photo credit: Newsone

Sad and beyond contemptible:

“The ceremony was not my suggestion, nor was it my intent, to participate in any ritual that is offensive in any manner to the Jewish community, or any group. Furthermore, I sincerely denounce any action that depicts me as a King, for I am merely just a servant of the Lord,” Long wrote in a letter dated Saturday.

The letter was addressed to Bill Nigut, southeast regional director of the Anti-Defamation League — a Jewish group that fights anti-Semitism.

“While I believe that Rabbi Ralph Messer has good intentions during his message at New Birth, I understand that the ceremony he performed on Sunday, January 29th, caused harm to the Jewish community, for which I am deeply sorry,” Long wrote.

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Soul Train was must see television before that phrase was ever coined, and Don Cornelius was not simply its host — he was its maestro–conducting virtuosos of dance, music, and style in an age of black chic.  His deep baritone illicited  more than questions seeking answers–they spoke plainly and loudly to black youth in America.  They spoke about how cool black consciousness was, how black music framed American culture, and how black folks were all beautiful.

Don Cornelius’ death was a jolt to those who learned to dance through Soul Train. It was blow to those who finally felt a sense of swagger and pride in their appearances… their styles… their culture.  He revolutionized black hipness and reached across swaths of Americana, introducing millions to artists not allowed to appear on other music shows.  His death strikes deeply into the consciousness of those who are and were culturally aware, but it does not dull his swagger– and it will never diminish his influence.  RIP Mr. Cornelius.

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Newt Gingrich’s efforts to cast himself as the white knight, cleaving through the murk of blacks leeching off government, exposed more than the seedy opportunistic side of  politics–It laid bare an electorate fueled by racist mores.

The interesting part about being a racist is the not so subtle manner in which you promote your racist dogma.  Most racists don’t believe they’re being anything other than truthful… denying the invocation of  racist diatribes creates a protective cloak against which repudiation rarely penetrates.  In fact, the views of the accusers are seen as more unpalatable than the accused’s invective.

Racism is itself as insidious and ingrained as lying.  As Coates puts it, “The habit of lying does not end with the racism itself. It is a contagion that extends to the defense of the initial lie.”  To wit:

People who are regularly complicit in wrong, are not in the habit of admitting such things. The unwillingness to admit wrong, the greedy claim upon the powers of disappointment,  the deep sense of injury is not coincidental–it is a necessary fact of wrong-doing. The charge that the NAACP are the actual racist is the descendant of the notion that abolitionists wanted to reduce Southern whites to “slavery,”  that the goal of civil rights was the rape of white women.That Barack Obama would have a “deep-seated hatred of white people” is not a new concept.

Those that commit acts of wrong doing never admit to the act because they are in fact not wrong–at least in their mind.  Their business is all about proudly basking in their racism– totally unfettered.  It is an inherent trait that fuels their ambition.

Newt Gingrich’s goal is gaining the republican nomination for presidency of the United States, and those people in South Carolina weren’t just acknowledging a gotcha moment from moderator Juan Williams– or a deft retort from Gingrich–they were proudly reaffirming their own racist reality.   The promulgation of racist narratives isn’t incidental, it’s coolly calculated strategy–and to many, a way of life.  That much is now apparent.

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(This was originally published January 17th, 2011)

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”  Martin Luther King Jr. ,Letter From Birmingham Jail

An uncommon man leads in a common world, stripped bare of his dignity– but never his character, never his faith, never his soul.  To see the struggle is mighty.  To battle it heartily is righteous.  To maintain your serenity and love is Godly.  That defines leadership.  That defined Martin Luther King Jr.,  a man who led a struggle no average man or woman dared take on.

As I look backward, I gaze forward.  I celebrate the 25th anniversary of Dr. King’s holiday proudly, respectfully, and humbly.  I celebrate a man who in today’s climate of poisonous rhetoric, and unintelligible debate– would have been called anything from a treasonous Marxist– to an unpatriotic socialist. Some in fact, would debase and demean his work, while claiming to carry the awesome mantle of Dr. King’s legacy.  He demands more respect than that.

If Dr. King taught us anything, it was that sacrifice is a necessary burden of leadership.  Leadership must be tethered to a righteous cause.  It cannot be vacant in times of strife, or as the winds of discomfort shift the debate.  Righteous causes exist to give our lives direction– to fill our souls with purpose.  Dr. King knew his, and he shared it with all of us.  Those able to walk in his graceful path were anointed with the spirit of compassion, the power of forgiveness, the strength of righteousness, and the glory of eternal love.  With these qualities, man and woman shall endure.  They shall prosper.  They shall triumph over injustice and intolerance.

On this day, we should praise the true meaning of leadership.  We all should aspire to the heights of a man who worried less about his own mortality–and more about the mortality of those four little girls– brutally murdered in Birmingham.  Those little girls, whose lives “were distressingly small in quantity, but glowingly large in quality.”  We should aspire to quality.  We should wind our paths through gardens filled with light– never seeking comfort– but alwaysgiving it in doses large and small.

We have the power to lift the shadow of disappointment, cast widely upon us in times of difficulty.  It is within us to seek the solution to our problems, and reject with great confidence any attempt to dissuade us from our cause.  This is what real leaders choose.  The path is never a clean one, but it is a necessary one.  I pray I have the strength demanded of me to fulfill my promise.  But in times of doubt, the words of a man who worried less about his own mortality, and more about the quality of life for others, assuage my fears:

…when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you go forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness” then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

Dr. King taught us that continuous struggle is a necessity of change.  We can be the mechanism that fosters hope, as we continue to make that change a reality.  There is no greater heir to the King legacy than that.

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I try not to riff off of another blogger’s work, even though there are a significant number of writers I admire greatly.  But when I read this piece on Ta-Nehisi Coates’ blog regarding an op-ed written by a young black man in New York City, I had to link to it.  Here’s the dagger for me:

Last May, I was outside my apartment building on my way to the store when two police officers jumped out of an unmarked car and told me to stop and put my hands up against the wall. I complied. Without my permission, they removed my cellphone from my hand, and one of the officers reached into my pockets, and removed my wallet and keys. He looked through my wallet, then handcuffed me. The officers wanted to know if I had just come out of a particular building. No, I told them, I lived next door.

One of the officers asked which of the keys they had removed from my pocket opened my apartment door. Then he entered my building and tried to get into my apartment with my key. My 18-year-old sister was inside with two of our younger siblings; later she told me she had no idea why the police were trying to get into our apartment and was terrified. She tried to call me, but because they had confiscated my phone, I couldn’t answer.

Meanwhile, a white officer put me in the back of the police car. I was still handcuffed. The officer asked if I had any marijuana, and I said no. He removed and searched my shoes and patted down my socks. I asked why they were searching me, and he told me someone in my building complained that a person they believed fit my description had been ringing their bell. After the other officer returned from inside my apartment building, they opened the door to the police car, told me to get out, removed the handcuffs and simply drove off. I was deeply shaken…

It feels like an important thing to be part of a community of hundreds of thousands of people who are wrongfully stopped on their way to work, school, church or shopping, and are patted down or worse by the police though they carry no weapon; and searched for no reason other than the color of their skin. I hope police practices will change and that when I have children I won’t need to pass along my mother’s advice.

No matter how many times someone tells me profiling–and this case wasn’t even profiling, rather an unconscionable act of violation– is a necessary evil.  To me it just reinforces the double standard many black men face and white men don’t.  When there is an abrogation of your civil and human rights, that is not a necessary evil.  It’s simply evil.

So it goes I suppose, without recriminations or recourse for these officers involved.  The ever spinning wheels of tainted justice continue to claim victims who have no way to adequately respond to this molestation.  This is what passes for crime-fighting in many cities in America I suppose.

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Ron Paul is now leading in Iowa.

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This didn’t take long:

Of all the reasons for Herman Cain’s spectacular flame out, being a brother wasn’t one of them.  In fact I submit it helped him far more than it hurt him in his spectacular rise to the top of the polls.

What’s more fascinating is Cain’s persistent calls for black folks to end their reliance on using race as a crutch in American society.  He’s not only adopted the very idea he denounced, he’s proudly flaunting its usage.  I’d say Herman Cain’s character flaws–which include using race when it only suits him– as well as his general ignorance about the world around him did him in.  I suppose you reap what you sow when you play plantation politics.

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A reader on the Dish writes:

I thought I’d write to you with our own experiences taking part in the Occupy LA protests. I’m in my early 40s, at a well-paying job as a web developer for a large hospital in Los Angeles. My wife and I have no children. We’re very fortunate – we actually have a steady income and good health insurance. Yet, we live in a house that we share with her cousin because we couldn’t afford our own place. The house is deep underwater, and we’re drowning in debt (and shame on us for not reading the fine print when some of the credit card issuers arbitrarily raised our interest rates to 30% on cards that had never had a late payment EVER). We’re barely making it check-to-check, but somehow we are still making all of our payments. It would be so much easier to walk away from it all, but we have a sense of responsibility to these debts that we voluntarily took on.

What we’re demanding – what people in the Occupy movement are demanding – is the same responsibility from these large institutions, and the so-called 1%. It’s really that simple.

There is nothing wrong with Americans questioning economic policies–especially given the catastrophic results of our economic collapse.  What is so radical about that?  If nothing else, shining a lens on the inequities of a system clearly geared toward enriching a certain element of society, is as democratic as it gets.  Since when is responsibility a one-way street?

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It’s not easy being a blogger.  Witness the Blogger Life cycle:

1) Euphoric moment of inspiration
2) Pseudo-maniacal and self-indulgent perusing of domains
3) Careful consideration of theme and design
4) The inaugural post – “Hello world!”
5) The 2-4 post honeymoon phase
6) Waning and changing interests
7) Feelings of desperation and apathy from low engagement
Inevitable abandonment

@mileslennon has the full story about why 95 percent of blogs wither on the vine and die. As of this moment, I’m unclear as to which stage I reside in.  I kid, but these are definitely applicable to many in this chosen line of work.  Survival of the fittest indeed.

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Not only is it the price of a pizza, it’s the price of a pizza at Godfather’s Pizza.  Yes, Godfather’s Pizza– where the current Republican presidential nominee Herman Cain was the CEO.  Jon Huntsman was clearly prescient in his pronouncement.

Herman Cain may not be the next president, but he damn sure knows how to cross-promote.

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