Reading is Fundamental

I was doing so well in getting all my books in order. I gave away a few. Re-arranged my bookshelf. I told everybody who had borrowed books from me over a year ago that they could consider them theirs.

And then I heard Dr. Dennis Kimbro in a radio interview and what he said was so powerful that I bought several copies of his books. The idea is to share, of course.

I may be going backwards. I now have at least fifteen books in my possession that I have yet to read.

I also need to find time to write books that I have outlines for in my head.

Remembering My Daddy

For the last four or five years I have thought about writing something about my Daddy on the day that is commonly called Father's Day. This is apparently the year, but the few words that I type will not come close to describing my father. But I will try.

My father was a self made man in the truest sense of the word. He grew up in one of the most racist counties in Texas. He became ill at 11 years old and missed a whole year of school. When it was time for him to go back to school, he told my grandmother he was not going to school. She said that he would either 1)go to school or 2)get a job. He got a job at 12 years old and worked continuously until he reached retirement age. At sixteen years old he headed out with my grandfather to a city which offered better opportunities. They immediately found work, and slept on someone's porch for awhile until they could save enough money to bring the rest of the family down. The rest consisted of my grandmother, 3 of my aunts, and two of my uncles.

When he was of age he was drafted by the Army into the Korean War. Not only did he get sick overseas, but he found out AFTER his discharge (everybody thought it best not to tell him when he was overseas) that one of his best friends was murdered by racists in my hometown because he was on the wrong side of town after hours. And he was only on that side of town because he was a cook at a cafe and was asked to work late. My Daddy was very bitter about this and spoke of it often.

My father was a man who gave it to you straight-no chaser. He did not take any mess. And He loved to dress. What's that phrase-cleaner than the board of health? That was my father. He spent more time getting ready to go ANYWHERE than almost anyone I have ever known.

He was an honest man, and as a result he always had keys to almost all his worksites. He once worked at a laundry and happened to be the only man. I called it his harem. I would often go to visit him after school and I could tell that he was really running the place. And even I could tell that there was some flirting going on. For all the years that he worked there all of my clothes were dry cleaned and starched. Even my blue jeans. They might have been old, but they were always clean and starched.

My Daddy loved to work with kids. He had softball and basketball teams that consisted of those boys who could not for whatever reason make the school teams. It was an ideal match, because they were a little rough around the edges as was my father. My father only had two girls and of course he wanted sons. I'm sure that these boys were the sons that he never had. Actually I know they were, because they were always at our house. And they called him what my sister and I called him-Dadee.

I might as well admit that because my father wanted a son, he allowed me to do lots of things he would have taught a son to do. He let me get away with a lot. Nothing illegal or immoral, of course. I dated some bad boys and dared them to cross the line because if they did "I would tell my Daddy." I learned how to drive at 14, and at 16 when I got my license he bought me a car. He had a cousin who could fix any car (this was before cars had computers) so he always bought used cars and fixed them up. When he asked me what color I wanted, I said pink and white. And I got it. It was only when I was in college that I realized he had outsmarted me. How? There was nowhere I could go in our small town where that pink and white car would not be recognized. It was the old school version of a GPS.

Even though my father did not finish junior high school, he was a very smart man. Almost all of my aunts and uncles were college educated and were in fact teachers, and many people probably thought my father was also. He never lied about it, but he just carried himself regally. When my sister and I both were away at college, the mayor of our city appointed him as a Recreation Center Supervisor. He was responsible for a brand new 20 acre, half million dollar facility. He had the power to hire and fire, and the facility was geared towards the young men and women he was previously working with for free. Unfortunately, with this new responsibilty came more paperwork, and from what I found out later he could not keep up with the paperwork. That would have been something my sis and I ordinarly would have assisted him with. It lasted for a few years and then I guess he was "demoted". He still got to work with the kids, but he was no longer the Center Supervisor.

As with a lot of African American men who had seen some of the horrors of the segregated south, my Daddy had some demons. When he was able to retire at 65, he did. He stopped working with kids (because they had become more problematic and disrespectful) and drank more and more. He became reclusive.

He died 18 years ago at age 69 and had all of his teeth, and not one strand of gray hair. He lived a full and mostly happy life. I completely lost it at his funeral and only was present for the very beginning scriptures. I had to be carried out and could never calm down enough to go back in.

Happy Father's Day, Dadee. Rest in Peace and power.

BROWN V BOARD OF EDUCATION - 60 YEARS LATER

The more things change the more they remain the same.

Sixty years ago on this day a United States Supreme Court case [Brown v. Board of Education, 347 US 483 (1954)]that was-and is-considered a landmark case was decided in favor of not only the six children pictured on the left but all other children in their legally defined class. This decision was an attempt to offer parity in terms of education to all little American children regardless of race, creed or color. There are many misconceptions about this case. The first fallacy is that the little children pictured reaped the fruit of their parents tenacity while they where still small children. To the contrary, Linda Brown (who is the most recognizable of the children, since her father was the lead plaintiff)was 9 years old when her parents first filed their case in State court in 1951-and lost. She was 13 years old-a teenager- by the time the Supreme Court case was finally decided in Brown II in 1955.

I am sure all the children and parents had seen a lot of ugly things in those ensuing years.

Some parents lost their jobs, some houses were burned, at least one church was burned, citizens of their towns considered them troublemakers. As a matter of fact, even one judge in South Carolina who argued against segregation was forced from the bench and after receiving death threats fled to the North even before the Supreme Court decision was handed down. At least one of the parents was also forced to leave his home.

Segregation, after all, was the law of the land. [Read PLESSY V FERGUSON 163 US 537 (1896)] Black children who attended substandard and underfunded schools in the 1950's was an acceptable form of business as usual in the United States. Another fallacy, then, was that the cases all originated in Kansas. In point of fact they represented at least 5 different parts of the country. Parents filed lawsuits in State courts in Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware and the District of Columbia. The cases were purposely combined by the Supreme Court so that whatever the subsequent decision, it would not be seen as a Southern issue. The last fallacy is the importance of the NAACP. Many attempt to minimize this importance, but those who know American history know that the NAACP in many important arenas made the country better. The NAACP was a truthteller, and sometimes the truth is not what people want to hear. With very few resources but with great and passionate lawyers, the NAACP successfully argued the case before the Supreme Court and won with a unanimous decision. The opinion was pretty straightforward in it's distaste for segregated schools. It said that education is “the very foundation of good citizenship. To separate from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.” These words are a predictor of what followed in the subsequent years.

Many legal machinations were employed as a result of the 1955 Supreme Court case labeled Brown II that was supposed to give directions for implementing the 1954 case. Brown II used the phrase "all deliberate speed". The result was that many states gave no serious thought to integrating schools for 10 years or more. School segregation looked the same during this 10 year period: Underfunded, overcrowded, dilapidated infrastructure, were the status quo.

My own experience with Brown v Board was that I was in diapers when Linda Brown, et al originally filed their State lawsuit. I was in kindergarten when Brown v Board of Education decision came down. I was a freshman in junior high before I attended my first non-segregated school. In my town they integrated the older kids first. Seniors, then juniors, then sophomores, then freshmen. As much as I have always loved school, those were the worst 4 years of my educational life. We Black students could all see it was designed to be unpleasant. The school itself was huge compared to our little neighborhood school which housed all 12 grades. Despite those of us who were A and B students, Black students were usually assigned to the low achieving classes where students were tracked for non-college courses. Because I had many family members who taught at the segregated Black school in town, that tracking system was changed pretty quickly for me. We were never assigned to classes with any other Back students. We were never called on in class-even when we raised our hands. I remember writing a pretty good paper in high school, and I could see that my English teacher was impressed. He waited until class was almost over before handing me my paper and whispered to me that I wrote an outstanding paper. He also said if I was thinking about going to college I should major in journalism. Our principal (who I assume had a college degree from somewhere)would never say "Negro" - which was the word we preferred back then. It was always "nigra". And he always said it with a sinister smile. I have degrees from two HBCU's and have never felt the need to keep in touch with any of the white students who attended high school with me. I also have never felt any desire to attend class reunions.


60 years later, schools are re-segregating. Zero tolerance rules in schools result in many questionable expulsion of Black and brown children. Black and brown children are at risk for the school to prison pipeline. A report came out on the day of the 60th anniversary that "inner city youth" are at risk for something called "hood disease", which seems to be a form of PTSD for inner city children. The CDC says that maybe 30% of inner city youth are affected by this "disease" and not only does it make it difficult to learn, but it's like growing up in a war zone. The economic downturn resulted in many homeless families, and this includes children. A surprisingly large percentage of children who go to school now are homeless. Many neighborhood schools are in poverty just as much as the residents of the community. As a result they are lacking in resources to offer students a pleasant school experience. Basic courses are the rule-elective courses are the exception.

And then we have the the police commissioner in a small New Hampshire town who publicly called President Obama "that f--king n--ger". He admitted it, would not apologize, and said he would NOT resign. This would be distrubing at any time, but it is especially disturbing during a time when Black men and women are profiled and killed for perceived perceptions about who they are and what they are doing. By the POLICE.

While Brown was an important first step, it was only a step. Sadly, the country did not take the MOST important step in acknowledging the true meaning of segregation. That step involved telling the raw and real truth about America's relationship with it's Black citizens. Segregation-for Blacks in particular-was an answer to the Amendments passed after the South lost to the North. It is an answer to the period of Reconstruction immediately after that war. It is a statement by former slave owners that the slave will never have equal rights with the slave owners. Segregation is a statement of one's superiority that is not supported by facts either scientifically, morally, or spiritually. Brown, then, was never going to fully be succeessful as long as the systemic structures that undergirded segregation was still in place.

I often quote a proverb that has African roots:

Until the lion has his/her own storyteller, the hunter will always have the best part of the story.

More of us need to tell our stories. And it will not always be politically correct. Or male centered.

WHERE WE STAND: 72 YEARS POST-SLAVERY

I saw the last 30 minutes or so of an interesting documentary on WUGA-TV that was a summarization of Douglas A. Blackmon’s book Slavery by Another Name. (1) Since I first heard about Mr. Blackmon’s book I have always been impressed by his thoughtful and meticulous research. He documents an ugly part of American history which tells the story of Americans [mostly “free” Blacks] who were-in the early years of the 20th century-victims of involuntary servitude, exploitative labor arrangements, and peonage. They were picked up on minor charges and their labor was then sold to corporations, steel plants, and coal mines. Loitering was a common means for Black men (and others) to be imprisoned. By 1908 ‘convicts’ were not only rented to private industries and private farmers, but States began to use prisoners in their own endeavors. This was the beginning of chain gangs. This forced labor could be for any offense from sharecropping debt to general debt peonage.


Public schools in America are notorious for teaching HIStory, and not OUR story. For instance, there is no school system in America that teaches the real story of slavery in America. It was ruthless, heartless, demeaning, physically and mentally abusive, and calculatingly horrible in a Marquis de Sade kind of way. Slaves who arrived in America were immediately separated from their brothers and sisters who spoke the same dialect. Slaves were not taught the language of their slave owners and subsequently just picked up the language. Slaves were considered property-thus the three fifths rule. White plantation owners raped slave women repeatedly, fathered their children, and then raped their own daughters-and sons. While most slaves were forbidden to marry, those Black men and women still considered themselves family and struggled to stay together. They were often sold to different plantations-many times deliberately and diabolically so. Slaves were forbidden to learn to read and write, and the penalties for clandestinely doing so were either to be blinded or sold to another plantation - or death. The horrors of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe are more honestly taught than the horrors of American slavery.

What is commonly taught in American schools is that the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery in America. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mr. Blackmon does a very good job of documenting why this is not true. Post-1863/1865 slave owners found another way to obtain free labor to do the same tasks that slaves had done. The prison system was an ideal way to acquire free labor, and the combination of the 13th Amendment and the Black Codes which were enacted in many Southern states provided the mechanism.

Because many, many black men and women began to just disappear in the South at this time and ended up on chain gangs, it should be no surprise that this period was also the beginning of the mass migration of Black people from the South to the North. Living in the South was not safe for any Black man or woman, and those Blacks who remained in the South were courageous. The North was a temporary refuge, because over time it has been shown that it had it’s own landmines of danger for Blacks. Racism, hatred, and prejudice have no borders.

Two cases mentioned in the TV documentary and Douglas Blackmon’s book stand out for me-perhaps because I have some familiarity with the two states involved. The first is a 1921 case where a plantation owner/landowner in Jasper County Georgia and his Black farm boss were charged with murder in the death of a Black man who was forced by the owner to work against his will. There was also much evidence that at least 10 more Black men had been killed in the most gruesome ways possible by these same two men. Both were found guilty of murder and were given a life sentence by the jury. (The jury, by the way, asked for mercy for the plantation owner/landowner-after finding him guilty). Both the farm boss and the plantation owner/landowner died within ten years of their sentence. This case was important because the plantation owner/landowner was the first Southern white man since 1877 to be indicted for first degree murder of a Black man. It would not happen again until 1966. (2) (3)


On December 12, 1941 (almost eighty years after the ratification of the 13th Amendment),President Roosevelt, through his Attorney General, issued Circular No. 3591, which stated that the United States of America would aggressively prosecute any case of involuntary servitude or slavery. Within months of Circular 3591 a Texas man and his daughter were convicted of holding (and working) a man against his will for years. The father was sentenced to 4 years and his daughter was sentenced to 2 years by a Federal jury. They both served their time in Federal prison. Douglas Blackmon says-and I agree- that only then did slavery end. (4)


This blog entry is therefore a good news/bad news story. The good news is that men and women such as Douglas Blackmon continue to lift the shroud of secrecy off a very ugly chapter in American HIStory. The bad news is that even after the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th Amendment, and Circular 3591,on February 26,2012 a 17 year old Back teen [who did not have any arrests for any criminal activity] named Trayvon Martin was in a place he had every right to be and had money in his pocket. He went on a 7-11 run for snacks, and was killed by a 28 year old man named George Zimmerman [with a documented record of a violent past]. The reason: Trayvon Martin “looked suspicious and was up to no good.”

The more things change the more they remain the same.



NOTES:


(1) http://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/

(2) http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F60E1EFA3B5B1B7A93C5A9178FD85F458285F9

(3) http://law.jrank.org/pages/2820/John-S-Williams-Clyde-Manning-Trials-1921.html

(4) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120674498432473091.html



Revised 2.03.2013

2012 - GUNS, HATE, FEAR, HOODIES AND LOUD MUSIC

On December 21, 2012, Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President and CEO of the NRA, made his first public statement about gun violence in our schools since 20 children and 6 school personnel were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Not surprisingly, his solution calls for MORE guns, albeit by the GOOD guys. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” he said. He proposes that “qualified armed security” be placed in all our schools. This notion scares me, as I assume this armed security force will no doubt make the same mistakes as police officers, private security, and private citizens make who kill innocent people every week because they ‘thought’ someone had a gun or they ‘thought’ that someone was aggressively moving towards them. And how safe will our children be if there is a shootout in our schools between “the bad guy” and “the good guy”? Unfortunately, when bullets start flying they are not going to discriminate between the bad guy and innocent children, teachers, and parents who might be in the room. I am also worried because the security that is in many schools NOW are handcuffing and otherwise traumatizing children that are the same age as the 20 children murdered in Newtown, Connecticut.

Where will this “armed security” end? After all, we have had shootings in shopping malls, theaters, restaurants, churches, fast food establishments, office buildings, and gas stations, just to name a few locations. Is the solution to place armed security everywhere? Who determines who (other than police) is qualified to protect the citizenry with weapons? If someone qualifies with his/her weapon but belongs to one of the over 1, 018 hate groups as documented by the Southern Poverty Law Center would that disqualify him/her from being suitable for “qualified armed security” in our schools-or anywhere else? What will the criteria be for using the weapon? Will there be universal training? What are the penalties when an innocent person is killed?


The text of the Second Amendment reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” It was adopted 221 years ago, at a time when the United States was very wary of a standing army, but recognized the need for some sort of militia. The militia in 1791 was small and was expected to prevent a takeover by a standing army, so the people’s right to bear arms was a defense against both. I understand the relevance of this for 1791, but because we have a mammoth Military Industrial Complex in the 21st century, it doesn’t matter how many guns private citizens have, we would not win a fight with any standing army-especially our own. But I honor the Bill of Rights-including the Second Amendment-with the same reservation that I honor Section 1 of the Thirteenth Amendment: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” While the Thirteenth Amendment ON PAPER ended slavery, the Black Codes that were almost immediately established in each and every State guaranteed that every newly freed slave could easily be convicted of something somewhere on any given day.


But I don’t want to digress, because gun control is the topic right now. To quote Dr. Phil McGraw, “The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.“ As 2012 draws to a close, I find myself doing what I always do about this time every year: I critique what has happened in America over the past year. I try to look at events both separately AND in their totality, but a pattern always seems to develop. The re-election of President Barack H. Obama was certainly a highlight-if only because a majority of Americans decided to ignore the lies and negativity and instead sent a message to the 1% who took advantage of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision that FORWARD-and not backwards- is the direction America should go.


On a more troubling note, however, many extrajudicial killings occurred in 2012. These are those summary executions where a person is accused of a crime and is immediately killed by either police, private security personnel, or private citizens who act as judge, jury, and executioner. Common in other parts of the world, it is frightening to see these killings occurring more and more in the land of the free and home of the brave. The war on drugs and gangs has all too often become a war on young black men and women. This is not to dismiss black on black murders, for they certainly occur also. It is problematic when those who are paid to protect law abiding citizens carry out their own version of street justice. The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and the Malcolm X Solidarity Committee released a report mid-2012 entitled “Every 36 Hours: Report on the Extrajudicial Killing of 120 Black people” that alleges that police, security guards, or neighborhood watchmen kill a black man, woman, or child every 36 hours. MXGM call them “extrajudicial” because they happen without trial or any due process. These killings in 2012 include, for instance:


An unarmed 18 year old teen who was murdered after running into his house and being followed inside by a member of the Narcotics Task Force. Police falsely claimed that this teen was running away from them.


The murder of a 17 year old teen by a 28 year old neighborhood watch person as the teen was walking through a neighborhood he had every right to be in after buying skittles and iced tea at a nearby 7-11. The neighborhood watch person followed him and eventually shot and killed him because he thought the teen looked “suspicious.”


An unarmed 20 year old who fled from police who were investigating a party because alcohol was purportedly being served to underage party goers. This 20 year old hid on a neighbor’s back porch. The neighbor shot him in the chest and killed him. No charges filed, as the D.A. said the neighbor had the right to “defend his home”.


An unarmed 45 year old man who was involved in a car accident got into it with the State Trooper who arrived to investigate. The Trooper said the 45 year old attacked him with his dogs. The Trooper shot the man 3 times, killing him. The Trooper did not shoot the dogs.


A 24 year old unarmed man asked for a refund/or lower price on condoms at a store. The clerk refused, the 24 year old knocked over some merchandise, and the clerk shot and killed him. The clerk was charged with first degree murder.


After some sort of altercation, an 18 year old was running from the scene. A police captain chased him and shot him in the back. Witnesses say the 18 year old was surrendering when he was shot. The police captain was charged with manslaughter.


A 30 year old woman who had a diagnosed mental illness was beaten, held face down on her bed, and suffocated by police-who were initially called to the home where she lived by her concerned family members.


An 18 year old was having a heated conversation in front of his parent’s home while trying to protect his sister. He was killed by two security guards who pretended to be police officers. These guards left the apartment where they were being paid to patrol and unasked, went onto the 18 year old’s parent’s private property. They were arrested for impersonating police officers but were not charged with murder.


A 19 year old was killed by police based on the untruthful statement of a so-called victim who stated the 19 year old had stolen a laptop at gunpoint. There was definitely no gun and most likely no theft. The accuser was charged with manslaughter because “his false statement” led to the teen’s killing.


An 18 year old naked teen was shot and killed by police because he was acting bizarrely and they ‘thought’ he had a knife. Again - he was NAKED.


A 22 year old unarmed young woman was an innocent bystander and was shot in the head and killed by off duty police officer who angrily drove up to a group of people in an unmarked police vehicle.


A 27 year old unarmed man was “stealing” cobblestones from a public housing complex construction site. He saw a police officer and ran from the officer towards his mother’s building. Two officers chased him down and another veered onto the sidewalk and hit him. After six days in a coma,and handcuffed to a hospital bed, he died.


A 23 year old unarmed man was killed by a security officer who was working at a club and claimed the 23 year old tried to force his way in and reached for a gun. No gun was found. The security guard was charged with voluntary manslaughter.


An unarmed 27 year old man was shot and killed by a hotel security guard because the 27 year old and an unidentified woman were arguing with the guard. The security guard was charged with murder.


An unarmed 13 year old was shot and killed by a 75 year old man who accused the teen of stealing his guns. The teen was shot while denying the theft (he was in fact in school at the time of the theft) and with his hands in the air. The 75 year old was charged with first degree murder.


A strip club security guard shot and killed an unarmed 28 year old who was “rolling joints” in the parking lot. The 28 year old was shot 11 times and his friend was shot 4 times. The security guard said he “feared for his life.” He was charged with second degree murder.


A 17 year old teen was murdered while in an SUV with three friends. The murderer confronted the teens because he decided their music was too loud for his sensibilities. After shooting 8 or 9 times into the SUV because “he felt threatened” and killing the teen, the murderer left the scene to stay in a hotel for the night. He did not call police. At some later point the next morning, he drove over 150 miles to his home instead of immediately turning himself in to police. He has been charged with one count of first degree murder and three counts of attempted first degree murder.


Finally, in an online AP poll conducted with researchers from Stanford University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Chicago 2 or 3 months before the elections of November 2012, 51% of Americans expressed explicit anti-Black sentiments. There was little difference between Democrats, Republicans, or even Independents, by the way.


It is, of course, not just African Americans who are harmed when guns are in the hands of the wrong people. Hate, fear, xenophobia, and mental illness are equal opportunity threats. Too many mass killings have proven this in 2012:


A gunman killed seven people and wounded three in a shooting at a Christian college in California.


12 people were killed and 59 injured by a madman with many types of guns in a theater. He ambushed them as they had just settled into a theatre to watch a midnight screening of a Batman movie.


A gunman killed six people during Sunday services at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin before he was shot dead by police.


A gunman opened fire inside an Oregon shopping mall, killing two people and wounding one before killing himself.


11 days before Christmas, 20 children between the age of 6 and 7 were brutally and savagely murdered by a madman armed with numerous weapons. He also killed seven adults-including his mother, the principal of the elementary school where the carnage played out, the school psychologist, and four teachers. And as a coward would do, he killed himself when he heard first responders closing in on him.


Guns don’t kill people. People who have guns and problems kill people. If just one innocent child or adult can be saved by having tougher gun laws in the United States, I’M ALL IN.

MY RACIAL PROFILING STORY

Almost every Black person that I know has a racial profiling story. I do not think that means we make more excuses than everybody else-we might just be more attuned to games people play-out of necessity. Sometimes the games can be fairly innocuous. Occasionally, though, they can be deadly if we get into that “I’m an American just like everybody else and I have my rights” stance. Under certain circumstances, we will be DEAD right.

I cannot speak for everybody else who gives voice to their profiling story, but I for one do not speak from a place of hatred. I have a love for all humanity. Not only love for my people, but love for my fellow man. That is MY paradigm. Let me explain. I have always been an avid reader and as a pre-teen I wanted a library card. I grew up in a small town where you had to jump through hoops to get one: you had to get your parents to prove they were residents of the town for a good period of time and not transients. I also seem to recall that my uncle had to sign something as to the truth and certainty of my parents’ statement. Anyway, when I finally got my card I practically lived in the library. I was disappointed that the section on “Negro” history was pretty paltry, but I nonetheless read all of those in pretty short order. Plays, poems, biographies, even maps-I read them all. After that, I started reading autobiographies and the history of other people. I wept when I read The Autobiography of Anne Frank. This led me to read a lot of Jewish history. I then became curious about Biblical history. I read a lot of Irish history and discovered why Irishmen are such a proud people. I read a few autobiographies of Chinese, Japanese, and Italian citizens. So I get it. Every racial and cultural group has come from behind stories. Blacks do not have exclusivity on pain.

We Blacks, however, have stories that no one else wants to share either ownership or understanding. For instance, one of my favorite authors is Harper Lee. She wrote only one book and it won a Pulitzer Prize. The name of that book is To Kill a Mockingbird. She wrote movingly about the unfairness, mistreatment, and downright hatred of Black citizens by some whites in her small southern town in the 1930’s or 1940’s. It was actually considered pretty courageous for her to write such a book about her beloved South. When asked, however, in the 1960’s what she felt about The Freedom Rider’s riding buses across the South and exposing the malevolent nature of some whites, she said the Freedom Riders were wrong to expose the South like that and she much rather preferred the model set by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It seems as if she was disconnected from the fact that The Freedom Riders, Dr. Martin Luther King (and SNCC and The Black Panthers, by the way) were all connected. They were fighting the same battle, but just had different strategies.

But I digress.

This is my racial profiling story. Sometime around 1996 or 1997 my daughter, son in law, my three small grandchildren, my niece, her small daughter and myself were traveling from West to East and would have to pass through Alabama. We were in a rental van and were coming back from a wedding where my daughter’s step brother had gotten married. My daughter was in the wedding party as was my youngest grandson, who was either five or six at the time. It was a great wedding and we had a great time with old and newfound friends. We were anxious to get home because there were things we all had to do when we got home. My daughter worked for a Fortune 500 Company and she and my son in law were going to close on their first home the next day. The wedding was on a Saturday. We got on the road pretty early on Sunday morning, because both my daughter and I had to get back to work on Monday morning. My daughter had scheduled the closing during her lunch break on Monday. I worked for the Court system at the time and may have had a hearing scheduled before a judge that I had to attend.

We were also anxious to get back for another reason. My granddaughter has sickle cell anemia (as do all three of my grandchildren) and had felt sick all Sunday morning and we wanted to get home to her doctor just in case she went into crisis. We all just threw our luggage in the back of the van and all of our fancy wedding clothes on top of the luggage. My granddaughter had thrown up twice and was feeling pretty lousy. My son in law had braids at the time and for some reason he decided to undo them and just let his hair blow in the wind. I would not say he was speeding, but he was putting distance between him and the slower moving cars.

So of course we see the police lights behind us just as we were almost out of Alabama. Everybody knows that town, right? In the beginning there was just one police car. My son in law did not have a hat on so his hair was all over the place. He did not have his Drivers License on him (which I did not know) but he did have a valid license and he knew his number. And we were in a fancy van. The police officer searched him and then placed him in the back of the police car and called for backup. The problem? My son in law had the emergency traveling money and closing cost money-in cash-in his wallet. So of course the police officer was thinking: drug dealer. My daughter explained the situation and showed her ID. She also showed the bank withdrawal ticket from their account. I vouched for her story and showed my business card from my employment. My niece worked at a job for a Fortune 500 company also and she identified herself. I assume they asked my son in law about his employment, and would have discovered that he was in between jobs because he was the caretaker for my grandchildren because of their chronic illnesses and constant hospitalizations.

The officer called two other cars for backup: Another officer to help him search our vehicle and the K-9 officer with the drug dog. So we women and children are standing on the side of the road. The one man with us was in the back seat of the police car, and the police are pulling our wedding clothes out of the car trying to find. . .something. It was not that kind of trip and we were not that kind of people so I knew they would not find anything. We were exactly what the contents of the van showed we were: A family coming home from a fancy celebration. They pulled everything out of the car and the dog sniffed and sniffed and we stood on the side of the road for at least 45 minutes. We told the officer my granddaughter was ill and she in fact threw up again on the side of the road. After the extensive search, the police officer got my son in law out of his car and gave him all the money back. And left without a word. You could tell he was not pleased.

My son in law did not get a ticket for anything. The computer verified that he did have a valid Drivers License but did not even get a ticket for not having the license on him. He did not get a ticket for speeding. They knew the van was not stolen because they saw the paperwork. They knew that three of the occupants of the vehicle had very reputable employment. They saw the bridesmaid dress, the little fancy suit my grandson wore, the other fancy dresses, and the dress suit my son in law wore.

I call this racial profiling because if we did not get a ticket for anything, why were we stopped? Was it the hair thing? And when we proved who we were why were we detained for 45 minutes? And why can’t Black people have large amounts of cash without being suspected drug dealers? And if all three of us women were not observing every move the officers were making around our van, would ‘something” have mysteriously appeared in the vehicle that would justify taking the closing cost money? If the police had taken the closing cost money how long would it have taken my daughter and son in law to save for another house-and would my grandkids have missed out on the many years of happiness they enjoyed in the house their parents closed on the following Monday? If we said to the officers that we want to exercise our constitutional right to NOT allow you to search our vehicle would we all have been detained? What if there had been three Black men in the van without the women and children? Fortunately, racial profiling does not always end in violence, but there are always the ‘what ifs‘.

THE VOICE

I came across a quote when I was working on my dissertation proposal (where I queried why and how 900 plus souls died in Jonestown) that I could never wrap my head around. It went something like this: The purest form of healing is death. I understand it now. I understand it because I am a little older and wiser. More importantly, though, I understand it because Whitney Houston is no longer with us. I cannot even bring myself to say that she is dead, even though I know it is true because I just watched her HomeGoing service.

How can Whitney Houston be dead? Because we live in the 21st century and have access to almost everything a “celebrity” does, we have seen video of Whitney having fun and laughing and smiling and being her bold and beautiful self just 24 hours before she died. It is so surreal. What we do not know is what happened in the final minutes of her life. And while the toxicology report will eventually reveal that final puzzle piece, it will still not be as important as the sad truth that she is gone from among us.

It was obvious from the moment Whitney stepped onto the music scene that she was special. She had a big voice and a big personality. However, she never pretended to be anything other than what she was-a girl from New Jersey. The industry at some point did not think this was enough and repackaged her. It created an image that made her more mainstream, but in hindsight, at some point the image apparently took her further away from who she thought she was. She could wear sophisticated gowns and appear at A-list functions, but at heart she apparently just wanted to be Nippy from the neighborhood. She tried to remind us over and over in subtle and not so subtle ways that she was really just like us except God had given her an incredible and amazing instrument. The rebellion to reclaim herself took a dangerous turn and her subsequent struggles were played out before the world-once again thanks to 21st century technology. In trying to reclaim the part of her that made her ‘just Nippy’ she did not honor The Voice. And just as the Lord giveth, he also takes away.

The good news was that Whitney Houston grew up in the church and came from a praying family. And many of her fans were praying people. The further down the rabbit hole we fans thought she might be going, the more we prayed. And prayed. And because God hears the prayers of the righteous, she came to herself, just like the prodigal son in the Bible parable.

The Voice was slowly coming back, and we thought she had time. She had nothing to prove to anyone. She had already sold 200 million albums, received 6 Grammy Awards, and won 22 American Music Awards. She was the only artist with at least one Grammy, one Emmy, one MTV Video Music Award, one MTV Movie Award, one People’s Choice Award, and one Billboard Music Award. And she was so good as a singer that she was called simply The Voice. She could take the songs of other artists-songs that had languished in a pile of average sales-and make them number one on the charts. So we were willing to wait until she came all the way back. We thought she had time. After all, she was just 48 years old. Her fans only wanted her to be well-in mind, spirit, and body. We all fight demons and she was fighting hers.

But of course our time is not God’s time. And His ways are not our ways. He decided to heal her by calling her home. And God being God, he decided to call her home the day before one of the biggest award show for singers was to take place. An award show that she had once ruled. One minute she was Nippy. And the next minute she was dead. It is almost too much to comprehend.

We all thought she was winning the battle right up until February 11, 2012. On that day the Lord decided to give her the perfect peace that she needed. And she joined the ranks of so many other artists that have died in the last three and a half years-Vesta Williams, Heavy D, Etta James, Nick Ashford, David Peaston, Phoebe Snow, Clarence Clemons, Gladys Horton (lead singer for the Marvelettes), Gil Scott-Heron, Johnny Otis, Jessy Dixon, Lena Horne, Teddy Pendergrass, Michael Jackson, and Koko Taylor. And Don Cornelius is producing the show. Whitney Houston once again can hit those high notes. And her struggle to ‘just be Nippy’ is over.

PRAYER AND FOOTBALL

Let me start off by saying I believe in the power of prayer. I also believe that prayer in the NFL is not a bad thing. I have seen a lot of things happening in sports that are far, far worse than praying. I therefore have no problem with Tim Tebow or any other athlete praying. After all, there is even an athlete's prayer:


God, let me play well but fairly.
Help me to learn something that matters
once the game is over.
Let competition make me strong but never hostile.
Always let me help my opponent up.
Never catch me rejoicing in the adversity of others.
If I know victory, allow me to be happy; if I am denied, keep me from envy.
Remind me that sports are just games.
If through athletics I set an example,
let it be a good one.


What I do have a problem with is Tim Tebow being singled out by the media as being the inventor of prayer on the playing field. Professional football players have been praying long before Tebow was born. The first recorded prayer in the end zone was by Herb Lusk in 1977:



And yes, Tim Tebow prays














But so do many others. Michael Vick often gives thanks.



As did Deion Sanders during his playing days:




High school football players pray.






This cornerback was actually penalized for his praise. It was deemed to be "an illegal celebration."










There are almost 1700 National Football League players, and many of them prayer. They pray individually and as a team. They follow what Matthew 6:5-6 says, however, so we often don't see them.

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you."
























So kudos to Timmy and ALL athletes who understand

Philippians 4:13 --I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.

THE POWER OF LOVE

It is hard to receive a finger pointing in your direction for something that you did not do. As a Black American, I totally get that. But if we are to become change agents in the solution to the problem of racism, we must admit that it exists. And we must admit that it is systemic. In America, it is in our DNA and we have to unlearn it. American racism, then, is not about people individually-it is about the systems that have supported it for centuries. I like the definition of racism given by The National Council of Churches Racial Justice Working Group: "Racism is the intentional or unintentional use of power to isolate, separate, and exploit others....Racism is more than just a personal attitude; it is the institutionalized form of the attitude."

I think in order to take emotions off the table in dealing with racism we must be logical in our study of it. As I learned in my first year of college, we must start by attempting to disprove the hypothesis. If we think that racism no longer exists, start by research in the opposite direction. This has been my working model that has helped me grow tremendously. While I have not changed my position on every issue, I certainly have gained a lot of knowledge about the other side. So I grew as I gained knowledge and I gained knowledge because I read…everything. I read what agrees with my positions and what does not. After all, SUN TZU advised that in order to win any struggle you have to know your opposition.

The Preamble to our Constitution talked about a goal: "to form a more perfect union". We are not there yet. And those lofty words even then did not acknowledge the disparities that existed. In order to reach those goals that the Preamble promised, we must open up the wounds of our ugly past in order to acknowledge it, move on, and have a more perfect future.

We must acknowledge that Black people were miseducated for a reason. During slavery a Black person could be blinded, beaten or killed for attempting to learn to read. After slavery "ended" there was no government mechanism in place to educate the former slaves. Separate and unequal schools were the law of the land until 1954. We only have to re-read NY Sen. Chuck Schumer's 2008 speech before the Urban League and Action for a Better Community, Inc. titled "The Crisis of African-American Male Unemployment" to see the link between lack of education and unemployment.

The mortgage crisis in this country occurred not because middle class people (both Black and white) put a gun to someone's head and made them give them a mortgage, but instead happened because of greed. Mortgage companies and banks and everyone in between made money and middle class people lost homes. But how has this been played out? Story after story of people (many of them Black, but certainly not all) portrayed as dishonest and liars simply because they wanted a piece of the American Dream. Right wing pundits often put a Black face on the guilty party in this crisis.

The criminal justice system has been highlighted most recently because of the Troy Davis execution. Like everybody, I do not know whether Troy Davis committed the crime for which the State of Georgia killed him. I do know, however, there was too much doubt to do so on September 21, 2011. North Carolina has instituted the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, a program to review all cases where defendants maintain their innocence. Three people have already been released. Craig Watkins, District Attorney in Dallas County established a Conviction Integrity Unit and as a result there have been 21 DNA exonerations as of February 2011. Most frightening, though, is that since 1973, 138 people in 26 states have been released from death row. 138 innocent people would have been killed if someone had not taken a second, and third, and maybe a fourth look at their case. The majority of these innocent citizens have been Black.

Lastly, the opposite of love is hate. There is a record high 1002 active hate groups in America as documented by the SPLC Intelligence Project. These are men and women who have professed on some level their dislike other men or women because of their ethnicity, the color of their skin, their sexual identity, or some other perceived difference. These men and women more than likely have children who they are also teaching hate. This hatred has now emboldened those who “represent” us in the halls of our local, state and national political institutions and now we regularly hear hate speech among our politicians. It has become an us versus them dialogue. We must repudiate them if they do not share our values.

As for me, I choose the power of love. And because knowledge always increases power, I choose to open my eyes fully and see how and why we are where we are as a society. And to do my part to pass this knowledge on. Most importantly, I try also to reconcile all the above with the words spoken in the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians.

Post-racial? We're not there yet

The sentence in Story 1 was handed down a few months after Barack Obama was sworn in as the President of the United States. In Story 2-a few months before. Are there any observable and glaring differences in not only the sentences, but in the tone used by the Judges? Just asking. Ms. Harris just happens to be Black, and Ms. Gamble is white.


Story 1







Georgia Tech thief gets 10 years in prison
By STEVE VISSER

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Monday, March 16, 2009

Fulton County Superior Court Judge John Goger sentenced a former Georgia Tech employee to 20 years Monday — voicing disdain for the defendant and calling the prosecution’s suggested sentence too lenient.
Citing the “obscene amount of money she stole” and her violation of the public trust, the judge sentenced Michelle Harris to 10 years in prison and 10 years on probation for stealing more than $173,000 from the university by running up fraudulent charges on her university credit card.
Goger noted that Harris , also known as Michelle Dunbar , started stealing within six months of being hired as a program coordinator. The money came from federal and private foundation grants.
“Take her away,” Goger told deputies who took Harris to the Fulton County jail.
Harris had thrown herself on the mercy of the court. Earlier, she had balked at pleading guilty in a plea agreement, which called for her to spend three years in prison. She blamed the media spotlight on her case for her last-minute rejection of the plea deal.
On Monday, state Attorney General Thurbert Baker’s office recommended six years in prison.Harris’ attorney Clay Thompson asked the judge for leniency in part so his client could start repaying the money she stole. Goger told Thompson, who was just recently hired, that he warned Harris a year ago that she would have to have made some restitution by the time of her sentencing to get a break on prison time.
“Has she restored one nickel to Georgia Tech — just one nickel?” Goger asked Thompson .
Thompson said Harris was on the cusp of making a payment and possibly borrowing from family members.
“Is the answer no?” Goger asked.
“The answer is no,” Thompson said.


Find this article at:
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/atlanta/stories/2009/03/16/georgia_tech_pcard.html?cxntlid=homepage_tab_newstab






STORY 2





Former Georgia Tech worker gets 2.6 years for purchases
Donna Gamble admitted spending $316K with state credit card
By BILL TORPY

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

In the end, a former Georgia Tech employee who stole $316,000 with university credit cards stood mute before a federal judge as she was sentenced to 32 months in prison.
Donna Renee Gamble of Marietta was too embarrassed to talk in open court Tuesday or to even ask friends to come and speak on her behalf, said her defense attorney, Jimmy Berry . He suggested she was struck by some sort of “obsession” over a five-year period that caused her to buy things like a jet ski, a popcorn machine, a wide-screen TV, robotic vacuums, a treadmill and Auburn University football tickets.
“You just never know why,” Berry said after the brief hearing. “People get away with things and they mushroom. She did it a few times, there were no checks and balances at the school and it took off from there.
“The things they bought were for the betterment of the family,” Berry said of the 43-year-old mother of two daughters. “I guess it was something like that, she rationalized.”
U.S. District Court Judge Jack Camp cited the “frivolous nature” of her purchases before sentencing. Gamble, who worked in the Parker H. Petit Institute of Bioengineering and Bioscience, also was ordered to repay $316,000. Authorities have seized many of the items she bought with grant-funding from the National Science Foundation. The cards, called “p-cards,” are issued for state employees to buy work-related goods and services.
“I don’t see why you didn’t see it was wrong to steal $316,000 from the Georgia Institute of Technology,” Camp said before pronouncing sentence.
Neither Gamble, nor her husband Mickey , who sat with her before the hearing, spoke afterwards.
Federal prosecutor Russell Phillips called her actions “incredibly greedy, selfish and wasteful.” Gamble purchased a total of 3,800 items with 2,000 separate purchases, many of them from her computer at work, he said.
“It takes a lot of time to buy 3,800 items in 2,000 transactions,” Phillips said. “It’s much worse than if she wrote a single check for $316,000.
Gamble’s spending spree went unnoticed until August 2007 when a tipster called Georgia Tech auditors. Results of an investigation of the p-card program at the state’s 35 public colleges and universities found 18 cases of fraud, according to a report released in January by the University System of Georgia. Gamble was the only federal prosecution so far.
The state has indicted four people in other cases of alleged p-card fraud, said Russ Willard of the Attorney General’s office, noting one had pleaded guilty. He said other cases are being investigated.
Another former Tech employee, Michelle Harris , a former program coordinator in the school’s College of Management , was indicted this year and charged with using $173,000 in school money for personal expenses, including a diamond ring, laptop computers, digital cameras and making several debt payments.
Brad Douglas, the commissioner of the Department of Administrative Services, said the number of cards had been reduced from about 20,000 to 15,000. The program had grown from a small purchasing program into a more then $300 million in annual charges.



Find this article at:
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/atlanta/stories/2008/08/19/georgia_tech_sentencing.html

SOME THOUGHTS ON 9-11

Like everyone else on the planet today, I have been thinking backwards ten years. And of course I ask the usual questions. Do I remember where I was at the exact moment the first plane smashed into the World Trade Center? When the second plane went into the second tower what was I thinking? As the news unfolded that two other planes had been hijacked, who did I think was responsible? What must the victims have thought was happening to them? Who could have hated the United States so much that they were willing to die in order to kill as many Americans as possible?

I KNOW my answers to all of these questions, but today is not a day for what I thought then, or even what I think now. Today is a day to concentrate on the innocent victims. Those who were killed at the World Trade Center, in a Pennsylvania field, at the Pentagon, and aboard American Flights 77 and 11, and United Flights 93 and 175. A total of 2,996 people lost their lives as a result of the September 11th, 2001 attacks. They were Americans of every age, race and sex. They all seemed to have loved America dearly. Some of them were living pay check to pay check, and some had no money worries at all. Some of them were working a job they loved, and some were working just to pay the bills. The common denominator was that in all the biographies I have read about the victims, they were all connected to someone who misses them now that they are gone. Their lives had a purpose-no matter how big or small.

Many cultures who live closer to the earth feel that the essence of a person is the spirit, and not the physical body. Also, they believe the spirit never dies. This is true of the Native American culture, and it is true of most African cultures. Simply saying their name is part of the process of keeping the spirit alive. If you talk about a person for a day, they ‘live’ for that day. So on this 10th anniversary of the tragedy of 9-11, I would like to list the names of a segment of victims that is usually lumped in with the other victims. Now, I have no problem with that at all, because I have cried many tears about the loss of life of ALL the victims. But because I cannot list the names of almost 3,000 people, I will list the names of Americans of African descent-those born in America and those born elsewhere. America truly is a melting pot and those who lost their lives illustrate this. They all had unique lives and their lives told their story. I don’t think we realize the numbers that this subset of victims represents. We should not be surprised, though, because we are an integral part of the fabric of America-both the good and the bad. Their biographies can be found all over the internet if one is really interested in their stories.

The first long set of names are those Americans of African descent who died at the World Trade Center towers. The last sets are the victims who died on the planes and at the Pentagon.

For today-their spirit lives.


Ignatius Udo Adanga
Sophia B. Addo
Godwin Ajala
Yaphet J. Aryee
Sharon Balkcom
Sheila Barnes
Jasper Baxter
Balewa Albert Blackman
Sean Booker
Veronique Bowers
Larry Bowman
Jonathan Eric Briley
Janice Brown
Kenny Caldwell
Sandra Campbell
Del-Rose Cheatham
Vernon Cherry
John A. Cooper Jr.
Benjamin Keefe Clark
Eugene Clark
Tarel Coleman
Denease Conley
Brenda E. Conway
Helen Cook
Conrod Cottoy, Sr.
Elizabeth Darling
Titus Davidson
Jeffrey Mark Dingle
Clinton Davis
Daphne Ferlinda Elder
Sadie Ette
Christopher S. Epps
Samuel Fields
Andre Fletcher
Godwin Forde
Donald Foreman
Lucille Francis
Clyde Frazier Jr
Lillian Frederick
Tamitha Freeman
Ervin Gailliard
Boyd Gatton
Rodney C. Gillis
Harry Glenn
Calvin Gooding
Harry Goody III
Keith Glascoe
Winston Arthur Grant
Derrick Arthur Green
Wade B. Green
Tawanna Griffin
Joan D. Griffith
Vaswald Hall
Aisha Harris
Anthony Hawkins
Ronnie Lee Henderson
William L.Henry Jr
Clara Hinds
Neil O. Hinds
Tara Y. Hobbs
DaJuan Hodges
Uhuru Gonja Houston
Lamar Demetrius Hulse
Todd Isaac
Farah Jeudy
Charles Gregory John
Lashawana Johnson
Linda Joyce Jones
Karl Joseph
Stephen Joseph
Lisa Kearney-Griffin
Abdoulaye Koné
Nathaniel Lawson
Charles Lesperance
Michael W. Lowe
Gene Edward Maloy
Marion Manning
Margaret Mattic
Tyrone May
Keithroy Maynard
Kaaria Mbaya
Stanley McCaskill
Tonyell McDay
Evelyn McKinnedy
Darryl L. McKinney
Walter Arthur McNeil
Eskedar Melaku
Shevonne Mentis
Wesley Mercer
Wilbert Miraille
Sharon Moore
Dorothy Morgan
Damion Mowatt
Marcus R. Neblett
Oscar F. Nesbitt
Curtis Terrence Noel
David Ortiz
James Parham
Michael Parkes
Richard A. Penny
Anthony Portillo
Shawn E. Powell
Carol Rabalais
Lorenzo Ramzey
Bruce Reynolds
Vernon Richard
Michael Richards
Venesha Rodgers
Catharina Robinson
Jeffrey Robinson
Nolbert Salomon
Jacquelyn Sanchez
George Eric Smith
Leon Smith Jr
Rochelle M. Snell
Walwyn Stuart
Donnie Brooks Taylor
Lorisa Ceylon Taylor
Dorothy Temple
Capt. William Harry Thompson
Nichola A. Thorpe
Abdoul Karim Traoré
Felicia Traylor-Bass,
Karamo Trerra
Pauline Tull-Francis
Courtney Wainsworth Walcott
Derrick Washington
Nathaniel Webb
John S. White
Malissa White
Wayne White
Crossley Williams Jr.
David Williams
Louie Anthony Williams
Olabisi Shadie Layeni-Yee
Barrington L. Young Jr.
Jacqueline "Jakki" Young




Bernard Curtis Brown II-11 years old, aboard American Flight 77
Sara Clark-teacher, aboard American Flight 77
Asia Cottom-11 years old, aboard American Flight 77
James Daniel Debeuneure-teacher, aboard American Flight 77
Rodney Dickens-11 years old, aboard American Flight 77
Hilda E. Taylor-teacher, aboard American Flight 77
LeRoy Wilton Homer Jr.-First Officer aboard United Flight 93
Wanda Anita Green-Flight Attendant aboard United Flight 93
CeeCee Lyles-Flight Attendant aboard United Flight 93


Ada L. Mason Acker-Pentagon
Samantha Allen (Lightbourn)-Pentagon
Carrie Blagburn-Pentagon
Angelene C. Carter-Pentagon
Sharon Carver-Pentagon
Julian Cooper-Pentagon
Ada M. Davis-Pentagon
Johnnie Doctor Jr.-Pentagon
Amelia V. Fields-Pentagon
Sandra N. Foster-Pentagon
Cortz Ghee-Pentagon
Brenda Gibson-Pentagon
Diane M. Hale-McKinzy-Pentagon
Carolyn B. Halmon-Pentagon
Jimmie Ira Holley-Pentagon
Peggie M. Hurt-Pentagon
Sgt. Maj. Lacey B. Ivory-Pentagon
Brenda Kegler-Pentagon
Nehamon Lyons IV-Pentagon
Maj. Ronald D. Milam-Pentagon
Odessa V. Morris-Pentagon
Maj. Clifford L. Patterson Jr.-Pentagon
Scott Powell-Pentagon
Marsha Ratchford-Pentagon
Cecelia E. Richard-Pentagon
Judy Rowlett-Pentagon
Robert E. Russell -Pentagon
Janice Marie Scott -Pentagon
Antionette "Toni" Sherman-Pentagon
Edna L. Stephens-Pentagon
Sgt. Tamara Thurman-Pentagon
Lt. Cmdr. Otis Tolbert Jr.-Pentagon
Willie Q. Troy-Pentagon
Lt. Col. Karen J. Wagner-Pentagon
Meta L. Waller-Pentagon
Staff Sgt. Maudlyn A. White-Pentagon
Sandra L. White-Pentagon
Maj. Dwayne Williams-Pentagon
Kevin Wayne Yokum-Pentagon
Donald McArthur Young -Pentagon
Edmond Young-Pentagon
Lisa L. Young-Pentagon

DO WE REALLY BELIEVE CHILDREN ARE OUR FUTURE?

Then people brought little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples rebuked them. Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”
-Matthew 19:13-14


Future historians will critique the unique experiment created by the founding fathers and known as America based on how it has treated her children. If we look at our history up to this first decade of the 21st Century, it is not looking good. There is a litany of things that signal insincerity about how America treats children.

The most glaring red flag is America’s education system. In the age of the most advanced technology that the world has ever known, many public schools are still using a 19th century model. It makes no sense that every child in the public school system does not have his or her own Laptop. Or Notepad. Or IPAD. Or Kindle. Children in America should be communicating with children all over the world. After all, we are part of a global economy now, and knowing how to get along with people all over the world must start early. Also, there is no good reason for any school in America to still be operating on a nine month schedule. Because one never stops learning, the mission of schools should be to never stop teaching. Those who teach our children must recognize that they have our most precious jewels in their possession. To rob a child of a good educational foundation is to rob an adult of the right to life, liberty, and justice. It is therefore NOT ok to determine the kind of education a child gets based on money. It is not OK for teachers to enter into sexual relationships with their students. It is NOT ok for teachers to cheat on standardized tests. It is NOT ok for children to graduate from high school without being able to read. It is not OK for America’s teachers to not be compensated competitively in the job market. It is NOT ok when parents do not play a critical role in the education of their children. It is NOT OK for children to feel threatened in school by bullies and have no one to turn to. It is NOT ok for children who are different to feel the only way out is suicide.

Bad behavior by the nation’s politicians set the stage for young Americans to be disrespectful. Children hear what we say, but they also watch what we do. 2008 should have been a year that catapulted America into being what we have always said we were-the United States of America. For the first time in our nation’s history, a man who self identified as a Black American was elected to the Presidency of the United States. His victory was overwhelming. There was no question that he won by a huge majority. And his supporters came from all walks of life and all ethnic and racial backgrounds. It appeared as if a very ugly part of our nation’s history was finally going to fade into the pages of history. It did not take long for reality to set in. President Obama spent his first few months in office working non-stop. He traveled all over the world building bridges among allies and not so friendly countries alike in an attempt to show a side of America many countries had not seen before. He invited the opposition party to the White House numerous times. Some times they attended, but many times they declined. How do you refuse to come to the White House when the President of the United States asks you? The former Vice-President under the administration that created many of the ills which the country was facing spent all his time criticizing President Obama before he even had a chance to do anything. The opposition party and the media disrespects President Obama by not addressing him by his official title-President Barack Obama. They call him simply Obama. President Obama, I believe, will turn out to be one of the smartest presidents this country has ever had. And one of the most conciliatory. His biography is impressive and he started out where many of the nation’s at risk kids start. He was raised by a single parent; he spent a few years with his mom and her new husband, and then went to live with his grandparents. He had some early experimentation with drugs and at one point did not take education as seriously as he should have. He had an attitude adjustment, and went on to graduated from one of the nation’s top universities. Instead of immediately going to work for a firm where he would have made big money, he moved to a depressed part of Chicago and tried to help by doing community organizing. He met and married a local girl and together they are raising two healthy, happy, and intelligent little girls. There are apparently no skeletons in his very public closet (If there were we would know about them by now). This community organizing led him to run for his first political seat. His biography should have been embraced by all those who like to talk about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. Instead, the politicos and pundits tried -and still try-to turn these positive life lessons into partisan jokes. What must our children think about all of this? What motivation does this give them to strive hard to do well in school and go to college? Will any of them look at our politicians and say I want to be just like them? Are our children learning how to work together for the common good?

Drug use among America’s children is far too high. While it has leveled off from past years, it is still problematic today. Who is asking why pre-teens feel the need to take drugs? Are labels such as A.D.D. and hyperactivity useful? Why are teachers allowed to recommend that certain school children be given prescribed drugs as a prerequisite to remain in school? How much money are pharmaceutical companies making off these drugs? Why do we not listen to experts who say that yesterday’s Ritalin user is tomorrow’s cocaine user? When will America’s moms and dads realize that children live what they learn? When children see parents medicate with prescribed drugs (or self medicate with over the counter drugs and alcohol), guess what they think is acceptable behavior?

Violent criminal behavior by America’s children is a threat to everyone. No one is safe, no neighborhood is immune, and no family is exempt. We must ask the hard questions and be willing to accept the truth-no matter how uncomfortable that truth may be. Movies are far too explicit and violent. Video games go too far in depicting violent and sexual acts. Musical acts, actors, and reality stars are rewarded much too often for bad girl and bad boy behavior. Children are not adults and they therefore are not able to process all this stimuli with their adolescent brain. This brain tells them that the worst behavior is rewarded with the most money and most attention, so bad must be good. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure this out.

Far too many of our nation’s children’s are runaways. Why? Would a child run away from a focused and loving home? And if they would, what has happened in their life that tells them they do not deserve love? A runaway that stays outside of their home for a prolonged period of time often turns to drugs, gangs, prostitution-or a combination of all three. Living on the street is almost impossible for an adult, so a child has very little chance of having a good outcome. Hard questions must be asked of the parents, the schools, social service agencies, juvenile justice. Who missed the signs? How can they all come together and do better for our children.

Lastly, our nation’s children have become the victim of choice for far too many adult predators. It is NOT ok for children to be abducted out of their own homes. It is NOT ok for fathers to have sexual relations with their daughters or step-daughters. It is NOT ok for mothers to treat their sons as if they are their boyfriends. It is NOT ok for children to be abducted from playgrounds or malls. It is NOT ok for adults to gain the trust of children and then treat them like sexual toys. Punishment for adults who prey on children should be as severe as punishment for those who murder. It certainly should be as severe as that for animal cruelty, recreational drug use, aggravated assault, and theft.

It is time for all Americans to roll up our sleeves, prepare to get dirty, and DO something about the tragedy that is all too often the future that awaits our nation’s children. The rhetoric must end and the work must get started.

HOW TO SURVIVE AND REMAIN SANE IN THE 21ST CENTURY

There was a time in my life when I was very angry. And if I was to be perfectly honest, I enjoyed it. It spurred me on to learn, to grow, to speak. Those who knew me during that time knew I was not one to be messed with. They did not know WHAT I would do, but they knew it would not be pleasant. When people stepped to me, they stepped correctly and that is exactly how I liked it.

At some point,though,the anger stopped working for me. I lost some very important people in my life and the sadness seemed to consume me. I just wanted a sense of PEACE. Fighting for what was right just became too tedious. I did the work to get better and I'd like to share what I have learned on my journey to peace and happiness.

1. If you are in a job that is draining you-leave it. Yes, the economy is terrible, and money is tight, and you have bills to pay. But if you are unhappy each and every day because of a lousy job you are not really living anyway. Have enough faith in YOURSELF that there is a better world out there. You are smart and a hard worker and you CAN do it.

2. Learn to develop a sense of humor, because sometimes you just HAVE to laugh.

3. Don't be ashamed to have a sense of righteous indignation, because SOMETIMES the situation demands it.

4. You must have a belief in someone/something bigger than yourself. A higher power.


5. Learn to say NO without equivocation or hesitation. It will save you a lot of grief.

6. A working knowledge of The Bill of Rights, because after all, it speaks to all of us.

7. You should have a relationship with a good lawyer and have him/her on speed dial.


8. You should memorize your rights as set out under Miranda v Arizona (1966)


9. A basic knowledge of your rights as an American citizen if interacting with police officers for ANY reasons.


10. A cell phone with a clear microphone and good video quality. Or a camcorder. You never know when you need "evidence". Make sure you know when it is legal to do this.



11. At least ONE ride or die friend who will tell you when enough is enough. And will tell you at the exact moment you need to hear it.

12. A passport. Get this as soon as possible. It will become more difficult in the future.

13. A favorite song that speaks to your soul. And listen to that song as often as you need to.

14. A skill that no one can do better.

15. A real knowledge of those who came before.


16. Ten books on your bookshelf that are timeless and that you read over and over. And over. These are mine:

*The Choice by Sam Yette
*The Perverted Priorities of American Politics by Duane Lockard
*The Wretched of the Earth by Franz Fanon
*Black Families in White America by Andrew Billingsley
*What Color is Your Parachute by Richard Bolles
*Guide My Feet by Marian Wright Edelman
*The Habit of Surviving by Kesho Yvonne Scott
*Black Economics by Jawanza Kunjufu
*The Value in the Valley by Iyanla VanZant
*The Lifetime Legal Guide - 21st century Edition by Steven M. Sack
*The Glass House Tapes by Louis Tackwood and the Citizens Research and Investigation Committee
*The Africans by Ali Mazrui
*Fifty Black Women Who Changed America by Amy Alexander
*Black Psychology edited by Reginald Jones
*Revolutionary Suicide by Huey P. Newton
*The Readers Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary - Eleventh Printing (which should be about 1977)
Yeah. Yeah. I know this is more than ten. But all of these books are life changing.

16. Mad money to do with as you please.

17. Emergency funds to what you must.

18. A home computer. And the ability to use it. It is the gateway to the WORLD.

19. At least one friend who was NOT born in America.

20. A will. We all will die. Prepare for it.

Cheating in Atlanta: Looking Beyond the Veil

Someone is cheating the children who attend schools in Atlanta, Georgia.

The important question is Who? And why?

If we only blame the teachers, that is just a piece of the puzzle. I don't know if teachers were given an opportunity to really teach the courses as opposed to teaching to the test. Several teachers reported improprieties with the testing and were ignored, transferred, or contracts were not renewed. This sent a strong message to other teachers. Keep your mouth shut. It was reported by some teachers to be similar to the Mafia.

It's not as simple as bad teachers-because those who had the power to hire and fire were in on the cheating. And the Mayor of Atlanta, who is so vocal now about his outrage at the cheating, was perhaps inadvertently part of this sad drama in his role as a State Senator in Georgia. He introduced a bill that gave the Superintendent of Atlanta Public School system ALL power over the school board. So when the school board was hearing stories about cheating, and tried to make appropriate inquiries, they were SHUT DOWN by the Superintendent.

This story is SO much bigger than it looks. There are some questions as to whether due process was followed. If it was not, anything that the GBI claims to have been told will not be admissable in court. The teachers are now getting lawyers and are being properly advised of their Fifth Amendment rights.

This is a nationwide story. It is happening all over. And it will not go quietly into that good night.

And what about the geniuses who put so much weight on the importance of the CRCT test that teachers felt forced to teach to the test? Principals played a part in the cheating. And area superintendents apparently also knew about it. As bad as it is, the teachers and others who cheated are a small percentage of all the teachers in the Atlanta public school system. And it is not just Atlanta, as the graph below shows. The net is widening to some of the suburban areas now. Greed, fear, and ignorance knows no color.



Schools with questionable CRCT results

By Heather Vogell

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Saturday, October 17, 2009

Scores climbed or dipped dramatically at 12 schools in Atlanta and one in Fulton County. The AJC compared each class’ score in 2008 with its score in 2009, in the next grade.

Standard deviation shows how unexpected a score change is. The odds of a 4 standard deviation change are less than 1 in 31,000. The odds of a five standard deviation change are less than 1 in 3 million. The odds of a six standard deviation change are less than 1 in a billion.



Standard deviations Odds it could occur naturally
4 1 in 31,000
5 1 in 3 million
6 1 in a billion


Atlanta Public Schools

Benteen Elementary, Grade 3 Reading, 5.46 (better than predicted score)
Benteen Elementary, Grade 5 English/Language Arts, 4.3 (better than predicted score)
Bethune Elementary, Grade 5 Reading, 4.57 (worse than predicted score)
Blalock Elementary, Grade 5 English/Language Arts, 6.94 (better than predicted score)
Blalock Elementary, Grade 5 Math, 5.95 (better than predicted score)
Blalock Elementary, Grade 3 English/Language Arts, 5.78 (better than predicted score)
Blalock Elementary, Grade 4 English/Language Arts, 4.05 (better than predicted score)
Capitol View Elementary, Grade 3 Reading, 5.78 (better than predicted score)
Dunbar Elementary, Grade 5 Reading, 4.54 (better than predicted score)
F.L. Stanton Elementary, Grade 3 Reading, 4.27 (better than predicted score)
Perkerson Elementary, Grade 5 Reading, 5.56 (better than predicted score)
Peyton Forest Elementary, Grade 4 Math, 6.08 (better than predicted score)
Peyton Forest Elementary, Grade 4 English/Language Arts, 4.79 (better than predicted score)
Peyton Forest Elementary, Grade 5 Reading, 4.09 (better than predicted score)
Toomer Elementary, Grade 5 English/Language Arts, 9.29 (worse than predicted score)
Toomer Elementary, Grade 4 Reading, 6.35 (worse than predicted score)
Toomer Elementary, Grade 5 Reading, 5.45 (worse than predicted score)
Usher Elementary, Grade 5 Reading, 4.56 (better than predicted score)
Venetian Hills Elementary, Grade 3 English/Language Arts, 4.83 (better than predicted score)
Venetian Hills Elementary, Grade 3 Reading, 4.74 (better than predicted score)
West Manor Elementary, Grade 5 Math, 6.17 (better than predicted score)
Carroll County
Whitesburg Elementary, Grade 5 Reading, 4.47 (better than predicted score)
Dougherty County
West Town Elementary, Grade 5 Reading, 4.18 (better than predicted score)
Fulton County
Heards Ferry Elementary, Grade 3 English/Language Arts, 4.00 (better than predicted score)
Mitchell County
Baconton Community Charter, Grade 4 Math, 4.17 (better than predicted score)
Muscogee County
Muscogee Elementary, Grade 3 English/Language Arts, 4.26 (worse than predicted score)
Rigdon Road Elementary, Grade 5 Reading, 6.0 (worse than predicted score)
Rigdon Road Elementary, Grade 4 English/Language Arts, 5.36 (worse than predicted score)
Rigdon Road Elementary, Grade 5 Math, 5.33 (worse than predicted score)
Rigdon Road Elementary, Grade 4 Math, 5.31 (worse than predicted score)
Rigdon Road Elementary, Grade 4 Reading, 4.39 (worse than predicted score)
Rigdon Road Elementary, Grade 5 English/Language Arts, 4.13 (worse than predicted score)
Tift County
Omega Elementary, Grade 4 Reading, 4.58 (better than predicted score)

Find this article at:
http://www.ajc.com/news/schools-with-questionable-crct-164807.html


Other smoking guns:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC_4hwkvbpU

http://atlanta.cbslocal.com/2011/07/12/former-atlanta-school-board-chair-khaatim-el-resigns/

http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog/2011/04/20/deal-signs-bill-allowing-him-to-oust-aps-board-members/

http://www.politifact.com/georgia/statements/2011/jul/13/ralph-long/georgia-pol-says-atlanta-school-board-had-no-overs/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/29/nathan-deal-ethics-report_n_517493.html


You decide.