Laura Schlessinger's Crazy Cure for Racism: Do We Blame Dr. Laura or Dr. Dre?

• ·       Posted by TheBlackList on August 16, 2010 at 12:04pm
• ·       View TheBlackList's blog

Paul Scott:

A broken, elderly black man limped into his doctor's office last Tuesday afternoon. His neck bore the scars of numerous lynching attempts and his back the whelps of years of severe beatings. Reflected in his eyes was the pain of seeing his mother and sister raped and being powerless to do anything about it. As he described in vivid detail his many thoughts of committing suicide, the physician just sat emotionless in her chair. Finally, she scribbled on her prescription pad, "take two doses of the "N word" and call me in the morning. LOL..."

Last week, talk show host, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, came under fire for using the "N word" multiple times to help a caller get over her racial "hypersensitivity." While the purpose of the conversation was, supposedly, to give the caller life changing advice, in reality, Schlessinger was merely trying to help her predominately white audience get over their collective guilt of harboring white supremacist attitudes as she soothed them with the old standard, "Black Comedians use the N Word, Why Can't I" Therefore, if it's cool in Compton it must play well in Peoria.

Newsflash for Dr. Laura. Not all black men walk around grabbin' their crotches, showing their dirty drawers

and dropping the "N bomb" like there's no tomorrow. I, personally, have never made a habit of using the word and have spoken out against its use on many occasions. Also, activists such as Gary, Indiana radio host, Kwabena Rasuliu have led multiple protests against those in the Hip Hop world who have used such ignorance as a marketing tool.

However, folks like "Sgt. Schlessiger" and her Right Wing Storm Troopers, continuously, use black entertainers as justification for their racist rants. The comedians to whom Schlessinger referred do not speak for me nor do they speak for most people of African descent. It is unfortunate that, while folks like Dr. Laura can name black comedians who use the word, they cannot name one Afro-centric historian who has put the word in a social or historical context and can explain how it became a term of black endearment.

So, herein, lies the major problem facing this country in terms of race relations: historical and cultural ignorance. White Domination" the late psychologist Dr. Amos Wilson wrote, " through identification with the aggressor, the subject attempts to magically transform himself from the one being threatened to the one threatening; from powerlessness to powerful: from inferior to superior."

It must be noted that the degradation of black people for comedic purposes started with white black-face performer Thomas Rice's Jumpin' Jim Crow in 1830, predating early black comedians such as Moms Mabley and Redd Fox by more than a century. Not to mention that most black entertainers work for white owned companies.

While comedian Richard Pryor used the "N word" extensively in some of his early stand up routines, later in his career, following a trip to Africa, he publicly vowed to "never call a black man nigger again."

Perhaps, the group most influential in popularizing the word during the Hip Hop Era was NWA (Niggas With Attitude) of the late 80's and early '90's. However, the group was managed by Jerry Heller, a white man, who was also the co-owner of their record label, Ruthless Records. So, there have always been white business men who have supplied white Americans with an avenue to, vicariously, live out their racist fantasies through black entertainers.

While some may make the argument that it is only entertainment, the contradictions within this statement are many.

One example is that although Jewish comedians such as Jackie Mason and Adam Sandler, may make Jewish jokes, none of their stand up routines would ever be used by outsiders to make light of the Jewish Holocaust.

Also, attacks on the black community seem to be the only topics not off limit by the entertainment industry

Although, the use of the "N word" pops up as a topic of discussion every few years, most people, black or white, do not know the historical origins of the word.

The word "nigger" is derived from the Portuguese adjective "negro" which was used by the early slave traders to describe their new found "property." So, when it crossed the Atlantic , "negro" was ,eventually, transformed into the word "nigger;" different spellings but for all intents and purposes, having the same meaning as they both infer that black people are less than human.

Black psychologists have suggested that the use of the word by African Americans is a subconscious response to white supremacy.

In his book, "Black on Black Violence: The Psycho-dynamics of Black Self-Annihilation in the Service of Black entertainers from Professor Griff of Public Enemy to the late Michael Jackson had their careers negatively impacted by, allegedly, making anti-Semitic comments or songs. Ironically, Ice Cube, one of the founders of NWA was boycotted in the early 90's by the Korean community over a song he made in regards to the murder of 15 year old Latasha Harland, who was shot by a Korean grocer.

So, we see the real double standard at play.

If we are not careful, the controversy over Dr. Laura's statement will go the route of the infamous Don Imus incident as civil rights leaders and right wing media pundits will find a way to put the blame totally on rap music; blaming Dr. Dre instead of Dr. Laura.

In order to stop the Dr. Laura's of the world, this country must engage in a massive reeducation process. African Americans must learn all they can about their culture and pass the information on to future generations. Also, white Americans must be willing to hear the truth about the African American experience no matter how uncomfortable it might make them feel. This will not come from educators who fear backlash from school boards nor newspaper editors who are more concerned with offending their advertisers than serving the public good but will come from Afro-centric historians and scholars who are brave enough to speak truth to power without biting their tongues.

Unfortunately, this cure is too big a pill for most folks to swallow.

Paul Scott writes for No Warning Shots Fired .com. For more information about the Intelligence Over Ignorance lecture series on Race, Rap and Revolution contact (919) 451-8283 or info@nowarningshotsfired.com

Don’t forget Brandon Johnson. Question whether the police shootings in downtown Indianapolis was a city strategy to change the public discussion concerning Brandon’s beating by the cops. Ask yourself why Shamus Patton who is accused of shooting the people downtown just happened to use the same caliber weapon as is standard issue for the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department. Question how Shamus can be accused of firing 9 shots and hit eight people, then walk a block armed with a 40 caliber pistol, shoot 6 more times and hit one person, evade 300 police officers in the immediate vicinity and not get away from downtown and not get captured until the next day.

Question how police officers who are supposed to be experts can be in the company of one of their own whose blood alcohol content  is almost 2 and a half times the legal limit, and this fellow officer just ran over three people on motorcycles, killing one, almost killing another, yet  none of the experts notice that their fellow officer is drunk. Just think about it. Then tell me what you come up with. The Mayor said on Pastor Thomas Brown show that I had some balls to raise these issues. Even though this language is not becoming of a mayor, for one time he is right. I do have the nerve to question authority. Do you? Think about the questions raised. Don’t forget Brandon and his family. They should not have to go to court in order for the city to settle this case. Nor should the bikers have to go to court. If the mayor has the nerve then he will authorize the city to do the right thing. Thank you for listening

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said they were called to the 500 block of Fisher Creek Drive on a report of a burglary in progress. Chandler’s son Vincent was arrested, handcuffed and placed in the back seat of a police car. When Brandon refused to leave the scene, police attempted to arrest him but said they weren’t able to do so quickly because he resisted. Therefore, said police, the teen was beaten by at least two officers, David Carney and Jerry Piland.

Dawn,

Looks like the racist are still being born. Dying is not wiping them out. The below message expresses what I mean. I'm sure you will sign the petition

Dear friends,

On Wednesday, Rand Paul, the GOP's US Senate candidate for Kentucky repeated his claim that a central piece of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was wrong, and that businesses should be free to discriminate against whomever they please.¹ Paul and his supporters don't seem to care that without federal intervention, Black people might still be second-class citizens in most aspects of American life: where we eat, where we work, even where we live.

Then, on Thursday, FOX contributor and business anchor John Stossel went even further than Paul and called for the section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that applies to business to be repealed.² And he's refused to back down.

It's time to hold FOX accountable:

http://www.colorofchange.org/stossel/?id=3121-113378

While Rand Paul may have started this outrage, he can be taken care of at the ballot box — FOX News can't.

Stossel's position is an affront to Black America and everyone in this country who believes in racial progress. It's one thing to be a candidate with backwards views. It's another to be employed by a supposed news network and to use that platform to push hateful ideas that our nation repudiated decades ago.

It's time that FOX drop Stossel. It's why I've joined ColorOfChange.org in demanding Fox do so immediately. If after hearing from thousands of people like you and I, FOX refuses to act, it will make clear that FOX stands with Stossel and his values, and ColorOfChange has pledged to go directly after the network with a major public campaign.

Can you take a moment to add your voice to the call to fire Stossel? After you do, please ask your friends and family to do the same:

http://www.colorofchange.org/stossel/?id=3121-113378

FOX has a history of providing a platform for bigoted views and race-baiting. Most recently more than 300,000 people helped us hold FOX accountable by stripping Glenn Beck of more than 100 of his advertisers, after Beck called President Obama a "racist" with a "deep-seated hatred for white people."³

But Stossel has arguably gone beyond Beck, echoing segregationist arguments from the Jim Crow era:

"It's time now to repeal that part of the law because private businesses ought to get to discriminate. And I won't ever go to a place that's racist and I will tell everybody else not to and I'll speak against them. But it should be their right to be racist."

Stossel went on to argue something that history has disproved time and again — that private business will do the right thing, without being compelled by laws, because no one would patronize a business that discriminates. It's a blind belief in market fundamentalism that just isn't in sync with reality. In the '60s, white-owned businesses that allowed Blacks as customers lost business. Market forces actually perpetuated discrimination; they didn't combat it. Simply put: segregation would still be active in parts of this country if government hadn't stepped in.

And recent history has shown that the public accommodations section of the Civil Rights Act is still needed. In 1994, it was used to hold Denny's Restaurants accountable, after the chain repeatedly refused to seat Black customers.⁴ Just last year, it was used to go after a Philadelphia pool that prevented Black children from swimming there.⁵

It's time for Fox News to make a choice. Are they willing to continue to give a platform to racially-divisive rhetoric and revive dangerously outdated perspectives? Or will they move with the rest of the nation into into the 21st century? Please join me in calling on Fox News to fire John Stossel. And once you do, please ask your friends and family to do the same:

http://www.colorofchange.org/stossel/?id=3121-113378

Thank you.

References:

1. http://huff.to/cjOnxL
2. http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201005200033
3. http://bit.ly/aoJUUy
4. http://nyti.ms/bpVZZY
5. http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/January/10-crt-033.html

Demsaretoast:

Maybe this game devised by Tim Wise will help you to understand that American society is not post racial. Wake up or we’re all through. Oh you did see that I won the election to be a statewide delegate didn’t you? That was overwhelmingly white folks who voted for me. Don’t look like you speak for all white folks. Play the game. Let us know how you do.

Rev. Mmoja Ajabu

Thursday, April 22, 2010

"Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black" - Tim Wise

Let’s play a game, shall we? The name of the game is called “Imagine.” The way it’s played is simple: we’ll envision recent happenings in the news, but then change them up a bit. Instead of envisioning white people as the main actors in the scenes we’ll conjure - the ones who are driving the action - we’ll envision black folks or other people of color instead. The object of the game is to imagine the public reaction to the events or incidents, if the main actors were of color, rather than white. Whoever gains the most insight into the workings of race in America, at the end of the game, wins.

So let’s begin.

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.

Imagine that white members of Congress, while walking to work, were surrounded by thousands of angry black people, one of whom proceeded to spit on one of those congressmen for not voting the way the black demonstrators desired. Would the protesters be seen as merely patriotic Americans voicing their opinions, or as an angry, potentially violent, and even insurrectionary mob? After all, this is what white Tea Party protesters did recently in Washington.

Imagine that a rap artist were to say, in reference to a white president: “He’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on my machine gun.” Because that’s what rocker Ted Nugent said recently about President Obama.

Imagine that a prominent mainstream black political commentator had long employed an overt bigot as Executive Director of his organization, and that this bigot regularly participated in black separatist conferences, and once assaulted a white person while calling them by a racial slur. When that prominent black commentator and his sister — who also works for the organization — defended the bigot as a good guy who was misunderstood and “going through a tough time in his life” would anyone accept their excuse-making? Would that commentator still have a place on a mainstream network? Because that’s what happened in the real world, when Pat Buchanan employed as Executive Director of his group, America’s Cause, a blatant racist who did all these things, or at least their white equivalents: attending white separatist conferences and attacking a black woman while calling her the n-word.

Imagine that a black radio host were to suggest that the only way to get promoted in the administration of a white president is by “hating black people,” or that a prominent white person had only endorsed a white presidential candidate as an act of racial bonding, or blamed a white president for a fight on a school bus in which a black kid was jumped by two white kids, or said that he wouldn’t want to kill all conservatives, but rather, would like to leave just enough—“living fossils” as he called them—“so we will never forget what these people stood for.” After all, these are things that Rush Limbaugh has said, about Barack Obama’s administration, Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama, a fight on a school bus in Belleville, Illinois in which two black kids beat up a white kid, and about liberals, generally.

Imagine that a black pastor, formerly a member of the U.S. military, were to declare, as part of his opposition to a white president’s policies, that he was ready to “suit up, get my gun, go to Washington, and do what they trained me to do.” This is, after all, what Pastor Stan Craig said recently at a Tea Party rally in Greenville, South Carolina.

Imagine a black radio talk show host gleefully predicting a revolution by people of color if the government continues to be dominated by the rich white men who have been “destroying” the country, or if said radio personality were to call Christians or Jews non-humans, or say that when it came to conservatives, the best solution would be to “hang ‘em high.” And what would happen to any congressional representative who praised that commentator for “speaking common sense” and likened his hate talk to “American values?” After all, those are among the things said by radio host and best-selling author Michael Savage, predicting white revolution in the face of multiculturalism, or said by Savage about Muslims and liberals, respectively. And it was Congressman Culbertson, from Texas, who praised Savage in that way, despite his hateful rhetoric.

Imagine a black political commentator suggesting that the only thing the guy who flew his plane into the Austin, Texas IRS building did wrong was not blowing up Fox News instead. This is, after all, what Anne Coulter said about Tim McVeigh, when she noted that his only mistake was not blowing up the New York Times.

Imagine that a popular black liberal website posted comments about the daughter of a white president, calling her “typical redneck trash,” or a “whore” whose mother entertains her by “making monkey sounds.” After all that’s comparable to what conservatives posted about Malia Obama on freerepublic.com last year, when they referred to her as “ghetto trash.”

Imagine that black protesters at a large political rally were walking around with signs calling for the lynching of their congressional enemies. Because that’s what white conservatives did last year, in reference to Democratic party leaders in Congress.

In other words, imagine that even one-third of the anger and vitriol currently being hurled at President Obama, by folks who are almost exclusively white, were being aimed, instead, at a white president, by people of color. How many whites viewing the anger, the hatred, the contempt for that white president would then wax eloquent about free speech, and the glories of democracy? And how many would be calling for further crackdowns on thuggish behavior, and investigations into the radical agendas of those same people of color?

To ask any of these questions is to answer them. Protest is only seen as fundamentally American when those who have long had the luxury of seeing themselves as prototypically American engage in it. When the dangerous and dark “other” does so, however, it isn’t viewed as normal or natural, let alone patriotic. Which is why Rush Limbaugh could say, this past week, that the Tea Parties are the first time since the Civil War that ordinary, common Americans stood up for their rights: a statement that erases the normalcy and “American-ness” of blacks in the civil rights struggle, not to mention women in the fight for suffrage and equality, working people in the fight for better working conditions, and LGBT folks as they struggle to be treated as full and equal human beings.

And this, my friends, is what white privilege is all about. The ability to threaten others, to engage in violent and incendiary rhetoric without consequence, to be viewed as patriotic and normal no matter what you do, and never to be feared and despised as people of color would be, if they tried to get away with half the shit we do, on a daily basis.

Game Over.

Tim Wise is among the most prominent anti-racist writers and activists in the U.S. Wise has spoken in 48 states, on over 400 college campuses, and to community groups around the nation. Wise has provided anti-racism training to teachers nationwide, and has trained physicians and medical industry professionals on how to combat racial inequities in health care. His latest book is called Between Barack and a Hard Place.

American Helicopter Gunners Laugh As They Take Innocent Life – A Must See!!

My lord!! What the hell is going on? A bunch of right wing tea partiers want to shoot cops while military personnel begs to be given the authority to shoot innocent people that includes two journalist working for American news services. Seven noncombatants were killed in the Baghdad attack — among them a driver (Saeed Chmagh) and photographer (Namir Noor-Eldeen) employed by the Reuters news service. Reuters, indeed, had been seeking to obtain internal Pentagon materials pertaining to the attack — including the footage that went online yesterday — for the past three years, using the Freedom of Information Act. The agency's efforts had so far proved fruitless. Now you can see the killings first hand. Listen to the gunners laugh as they take human life. To what has America come? I pray to God that America comes to its senses and begins to recognize the true God of justice and righteousness, so it might  foster the humane treatment of humans.  Buckle up!! The video is truly a rough ride. Thank you for listening to AjabuSpeaks.

http://www.collateralmurder.com/

Post-Hutaree: How Glenn Beck and Fox News spread the militia message

April 06, 2010 8:38 am ET

Reading last week's disturbing news accounts about the Midwestern arrest of nine alleged members of a Christian militia known as the Hutaree, a group whose members were reportedly planning to kill cops in order to spark a wider, armed revolt against the U.S. government, I noticed this nugget [emphasis added]:

FBI agents moved quickly against Hutaree because its members were planning an attack sometime in April, prosecutors said.

My hunch is the self-described "warriors" of the Hutaree probably circled April 19 on their calendars for any cop-killing fantasy they might have planned to pull off. Why April 19? That was the day, 17 years ago, when the FBI staged its final failed assault on cult leader David Koresh's heavily armed compound in Waco, Texas. It was on April 19, 1993, following a 51-day siege, that Koresh's fanatical followers, rather than surrendering to authorities, staged mass suicides (and, in some cases, executions) as the compound burned to the ground.

Precisely two years later, on April 19, 1995, right-wing zealot Timothy McVeigh commemorated the Waco inferno by declaring war on the federal government and blowing up his rented Ryder truck outside of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. McVeigh's act of far-right radical terrorism sheared the north side off the Murrah Building, killing 168 people and injuring hundreds more. ("I reached the decision to go on the offensive -- to put a check on government abuse of power," McVeigh later wrote.)

April 19 remains an almost mythical date among dedicated government haters. It's a date that lives in infamy as proof of the dark consequences of when a tyrannical government (run by Democrats) turns on its own.

So yeah, as the Hutaree gun nuts allegedly plotted in the woods of Michigan on the best way to kill cops, pieced together their seditious plans to wage war on the U.S. government, and planned their upcoming confrontation with the Antichrist, I'm guessing the landmark militia day of April 19 loomed large.

For anyone who thought the dark, Waco-fueled chapter of domestic extremism in this country was behind us, the Hutaree arrests were a jarring reminder that, with the election of another Democratic president, the violent militia message is back.

And it's stronger than ever.

Not only have the number of radical-right extremist groups exploded in the wake of President Obama's election (more than 500 today, as compared to just 200 during the 1990s), but these militia members now have a proud sponsor in the person of Fox News' Glenn Beck, who has done more than any other person to amplify and mainstream the movement's hateful and foreboding anti-government message. Beck continues to give a voice, and national platform, to the same deranged, hard-core militia haters and self-style "patriots" who hounded the new, young Democratic president in the early 1990s in the wake of Waco.

On TV and the radio, Beck rarely bothers to mention the militia movement by name. Instead, he's simply co-opted their rhetoric as his own. He's acted as a crucial transmitter, warning about Obama fronting his own private "army," and urging followers to "start food storage."

Not to mention these previous militia moments:

• ·         Beck asserts: "The second American revolution is being playing out right now"
• ·         Beck says "what is ahead may loosen the bonds of society," may end with "a French Revolution"
• ·         Beck: "There is a coup going on ... it has been done through the guise of an election"
• ·         Beck: "You can't convince me that the founding fathers wouldn't allow you to secede"
• ·        

The truth is that the daylight separating the radical, anti-government militia movement from self-styled mainstream conservatives is growing dimmer by the day. Like the fact-free Obama birthers, the militia remains a radical subset that today's right wing refuses to part ways with. That sad fact was highlighted when scores of far-right media voices initially downplayed the Hutaree arrests last week, or even defended the militia members and -- disturbingly reminiscent of Waco -- cast the FBI and the federal government as the over-reaching bad guys.

And at Fox News, it's not just Beck. The cable "news" channel's militia-flavored message (beware gun-toting IRS agents!) has been as simple as it's been relentless: Obama is destroying this country and he's doing it intentionally. It's not that people disagree with Obama and don't like what they call his "liberal" policies as applied to the economy and health care reform, etc. Instead, the conflict is much more dire. Obama is not just misguided in this political and legislative agenda. Instead, Obama is the incarnation of evil (the Antichrist?), and his driving hatred for America, as well as for democracy, runs so deep that he ran for president in order to destroy the United States from within.

Right on cue last week, Rush Limbaugh, who serves as sort of a militia godfather theses days, issued this back-against-the-wall warning: "Our country is being overthrown from within."

That's exactly what militias were saying about Clinton back in the 1990s, as historian David Bennett recently noted:

"I love my country but I fear my government," one bumper sticker proclaimed in the 1990s. A small North Carolina group of "Christian" constitutional literalists proposed to "resist the coming New World Order" by "removing treasonous politicians and corrupt judges." As today, they feared a liberal "tyrant" in the White House. At a gun rights rally in Michigan in 1995, a T-shirt called President Clinton a "Socialist-Marxist Comma-Nazi" ...

Sound familiar?

Folks, we're witnessing a militia rerun. Except this time, thanks to the likes of Beck and Fox News, the unwanted repeat is being broadcast nationwide.

Actually, today's hysterical warnings are probably even more extreme than the last time a Democrat sat in the Oval Office. What's disturbing is that instead of having to trade copies of The Turner Diaries, relying on grassroots fax networks, or traveling to gun shows to hear that kind of incendiary insurrectionist rhetoric (i.e. the president must be stopped!), haters can just turn on the highest-rated cable news channel.

In a way, I wonder why militiamen bother to form groups anymore if Fox News is willing to embrace and broadcast their fervent, anti-government New World Order rants on a daily basis? The militia flourished on the fringes in the 1990s, in part, because those on the far-right felt like their government-hating message was being ignored. But today it's celebrated and broadcast nationally. Talkers like Beck have trumped the militia movement. They've completely co-opted the message and made the groups increasingly irrelevant as Fox News cuts out the middleman -- the militia groups -- and hijacks their insurrectionist, government-hating rhetoric.

Don't think there's a larger connection? Just look at the initial reaction when news broke about the Hutaree arrests. The knee-jerk response from some right-wing bloggers to either defend the militia members, or at least raise all kinds of doubts and partisan suspicions about the law enforcement raids, told us all we needed to know about where their true allegiances lie. Meaning, conservative voices immediately telegraphed their support from the persecuted militiamen and clearly suggested they were being used as pawns in an Obama government abuse of power.

Blogger Pamela Geller complained that the FBI raids were "nuts." Glenn Beck's radio guest host Chris Baker decried the Hutaree arrests as "nothing more than attack on faith and free speech." And Washington Times columnist and frequent Fox News talker Monica Crowley likened Hutaree members to proud patriots, as she squarely placed the blame on the government for squelching the militia's right to dissent:

The Democrats handle dissent by isolating it, smearing it and delegitimizing it in order to crush it. The warning should be clear: If you have small-government, traditional values, you may be considered by your own leadership to be an enemy of the state.

Keep in mind that both Geller and Crowley conveniently forgot to inform readers that the militia members had been arraigned on charges of plotting to kill cops. Apparently that fact no longer moves the needle in today's right-wing media, which has severed its traditional ties with the law-and-order movement and instead today pledges its allegiance to whoever hates the government -- and Democrats -- the most.

Other conservative media voices rushed in to downplay the Hutaree news last week. At Lucianne Goldberg's site, the wannabe cop killers were portrayed as "dimwits that [sic] couldn't recognize a decent deer hunt." A New York Post editorial dismissed the armed Christian "warriors" as "a few guys in the woods with guns." And when not mocking the FBI's raid and raising doubts about the need for arrests, the right-wing blog Confederate Yankee referred to the Hutaree not as an anti-government militia group, but as a religious "cult." (Nice try.)

Still others took a third path, suggesting politics were behind the militia crackdown. For instance, this was what Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds instinctively wrote about the Hutaree raid:

THE TIMING APPEARS CONVENIENT

Reynolds, along with other right-wing bloggers, suggested the arrests were politically motivated; that the raid was perhaps part of a government-wide conspiracy to spotlight conservatives in a negative light and stymie dissent. Rather than immediately denouncing anti-government extremists who may have been plotting to kill cops, Reynolds played up the partisan angle, suggesting the timing of the raid was a bit too "convenient." (Of course it was convenient, but not in the way Reynolds meant: The FBI claimed the extremists were poised to strike this month, so naturally that wanted to act before then.)

And oh, by the way, at Tea Party Patriots: Official Home of the American Tea Party Movement, this was the headline that immediately went up after the first bulletins about the militia raids were posted:

That's right, some Tea Party leaders instinctively tagged the Hutaree compound as one of their own as it came under attack from federal law enforcement officials. And can you blame them? Today's right-wing, Obama-hating rhetoric -- as amplified by Glenn Beck and much of the GOP Noise Machine -- is indistinguishable from the militia message.

That frightening kinship is obvious for everyone to see and hear.

Follow Eric Boehlert on Twitter.

The following video is a white woman confessing that she grew up in a home where her father was an overt racist and her mother was a covert racist. She feels her mother was more dangerous than her father. What she says too often reflects the positions, in my opinion, taken by Dawn and Jason on this blog. My question for them both; Is this woman exposing the foundation from which you think? I would even venture to say that it is this woman's illumination of white cognition that is the foundation from which most of the white conservative backlash to President Obama's healthcare reform comes. She even talks about how white supremacy used black preachers to sustain their white supremacy. We all know that Christianity was used by the slave master as a tool of mind control. History bears witness that the white people in America that enslaved Black people from Africa, saw themselves as Christians. When Blacks learned how to read we found that the Christianity given Blacks by white people was much different from the words that were in the Bible. That Christianity was a tool of mind control to sustain slavery. Unfortunately, some preachers still today are still teaching this same slave Christianity. This is the reason why many white folks were upset with Rev. Jerimiah Wright. He was not teaching and preaching slave obey your master. Jerimiah didn't teach do not  rebel against oppression. Just turn the other cheek. Some of us embraced the slave master's religion and didn't change its parameters to forward our liberation.  Black and white must unite so that we see the humanity in us all no matter what is our appearance. In this season of Easter it is time for a resurrection of self. We must see ourselves in others so we can do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Wake up people or we're all through! You must listen to the candor of this white woman. You must see the video. All comments are welcome. Thank you for listening to AjabuSpeaks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=881z9aWUel8&feature=related Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skw5jAOfkOk&feature=related Part 2

The Rage Is Not About Healthcare

 The below article by Frank Rich clearly uses history to make the point that the rage being expressed basically by white people who are Republicans is not about health care. As Bishop Benjamin so aptly put it in his sermon yesterday when he asked the question, “why would people who need healthcare be opposed to receiving healthcare?” The answer is that this minority of white people, who are mainly republican, see the once superior role of white people eroding to be equal to all others in America. Now I am not just stating that the tea partiers’ are white and republican because I am a diehard democratic who wants to take the opportunity to disparage white republicans. I truly don’t care what label you put on yourself. The question that answers for me who you are is what is in your heart. So don’t think that I have that political agenda. “A Quinnipiac poll last week found that 74 percent of Tea Party members identify themselves as Republicans or Republican-leaning independents, while only 16 percent are aligned with Democrats.” I am just reporting the facts. And I state again, that I feel, and I say that I feel because I have no substantial facts, but I feel that the members of the Tea Party are a minority of the white people in America. I don’t want to believe that a majority of whites in America want to stand in the way of history. History has proven time and time again that one can make history, but one can’t stop it.

 Here in Indianapolis we have a chance to make history. Jose Evans, a Black man, is running for mayor. There has never been a Black Mayor in Indianapolis. It is time. Nobody can become mayor in Indianapolis without some support from the Black community. It is time that Black folks around the world, particularly here in Indianapolis, begin to support ourselves first, before we look for others to support. I am basically saying that the tea partiers are not wrong to support themselves but I am saying they are using the wrong tactics. The demographics of America are changing. The tea partiers are concerned, in fact a better word for their behavior would be frightened, that America no longer looks like it did when George Washington was first elected President. “The Times reported that births to Asian, black and Hispanic women accounted for 48 percent of all births in America in the 12 months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority.” The tide of history is minimizing the numbers of whites in America. That means that the numbers of Blacks and Hispanics in Indianapolis is probably on the rise. We must go with the flow of history. It is time for a Black man to be the Mayor of Indianapolis. ALL THE WAY, JOSE! YES WE CAN! YES WE WILL! We mustn’t let money be the issue that stops history from being made. Donate to Jose’s campaign now!!

                   http://www.evansforindy.com     

 Don’t get in the way of history. It is like a tide. If we go with the flow, then we ride the cress stay on top of the water and survive. If we resist then we get caught up in the currents and drown. Let’s ride the cress be we Black or white. History demands that America accept its change. Thank you for listening to AjabuSpeaks.

 March 28, 2010

Op-Ed Columnist The Rage Is Not About Health Care

By FRANK RICH

 THERE were times when last Sunday’s great G.O.P. health care implosion threatened to bring the thrill back to reality television. On ABC’s “This Week,” a frothing and filibustering Karl Rove all but lost it in a debate with the Obama strategist David Plouffe. A few hours later, the perennially copper-faced Republican leader John Boehner revved up his “Hell no, you can’t” incantation in the House chamber is instant fodder for a new viral video remixing his rap with will.i.am’s Yes, we can classic from the campaign. Boehner, having previously likened the health care bill to

Armageddon, was now so apoplectic you had to wonder if he had just discovered one of its more obscure revenue-generating provisions, a tax on indoor tanning salons.  But the laughs evaporated soon enough. There’s nothing entertaining about watching goons hurl venomous slurs at congressmen like the civil rights hero John Lewis and the openly gay Barney Frank. And as the week dragged on, and reports of death threats and vandalism stretched from Arizona to Kansas to upstate New York, the F.B.I. and the local police had to get into the act to protect members of Congress and their families.  How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn’t recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht. The weapon of choice for vigilante violence at Congressional offices has been a brick hurled through a window. So far.

No less curious is how disproportionate this red-hot anger is to its proximate cause. The historic Obama-Pelosi health care victory is a big deal, all right, so much so it doesn’t need Joe Biden’s adjective (f_ _ _ing) to hype it. But the bill does not erect a huge New Deal-Great Society-style government program. In lieu of a public option, it delivers 32 million newly insured Americans to private insurers. As no less a conservative authority than The Wall Street Journal editorial page observed last week, the bill’s prototype is the health care legislation Mitt Romney signed into law in Massachusetts. It contains what used to be considered Republican ideas. Yet it’s this bill that inspired G.O.P. congressmen on the House floor to egg on disruptive protesters even as they were being evicted from the gallery by the Capitol Police last Sunday. It’s this bill that prompted a congressman to shout “baby killer” at Bart Stupak, a staunch anti-abortion Democrat. It’s this bill that drove a demonstrator to spit on Emanuel Cleaver, a black representative from Missouri. And it’s this “middle-of-the-road” bill, as Obama accurately calls it that has incited an unglued firestorm of homicidal rhetoric, from “Kill the bill” to Sarah Palin’s cry for her followers to “reload.” At least four of the House members hit with death threats or vandalism are among the 20 political targets Palin marks with rifle crosshairs on a map on her Facebook page.

 When Social Security was passed by Congress in 1935 and Medicare in 1965, there was indeed heated opposition. As Dana Milbank wrote in The Washington Post, Alf Landon built his catastrophic 1936 presidential campaign on a call for repealing Social Security. (Democrats can only pray that the G.O.P. will go for it again in 2010, as Obama goaded them on Thursday, and keep demanding repeal of a bill that by September will shower benefits on the elderly and children alike.) When L.B.J. scored his Medicare coup, there were the inevitable cries of socialism along with ultimately empty rumblings of a boycott from the American Medical Association. But there was nothing like this. To find a prototype for the overheated reaction to the health care bill, you have to look a year before Medicare, to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Both laws passed by similar majorities in Congress; the Civil Rights Act received even more votes in the Senate (73) than Medicare (70). But it was only the civil rights bill that made some Americans run off the rails. That’s because it was the one that signaled an inexorable and immutable change in the very identity of America, not just its governance.

 The apocalyptic predictions then, like those about health care now, were all framed in constitutional pieties, of course. Barry Goldwater, running for president in ‘64, drew on the counsel of two young legal allies, William Rehnquist and Robert Bork, to characterize the bill as a “threat to the very essence of our basic system” and a usurpation of states’ rights that would force you to admit drunks, a known murderer or an insane person into your place of business. Richard Russell, the segregationist Democratic senator from Georgia, said the bill “would destroy the free enterprise system.” David Lawrence, a widely syndicated conservative columnist, bemoaned the establishment of a federal dictatorship. Meanwhile, three civil rights workers were murdered in Philadelphia, Miss.

That a tsunami of anger is gathering today is illogical, given that what the right calls Obamacare is less provocative than either the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Medicare, an epic entitlement that actually did precipitate a government takeover of a sizable chunk of American health care. But the explanation is plain: the health care bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled America in 1964.

In fact, the current surge of anger and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism predates the entire health care debate. The first signs were the shrieks of traitor and off with his head at Palin rallies as Obama’s election became more likely in October 2008. Those passions have spiraled ever since from Gov. Rick Perry’s kowtowing to secessionists at a Tea Party rally in Texas to the gratuitous brandishing of assault weapons at Obama health care rallies last summer to “You lie!” piercing the president’s address to Congress last fall like an ominous shot.

 If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver,none of them major Democratic players in the health care push, received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!” these are the people they want to take the country back from.

 They can’t. Demographics are avatars of a change bigger than any bill contemplated by Obama or Congress. The week before the health care vote, The Times reported that births to Asian, black and Hispanic women accounted for 48 percent of all births in America in the 12 months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the

House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded. If Congressional Republicans want to maintain a politburo-like homogeneity in opposition to the Democrats, that’s their right. If they want to replay the petulant Gingrich government shutdown of 1995 by boycotting hearings and, as John McCain has vowed, refusing to cooperate on any legislation, that’s their right too (and a political gift to the Democrats). But they can’t emulate the 1995 G.O.P. by remaining silent as mass hysteria, some of it encompassing armed militias, runs amok in their own precincts. We know the end of that story. And they can’t pretend that we’re talking about isolated incidents or a fringe utterly divorced from the G.O.P. A Quinnipiac poll last week found that 74 percent of Tea Party members identify themselves as Republicans or Republican-leaning independents, while only 16 percent are aligned with Democrats.

 After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, some responsible leaders in both parties spoke out to try to put a lid on the resistance and violence. The arch-segregationist Russell of Georgia, concerned about what might happen in his own backyard, declared flatly that the law is now on the books. Yet no Republican or conservative leader of stature has taken on Palin, Perry, Boehner or any of the others who have been stoking these fires for a good 17 months now. Last week McCain even endorsed Palin’s reload rhetoric. Are these politicians so frightened of offending anyone in the Tea Party-Glenn Beck base that they would rather fall silent than call out its extremist elements and their enablers? Seemingly so, and if G.O.P. leaders of all stripes, from Romney to Mitch McConnell to Olympia Snowe to Lindsey Graham, are afraid of these forces, that’s the strongest possible indicator that the rest of us have reason to fear them too. 

Correction: Timothy Geithner’s title at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York was president and chief executive officer, not chairman, as I wrote here last week.

CHOSEN BLACK LEADERSHIP OVER SELF APPOINTED
AL SHARPTON VS TAVIS SMILEY

I was going to stay out of this mess but on second thought, I’m going to have my say. It appears that Tavis is threatened by Barack becoming the President. Before Barack’s historic journey for some reason Tavis thought he was the HNIC. Let me share a small possibly unknown Black history fact. Tavis there never has been one Black in charge of all Blacks in this country. And it is a shame that we are not organized enough to have one Black person who can speak to the aspirations of all Black people. It would be a really meaningful goal if in your forums (The State Of Black America –SOBA) that you would push the idea of creating the structure for Black people to determine by our own choice, who is going to speak for us. It is clear that President Obama speaks for the nation and rightly so. That was what he was elected to do. Why can’t we as Black people create the infrastructure so we vote for the one person who is going to speak for Black people for the next four years. Obviously the President of the United States doesn't speak for us whether he is Black or white.

Now Glen you are normally a pretty straight shooter, however in this disagreement you seem to be taking the side of Tavis. If you listen to the conversation between Tavis and Al that played out on Al’s show you hear clearly that Tavis’ is lying.

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=02&year=2010&base_name=sharpton_vs_smiley

He is quoting a New York Times’ article that came out before Al and others met at the White House. Tavis telling mistruths to make his point is never acceptable. I am wondering why you are feeding into Tavis' lie as being a foundation from which to agree with him. Glen, what is really going on here? You are right. We must hold each other accountable. I am attempting to hold you accountable. You must account for what looks like an attempt by you to justify Tavis' deception. You and Tavis are making the New York Times a prophetic paper that can write about the outcome of a meeting before the meeting even takes place. Listen to the interview when Rev. Al makes this point. Tavis never responds to it and now you are using his obvious lie to say you support Tavis and Tavis is right!! What are you doing? Where has your integrity gone? I am giving you the benefit of the doubt that you have listened and understood the complete exchange between Rev. Al and Tavis. Surely you are not writing about something that you haven't listen to?

I would again state that the best thing that can happen out of all this mess is an infrastructure being devised that allows Black people to choose our leader instead of having to accept these self appointed people as the leadership. I repeat again, there is no person in the United States of America that has been chosen by Black people to represent our interests and aspirations of Black people in America. I don't care whether that person is the President, Senator, Congressman, Mayor, Governor, etc. There maybe Blacks in all of these positions, however none of them were elected to represent the interests of Black people. Wouldn't you agree? Isn't time that we have our own elected voice? Come hear more March 10, 2009 at 7PM at Light Of The World Christian Church. I will follow up on this message.The title of the message is "Family Mess." Your comments are sought and welcomed. Thank you for listening to AjabuSpeaks.

Smiley vs.Sharpton: A Potemkin Drama

By Glen Ford

Created 03/03/2010 - 12:28

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

Things are getting ugly in Black misleadership circles, as Rev. Al Sharpton attempts to send Tavis Smiley into permanent purgatory for being “notoriously anti the president.” But Smiley won’t go quietly. He’s taking names of those who continue to give Barack Obama a “pass.”

Smiley vs.Sharpton: A Potemkin Drama

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

“Sharpton and his crowd have devolved to meek and ridiculous access-seekers with no significant agenda to ‘ballyhoo.’”

Last week’s live broadcast confrontation between Tavis Smiley and Rev. Al Sharpton was a perfect window into the incoherence and utter ineffectuality of what passes for African American leadership. Smiley, the media entrepreneur, for ten years (2000-’09) staged an annual electronic facsimile of Black political life, purporting to represent, as spelled out in the production’s title, the “State of the Black Union [1]” – SOBU. Smiley choreographed the event, a ritualized “coming together” that gave the illusion of Black “unity” and motion when, In fact, the showcase was structurally incapable of effectively addressing – much less resolving – any issue of importance. Nor was it meant to be anything but a media happening, a kind of Black Potemkin Village where luminaries strutted, pandered and pontificated on cue – a manufactured drama creating an aura of relevance and the impression of movement: a substitute for a real Black people’s Movement.

Tavis sold lots of books along the way, preaching a “covenant [2]” that would bind his show’s performers and a hungry Black audience to a preached-at but not fought-for state of being that could be achieved through presentation, alone.

Smiley cemented his status as Grandmaster of a holographic politics consisting of a soundstage, on which electronic icons pushed the envelope of contention no farther than the theatrical constraints of an agreed-upon “unity” would allow – never nearly enough to reveal any contradictions demanding resolution for the sake of future of The Race.

”Black political theater was bum-rushed by the Obama phenomenon.”

Then came Obama, and the undoing of Smiley’s skillfully crafted media diversion, trumped by the mega-show of a serious (i.e. corporate-funded) Black presidential campaign. Black political theater – even Smiley’s choreographed and meticulously casted all-Black format – was bum-rushed by the Obama phenomenon, which plumbed the brass-ring aspirations of an eternally marginalized people. All hands rushed to get on the Showboat, where dreams rooted in at least one side of the Black brain might be realized – and where the money surely was.

Smiley attempted in two successive years to lasso candidate Obama onto his stage set for a SOBU appearance. But such an association was anathema to the politician who made his deepest impression on the mass white psyche with his 2004 Democratic National Convention declaration that there was “no Black America…only the United States of America.” Of course Obama would not come to a “State of the Black” anything. Blacks were to be neutered as a prerequisite of national unity – and Obama’s political fortunes.

Smiley protested on the righteous political grounds that a candidate whose entire strategy was to lock up the Black vote by virtue of his own ethnicity and then proceed outward, should at least find time to appear in the Black political Potemkin Village. He might as well have cursed God. After 11 years as commentator on the hugely popular Tom Joyner Morning Show syndication, Smiley was forced out [3] in April, 2008, by "the hate he's been getting regarding the Barack issue – hate from the black people that he loves so much," said Joyner, who had himself joined the mob. Smiley held the last of his “State of the Black Union” gatherings in 2009, although maintaining his public radio and TV programs.

Sharpton’s Paymasters

Rev. Al Sharpton had long been one of the stock performers in the televised SOBU mini-spectacles. An acolyte of entertainer James Brown and sports hustler/gangster Don King, Sharpton is programmed to cut a deal – for himself. He keeps bad company and tends to wind up, like most people who parlay with low-lifes, being captured by them. Or more likely, he is himself hopelessly degraded. Thus it was not strange that his 2004 Democratic presidential campaign came under the control of Roger Stone, a far-right Republican political hit man whom even polite GOPers find unsavory (see The Black Commentator, February 5, 2004 [4]) – an underground passage Sharpton has navigated so often it must be considered his modus operandi.

Following the scent of bottomless corporate pockets, Sharpton in the Obama era made common cause with New York billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg’s vast political/financial network, a capitalist empire fully enmeshed with Barack Obama’s own Wall Street lifeline. With $500,000 laundered [5] through Bloomberg cronies’ accounts, Sharpton joined arch-racist Newt Gingrich for a salt-and-pepper tour touting Obama’s campaign to replace public schools with charters and break teachers unions, nationwide. He has graduated to full-fledged operative of the White House/Wall Street nexus, and will advocate nothing that might seriously upset his sugar daddies. Sharpton is finally playing in the big casino.

“Sharpton made common cause with New York billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg’s vast political/financial network.”

The National Action Movement leader joined NAACP president Ben Jealous and National Urban League chief Marc Morial for a snow-packed Black History Month meeting at the White House, February 13, from which the trio emerged proclaiming that “we have a president who get’s it” about the need to address Depression-level Black unemployment – albeit without directly targeting the particulars of the Black condition or promising any program adequate to the general crisis. (See BAR [6], “Sharpton, Jealous and Morial Make Small Talk at the Big House.”) Sharpton volunteered that the Black “leaders” might be of use in persuading Republicans to cooperate on the jobs issue.

The president did not dignify the meeting or his Black admirers’ analysis with a comment.

The previous week, Sharpton was reported to have told the New York Times [7] the president was “smart not to ballyhoo ‘a black agenda’” – the meaning of which quote would become central to the radio throw-down between Tavis Smiley and Sharpton.

Smiley’s Manifesto

Tavis is not Mr. Smiley unless he is building Potemkin Villages in the airwaves. Eager to get back in the center of the magic circle, Smiley returned to his old forum, the Tom Joyner Morning Show, to market yet another gathering of “leaders,” set for March 20 at Chicago State University. This time, it would be a great debate over a Black agenda. Some folks in the circle, he tried to convey [8], were singing the wrong song:

“The President doesn’t need a Black agenda, they sing. He’s not the president of Black America, he’s the president of all America, and he need not focus specifically on the unique challenges Black America is facing, they sing.I know ‘What’s going on.’ I know ‘We shall overcome,’ but I don’t know this new tune, ‘the president doesn’t need a Black agenda.”

Smiley called out the off-key performers, and produced a list of others who, he vouched, had remained in tune with the ancestors:

“I say this lovingly, they’re all friends and freedom fighters…but Al Sharpton, Ben Jealous, Charles Ogletree, Valerie Jarrett, Marc Morial, Dr. Dorothy Height, will also be joined by some other crooners who I think do want us singing a different song…Barbara Lee, Angela Glover Blackwell, Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson, Jesse Jackson, just for example.

“Other invited singers include Louis Farrakhan who hasn’t been singing much of late, but who has a solo I’m told he’s ready to share. Should be some kind of choir rehearsal to get us all singing the same song, Saturday, March 20, in Chicago, on national television.

“Do we think that we can give President Obama a pass on Black issues and somehow when he’s no longer in office, just resurrect the moral authority to hold future presidents accountable to our concerns? How does that work? You give one president a pass on Black issues, but when he’s gone, you go right back to trying to hold the next president accountable. I don’t get how we’re going to do that.”

A great debate, or an attempt to choreograph an exercise in false “unity?” Smiley appears to think he can pull off both, simultaneously. But later that day Al Sharpton was in his junkyard, howling.

In the studio for his daily radio show [9] with his guest and buddy, Harvard Professor Charles Ogletree, who taught both Barack and Michelle Obama, Rev. Sharpton accepted Tavis Smiley’s call:

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=02&year=2010&base_name=sharpton_vs_smiley        

SMILEY: How are you?

SHARPTON: I was fine until you started messing with me this morning. What’s wrong with you?

SMILEY: We need a conversation about whether or not there needs to be a Black agenda…. When there are certain African American leaders…who are quoted [as saying] that this president doesn’t need to have an African American agenda, given that Black folk are getting crushed, I said we need to come together to have a conversation about what that means. I think there’s a disconnect between those kinds of quotes and Black people [interrupted]…

SHARPTON: No, I think there’s a disconnect between what you’re saying and what was said. First of all, we never said that, and the New York Times never said we said that. [Smiley tries to interrupt] And if you thought we had said that you should have picked up the phone and asked us.

Smiley read the relevant Times copy aloud, but Sharpton’s awesome powers of obfuscation were in full display:

SHARPTON: I said that if you were getting ready to have an event then you’d be smart not to ballyhoo a certain segment of the event. That does not mean I don’t think you should have the event or emphasize something. What you just read is nowhere near what you said, Tavis.

And so it went, with Sharpton characterizing Smiley’s challenge on the Tom Joyner show as “disingenuous” and “lies.” But the Times didn’t take Sharpton’s statement that Obama was “smart not to ballyhoo ‘a black agenda’” out of context, and Smiley’s reading of the remarks was correct. The Reverend and his fellow unrepentant Obamites have been giving the president a “pass” since he first appeared on the national scene, allowing him to tack further to the Right with every passing day. And they are demanding a pass for themselves, as well, for wholly abdicating their responsibility as “leaders” to formulate a Black agenda worthy of the name, and to confront power with demands based on that agenda. Sharpton and his crowd have devolved to meek and ridiculous access-seekers with no significant agenda to “ballyhoo” – except the president’s own, corporate agenda.

“The Reverend and his fellow unrepentant Obamites have been giving the president a ‘pass’ since he first appeared on the national scene.”

These inert human objects cannot even be described as annexes to the administration, since Obama finds it politically inconvenient to recognize them as such. Their irrelevance is near total.

Although meek as a lamb with Obama, Sharpton played by Don King rules in lashing out at Smiley, whom he would eject from the inner sanctum for being “notoriously anti the president.” Tavis has no right to call a leadership meeting in Chicago or anywhere else, said Sharpton. “Some of the objective people who have not been pro or con the president should convene it.” At any rate, “I’m not going to be there.”

In truth, there is little point in organizing a gathering of people who will not fight. No matter how huge the herd, sheep are still sheep. Leadership is not to be found on a sound stage, but in struggle. As we build a new movement, we will grow a new leadership.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com [10]

A Short History Of Black Voting In America

Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone.  What do you mean by saying ‘You will be made free’?” (John 8:31-33).

In this scripture we see that the Jews to whom Jesus spoke were evidently not aware that their fore parents had been led by Moses out of bondage in Egypt. Humm.

Harriet Tubman was a runaway slave from Maryland who became known as the "Moses of her people." Over the course of 10 years, and at great personal risk, she led hundreds of slaves to freedom along the Underground Railroad, a secret network of safe houses where runaway slaves could stay on their journey north to freedom. Harriett Tubman is quoted as saying “I could have freed more, if they only knew they were enslaved.”  So the above mentioned Jews did not know they were enslaved.  Many Blacks during slavery, according to Harriett Tubman, didn’t even know they were slaves while being enslaved. Ok, I know you are now asking yourself where I am going with this. I advise you buckle up. The ride gets a little rough from here on out.

There are Black folks right now today in Indianapolis, Indiana that are still in slavery. Any time a person does not have the full rights of all other citizens then that person is enslaved. The denial of a person’s full citizenship determines the degree of enslavement which amounts to the degree that full citizenship is denied. Let me give you some examples.

A person convicted of a felon who can’t get employment because of the felon is enslaved to the degree that they can’t get employment. People with felons are to a large extent modern day slaves. Some people who are convicted felons manage to get employed. Lord knows I thank Bishop Benjamin for the opportunity that he has provided for me. However, the enslavement of a convicted felon goes further than employment. Are you buckled up?

It was revealed in the infamous 1856 Dred Scott decision that Blacks (particularly Black men) voted long before the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The Democratic controlled US Supreme Court ruled that Blacks “had no rights which a white man was bound to respect; and that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit (Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393, 407 (1856).

The Supreme Court ruled that by law it might be to the benefit of a Black person to be enslaved. My Lord!! Watch this!! We are no longer enslaved. Right? The question to be answered now is not a fight for access; we have the vote, now we must seek success. In other words, how do we use this vote to become successful? Right now here in Indianapolis we have a Black man appointed to be deputy mayor. Olgen Williams, although qualified, can’t be mayor because he is a convicted felon. He was fortunate enough to get a pardon from President George H. Bush. Don’t get alarmed, he has stated this personal information publicly, plus it is in his book. But even with the pardon we cannot vote for him to be Mayor. For some reason this city, does not want to let the past be the past. Indianapolis, and Indiana keeps letting the past affect the future because by law a convicted felon cannot run for local or state office. This means a person never serves out the term although the punishment given by the courts has been satisfied. If the mayor’s office was a federal office then being a convicted felon would not stop Olgen from running for mayor. A convicted felon by law can run for federal office. Olgen is enslaved locally by the degree that he cannot run for local or state office. Now this is where Harriett Tubman’s words come into play. All of us could be freed if we only understood that we are still enslaved. Rev. Ajabu, what are you talking about? Check your belt. Make sure it’s buckled. The ride is really rough from here.

All people in Indiana are enslaved. If a convicted felon is the best person for a local or state office no Indiana citizen can vote for that person because the law won’t let that person run. Therefore, a certain part of our citizenship is denied because we can’t vote for someone we might possibly want to vote.  It is time for Indiana to let go of the past so we all can move together toward the future. It is time for law to not be a deterrent to stopping people from holding political office. Whether a person is Black, White, Hispanic, and a convicted felon this should not stop them from becoming the Mayor of Indianapolis. Indiana and Indianapolis voted for Senator Obama to be President. In the past a Black man could not have been Mayor of Indianapolis, let alone President of the United States of America. If we can do it on the national level, then why not do it on the local level. To hold someone’s past over their head is to say that person is not free. It is time; no it’s past time, for Indiana to move into the twenty first century. Harriet said, more of us could have been freed, if we only knew we were enslaved. Jesus said we should know the truth, and the truth will set us free. Now you know the truth. Convicted felons at this time can never be fully free in Indiana, and neither can we. It is time for all to be free. Now you are aware, of a little known black history fact. What are you going to do so all can be free? Will the freedom loving Americans of Indiana please stand up!! May God order the steps of all righteous people. Come hear more March 10, 2009 at 7PM. I will follow up on this message. Thank you for listening to AjabuSpeaks.