think that we, too, are represented by the light-skinned blacks they keep throwing in our faces? Do they think we are going to buy anyway because we don't have any other choices?

What do they think?

Perhaps it is the idea that Tom Burrell discusses in his book.

Maybe they are just! Brainwashed!

Friday, April 15, 2011

Senate panel approves bill for teacher pay cuts, furloughs, layoffs | Texas Legislature News - News for Dallas, Texas - The Dallas Morning News

Senate panel approves bill for teacher pay cuts, furloughs, layoffs Texas Legislature News - News for Dallas, Texas - The Dallas Morning News Essentially Texas is saying "F... You to its teachers!" Maybe it is time for the teachers to echo the same sentiment! Teachers are already underpaid and overworked. How much lower can the pay and benefits get? It will be interesting to hear what the teachers' unions have to say about this new legislation.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

UPTOWN Magazine » Kevin Powell’s Open Letter to Chris Brown

UPTOWN Magazine » Kevin Powell’s Open Letter to Chris Brown

In light of Chris Brown's incident at Good Morning America-the public blacklash and the complete demonization of Chris Brown, Kevin Powell reached out addressing this Open Letter to Chris Brown. It is full of compassion and humanity. It is absolutely beautiful! I commend Kevin Powell for his efforts and connetion to his own humanity because that's what it takes to help heal another human soul.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Ava DuVernay, Salli Richardson-Whitfield & Omari Hardwick Talk To Don Lemon On CNN

Ava DuVernay, Salli Richardson-Whitfield & Omari Hardwick Talk To Don Lemon On CNN

The writer/producer and actors discuss the new film "I Will Follow" with Don Lemon of CNN.

Review – “I Will Follow” (A Deeply Personal, Reflective Chamber Drama)

Review – “I Will Follow” (A Deeply Personal, Reflective Chamber Drama)

This is in theaters now!

Watch Now – “400 Years Without A Comb” A Documentary (That Black Hair Thing…)

Watch Now – “400 Years Without A Comb” A Documentary (That Black Hair Thing…)

This is a 6 part documentary that explores the inferior seed planted in African-Americans in the Americas 400 years ago. The exploration treatment is viewed through the object of the comb which was carved with great skill and care in Africa. This is part 1 of 6. The other 5 parts are on YouTube for your viewing pleasure.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Strangers No More Movie Trailer - Bialik Rogozin School

Oscar Win Highlights Plight of Africans in Israel

Oscar Win Highlights Plight of Africans in Israel

It seems that Isreal is the refuge of choice for many Africans escaping political persercution, poverty and death. Yet, the Israeli government is not having it. Currently, the government is in the process of deporting African migrants. In addition, they are expelling Asians whoes work visas have expired. The heartbreaker is that hundreds of children are on the list to be expelled. These African children speak Hebrew and have known no other life. At the 2011 Oscars, the plight of these African Immagrints was featured in the documentary film, "Strangers No More." This documentary represented Isreal and won the Oscar! Film makers and children advocates in Isreal are hoping the win will inspire the government to relax their rules and allow the immigrant children to remain in Isreal. In facet, Yonathan Shaham of the "Israeli Children" Foundation, said, "If they are good enough to represent Israel at the Oscars, they are good enough to remain part of the country." Let's hope the Israeli goverment can conjure up the same sentiment for the children. Prehaps they will even rise to be what God orginally called them to be. The light of the wold and a refuge for all nations!

Abortion Activists Portray Black Women as Killers

Abortion Activists Portray Black Women as Killers

Once again black women are under fire! It's so strange that these groups carry on about abortion as if they really care about what happens to black babies. I know that's not the truth! It's merely a political ploy. You can believe that the people behind this massive campagin to paint black women as killers and murders of their own children are the same people, members of the TEA PARTY and the REPUBLICAN PARTY, who protested UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE and took guns to that party! These are the people who want to pull funding from all kinds of social programs. These are the people who do not want and equal education for all children especially if their taxes have to pay for it. These are the people who are complete RACIST-spitting on black congressmen, calling President Obama everything but a child of God and his family too. These are the people who target attack black women (people) in the various media outlets, on jobs and in the streets daily. Do you really think they care about black babies? This is just another effort by the racist mainstream to demonize women with black skin.

How the middle class became the underclass

How the middle class became the underclass

It seems as it alway is, THE RICH GET RICHER AND THE POOR GETS POORER AND THE MIDDLE CLASS GETS SQUEEZED TO DEATH! This article from CNN says just that. While the top 1% wages and incomes has risen 33%, the middle class's wages remains stagnet and has not change much since the 1080's. The only change has been a slight decrease in income for the middle class. It seems that this is due to LABOR UNIONS AND COLLECTIVE BARGINING. The decrease in union membership is just one factor in the decrease or stagnation of the Middle Class's wages. Read to find out about what's really going on!

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Watch All 8 Episodes Of Jaleel White’s Web Series “Fake It Till You Make It”

Watch All 8 Episodes Of Jaleel White’s Web Series “Fake It Till You Make It”

This is Jaleel Whites' entire series "Fake It Till You Make It".

Preview – “with WINGS and ROOTS” (A Tale Of Culture & Identity In 2 Cities)

Preview – “with WINGS and ROOTS” (A Tale Of Culture & Identity In 2 Cities)


This is truly a Tale of Two Cities: It is the tale of Immigrants in The U.S.A and Germany and how their stories parallel. If you care to be informed regarding the situations, take a look at the 4 minutes trailer from Shadow and Act.com.

Friday, February 11, 2011

When I Rise | Documentary on Barbara Smith Conrad | Independent Lens | PBS

When I Rise Documentary on Barbara Smith Conrad Independent Lens PBS

This is a Documentary film about Barbara Smith Conrad. Raised in the gully of the Jim Crow South, she was one of the first African-Americans to attend the University of Texas. As a music major, she was a talent that could not be denied. As a result Barbara was asked to sing the romantic lead in the campus rendition of Dido and Aeneas-oppsite a white male. The casting set-off a fire storm of racial controversy that ended up in the Texas state legislature. Admist the pressure from numerous groups who were fighting for the so-called rights of white people, Barbara was asked, by the Dean of the School of Fine Arts, to step down. The role was assumed by a white female. In the end, Barbara Smith Conrad became a world renowned and "internationally celebrated mezzo-soprano" despite the racism and racial hatred she had to endure. Today, she retruns to Austin, Texas and The University of Texas yearly to teach master classes.