Thursday, December 31, 2009
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Some things you need to know
Alfred A. Edmond Jr.
BlackEnterprise.com Editor
Inherent in God's commandment that I love my neighbor as I love myself is that if I don't love myself, I won't love my neighbor.
Success results from fulfilling your potential; greatness results from helping others to fulfill theirs.
Fears always causes far more suffering than the things I'm afraid of--most of which never come to pass or aren't nearly as bad as imagined. Fear does not herald the coming of the enemy--it IS the enemy. I shall not surrender to it. God is on my side. (Joshua 1:9)
Don't forfeit your joy in the present because you're too focused on trying to recapture the past and chase the future.
Adults recognize leaders the same way kids do. Who does what they say they'll do? Who can I rely on? Who pays attention to me?
Don't be so caught up in prayer that you forget to praise. God should hear "Thank You!" at least as much as He hears "Please?"
In the midst of battle, don't be so focused on the enemy that you lose sight of your goal. Check for the haters, but keep your eyes on the prize, and be encouraged!
I made it this far because others pray for me when I don't have the sense to pray for myself. Lord, I am grateful! Let's rejoice in the day and pray for one another!
Living in the past is prison. Living for the future is slavery. Freedom can be found only in the now. Be present, & be free.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Free the Scott Sisters.
Please put the petition on your page and encourage all your friends to sign. We can make a difference when we work together.
http://www.change.org/actions/view/free_the_scott_sisters_2
http://www.tagged.com/freethescottsisters
Learn more here - JUSTICE FOR ALL
http://www.ronsworldlife.com/
Friday, October 16, 2009
Just a little grove to help you feel your life move "good God" Maceo Parker plays Marvin Gaye "Let's Get It On" WE CAN CHANGE THE WORLD When we change our self, Then We can change our community, Then We can change our city or town, Then We can change our state, Then We can change our country, This will bring change to our world!!! We Are The Ones to make this change happen.......... ______________________ Love is the answer, A active love that makes us stand for justice, push for truth and shows Gods Power through the Love he gave us to share in this World. *************************** "review my blogs"
Saturday, October 10, 2009
In First Lady’s Roots, a Complex Path From Slavery
Fraser Robinson III and his wife, Marian, with their children, Craig and Michelle, now the first lady.
By RACHEL L. SWARNS and JODI KANTOR Published: October 7, 2009
WASHINGTON — In 1850, the elderly master of a South Carolina estate took pen in hand and painstakingly divided up his possessions. Among the spinning wheels, scythes, tablecloths and cattle that he bequeathed to his far-flung heirs was a 6-year-old slave girl valued soon afterward at $475. Henry Louis Gates Jr., Annette Gordon-Reed and others discuss what Michelle Obama's family tree says about America.
In his will, she is described simply as the “negro girl Melvinia.” After his death, she was torn away from the people and places she knew and shipped to Georgia. While she was still a teenager, a white man would father her first-born son under circumstances lost in the passage of time.
In the annals of American slavery, this painful story would be utterly unremarkable, save for one reason: This union, consummated some two years before the Civil War, represents the origins of a family line that would extend from rural Georgia, to Birmingham, Ala., to Chicago and, finally, to the White House.
Melvinia Shields, the enslaved and illiterate young girl, and the unknown white man who impregnated her are the great-great-great-grandparents of Michelle Obama, the first lady.
Viewed by many as a powerful symbol of black advancement, Mrs. Obama grew up with only a vague sense of her ancestry, aides and relatives said.
During the presidential campaign, the family learned about one paternal great-great-grandfather, a former slave from South Carolina, but the rest of Mrs. Obama’s roots were a mystery.
Now the more complete map of Mrs. Obama’s ancestors — including the slave mother, white father and their biracial son, Dolphus T. Shields — for the first time fully connects the first African-American first lady to the history of slavery, tracing their five-generation journey from bondage to a front-row seat to the presidency.
The findings — uncovered by Megan Smolenyak, a genealogist, and The New York Times — substantiate what Mrs. Obama has called longstanding family rumors about a white forebear.
In his will, she is described simply as the “negro girl Melvinia.” After his death, she was torn away from the people and places she knew and shipped to Georgia. While she was still a teenager, a white man would father her first-born son under circumstances lost in the passage of time.
In the annals of American slavery, this painful story would be utterly unremarkable, save for one reason: This union, consummated some two years before the Civil War, represents the origins of a family line that would extend from rural Georgia, to Birmingham, Ala., to Chicago and, finally, to the White House.
Melvinia Shields, the enslaved and illiterate young girl, and the unknown white man who impregnated her are the great-great-great-grandparents of Michelle Obama, the first lady.
Viewed by many as a powerful symbol of black advancement, Mrs. Obama grew up with only a vague sense of her ancestry, aides and relatives said.
During the presidential campaign, the family learned about one paternal great-great-grandfather, a former slave from South Carolina, but the rest of Mrs. Obama’s roots were a mystery.
Now the more complete map of Mrs. Obama’s ancestors — including the slave mother, white father and their biracial son, Dolphus T. Shields — for the first time fully connects the first African-American first lady to the history of slavery, tracing their five-generation journey from bondage to a front-row seat to the presidency.
The findings — uncovered by Megan Smolenyak, a genealogist, and The New York Times — substantiate what Mrs. Obama has called longstanding family rumors about a white forebear.
While President Obama’s biracial background has drawn considerable attention, his wife’s pedigree, which includes American Indian strands, highlights the complicated history of racial intermingling, sometimes born of violence or coercion, that lingers in the bloodlines of many American-Americans.
In 1870, three of Melvinia’s four children, including Dolphus, were listed on the census as mulatto. One was born four years after emancipation, suggesting that the liaison that produced those children endured after slavery. She gave her children the Shields name, which may have hinted at their paternity or simply been the custom of former slaves taking their master’s surnames. Even after she was freed, Melvinia stayed put, working as a farm laborer on land adjacent to that of Charles Shields, one of Henry’s sons.
But sometime in her 30s or 40s, census records show, Melvinia broke away and managed to reunite with former slaves from her childhood on the Patterson estate: Mariah and Bolus Easley, who settled with Melvinia in Bartow County, near the Alabama border. Dolphus married one of the Easleys’ daughters, Alice, who is Mrs. Obama’s great-great-grandmother.
A community “that had been ripped apart was somehow pulling itself back together,” Ms. Smolenyak said of the group in Bartow County. Still, Melvinia appears to have lived with the unresolved legacy of her childhood in slavery until the very end. Her 1938 death certificate, signed by a relative, says “don’t know” in the space for the names of her parents, suggesting that Melvinia, then in her 90s, may never have known herself.
Sometime before 1888, Dolphus and Alice Shields continued the migration, heading to Birmingham, a boomtown with a rumbling railroad, an iron and steel industry and factories that attracted former slaves and their children from across the South.
Dolphus Shields was in his 30s and very light skinned — some say he looked like a white man — a church-going carpenter who could read, write and advance in an industrializing town. By 1900, he owned his own home, census records show. By 1911, he had opened his own carpentry and tool sharpening business.
But sometime in her 30s or 40s, census records show, Melvinia broke away and managed to reunite with former slaves from her childhood on the Patterson estate: Mariah and Bolus Easley, who settled with Melvinia in Bartow County, near the Alabama border. Dolphus married one of the Easleys’ daughters, Alice, who is Mrs. Obama’s great-great-grandmother.
A community “that had been ripped apart was somehow pulling itself back together,” Ms. Smolenyak said of the group in Bartow County. Still, Melvinia appears to have lived with the unresolved legacy of her childhood in slavery until the very end. Her 1938 death certificate, signed by a relative, says “don’t know” in the space for the names of her parents, suggesting that Melvinia, then in her 90s, may never have known herself.
Sometime before 1888, Dolphus and Alice Shields continued the migration, heading to Birmingham, a boomtown with a rumbling railroad, an iron and steel industry and factories that attracted former slaves and their children from across the South.
Dolphus Shields was in his 30s and very light skinned — some say he looked like a white man — a church-going carpenter who could read, write and advance in an industrializing town. By 1900, he owned his own home, census records show. By 1911, he had opened his own carpentry and tool sharpening business.
A co-founder of First Ebenezer Baptist Church and Trinity Baptist Church, which later became active in the civil rights movement, he supervised Sunday schools at both churches, which still exist today, and at Regular Missionary Baptist Church. “He was the dean of the deacons in Birmingham,” said Helen Heath, 88, who attended church with him. “He was a serious man. He was about business.”
He carried his family into the working-class, moving into a segregated neighborhood of striving black homeowners and renters. In his home, there was no smoking, no cursing, no gum chewing, no lipstick or trousers for ladies and absolutely no blues on the radio, which was reserved for hymns, remembered Bobbie Holt, 73, who was raised by Mr. Shields and his fourth wife, Lucy. She said the family went to church “every night of the week, it seemed like.”
He carried peppermints for neighborhood children, Mrs. Holt said, and told funny stories about his escapades as a boy. But his family struggled. His first wife, Alice Easley Shields, moved around after they split up, working as a seamstress and a maid, and two of their sons stumbled.
Robert Lee Shields, Mrs. Obama’s great-grandfather, married Annie Lawson in 1906 and worked as a laborer and a railroad porter but disappeared from the public record sometime around his 32nd birthday. Willie Arthur Shields, an inventor who obtained patents for improving dry cleaning operations, ended up working as a maintenance man, Mrs. Holt said.
As for his ancestry, Dolphus Shields didn’t talk about it. “We got to the place where we didn’t want anybody to know we knew slaves; people didn’t want to talk about that,” said Mrs. Heath, who said she assumed he had white relatives because his skin color and hair texture “told you he had to be near white.”
At a time when blacks despaired at the intransigence and violence of whites who barred them from voting, from most city jobs, from whites-only restaurants and from owning property in white neighborhoods, Dolphus Shields served as a rare link between the deeply divided communities.
His carpentry shop stood in the white section of town, and he mixed easily and often with whites. “They would come to his shop and sit and talk,” Mrs. Holt said.
Dolphus Shields firmly believed race relations would improve. “It’s going to come together one day,” he often said, Mrs. Holt recalled.
By the time he died in 1950 at age 91, change was on the way. On June 9, 1950, the day that his obituary appeared on the front page of The Birmingham World, the black newspaper also ran a banner headline that read, “U.S. Court Bans Segregation in Diners and Higher Education.” The Supreme Court had outlawed separate but equal accommodations on railway cars and in universities in Texas and Oklahoma.
Up North, his grandson, a painter named Purnell Shields, Mrs. Obama’s grandfather, was positioning his family to seize the widening opportunities in Chicago. But as his descendants moved forward, they lost touch with the past. Today, Dolphus Shields lies in a neglected black cemetery, where patches of grass grow knee-high and many tombstones have toppled.
Mrs. Holt, a retired nursing assistant, said he came to her in a dream last month. She dug up his photograph, never guessing that she would soon learn that Dolphus Shields was a great-great-grandfather of the first lady. “Oh, my God,” said Mrs. Holt, gasping at the news. “I always looked up to him, but I would never have imagined something like this. Praise God, we’ve come a long way.”
Dolphus Shields firmly believed race relations would improve. “It’s going to come together one day,” he often said, Mrs. Holt recalled.
By the time he died in 1950 at age 91, change was on the way. On June 9, 1950, the day that his obituary appeared on the front page of The Birmingham World, the black newspaper also ran a banner headline that read, “U.S. Court Bans Segregation in Diners and Higher Education.” The Supreme Court had outlawed separate but equal accommodations on railway cars and in universities in Texas and Oklahoma.
Up North, his grandson, a painter named Purnell Shields, Mrs. Obama’s grandfather, was positioning his family to seize the widening opportunities in Chicago. But as his descendants moved forward, they lost touch with the past. Today, Dolphus Shields lies in a neglected black cemetery, where patches of grass grow knee-high and many tombstones have toppled.
Mrs. Holt, a retired nursing assistant, said he came to her in a dream last month. She dug up his photograph, never guessing that she would soon learn that Dolphus Shields was a great-great-grandfather of the first lady. “Oh, my God,” said Mrs. Holt, gasping at the news. “I always looked up to him, but I would never have imagined something like this. Praise God, we’ve come a long way.”
-Helen Heath of Birmingham,Alabama, who knew Michelle Obama's great-great-grandfather Dolphus Shields, holds the program from Shields' funeral in 1950. (The Birmingham News / Mark Almond) If Helen Heath were able to talk with Michelle Obama, there's one thing she'd want the first lady to know.
"She certainly should be proud of her heritage," said Heath, a west Birmingham resident. "She came out of a very good family, a very religious family, a very compassionate family, a very morally oriented family.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/10/08/us/politics/20091008-obama-family-tree.html?ref=politics
Friday, October 9, 2009
President Barack Obama
This morning, Michelle and I awoke to some surprising and humbling news. At 6 a.m., we received word that I'd been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009.
To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize -- men and women who've inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.
But I also know that throughout history the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it's also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes.
That is why I've said that I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations and all peoples to confront the common challenges of the 21st century. These challenges won't all be met during my presidency, or even my lifetime. But I know these challenges can be met so long as it's recognized that they will not be met by one person or one nation alone.
This award -- and the call to action that comes with it -- does not belong simply to me or my administration; it belongs to all people around the world who have fought for justice and for peace. And most of all, it belongs to you, the men and women of America, who have dared to hope and have worked so hard to make our world a little better.
So today we humbly recommit to the important work that we've begun together. I'm grateful that you've stood with me thus far, and I'm honored to continue our vital work in the years to come.
Thank you,
President Barack Obama
Saturday, September 26, 2009
America 's High Tech "Invisible Man"
By Tyrone D. Taborn
You may not have heard of Dr. Mark Dean. And you aren't alone. But almost everything in your life has been affected by his work.
Dr. Mark Dean is a Ph.D. from Stanford University . He is in the National Hall of Inventors. He has more than 30 patents pending. He is a vice president with IBM. Oh yeah, and he is also the architect of the modern-day personal computer.
Dr. Dean holds three of the original nine patents on the computer that all PCs are based upon. And, Dr. Mark Dean is an African American. So how is it that we can celebrate the 20th anniversary of the IBM personal computer without reading or hearing a single word about him? Given all of the pressure mass media are under about negative portrayals of African Americans on television and in print, you would think it would be a slam dunk to highlight someone like Dr. Dean.
Somehow, though, we have managed to miss the shot. History is cruel when it comes to telling the stories of African Americans. Dr. Dean isn't the first Black inventor to be overlooked Consider John Stanard, inventor of the refrigerator, George Sampson, creator of the clothes dryer, Alexander Miles and his elevator, Lewis Latimer and the electric lamp. All of these inventors share two things: One, they changed the landscape of our society; and, two, society relegated them to the footnotes of history. Hopefully, Dr. Mark Dean won't go away as quietly as they did. He certainly shouldn't. Dr. Dean helped start a Digital Revolution that created people like Microsoft's Bill Gates and Dell Computer's Michael Dell. Millions of jobs in information technology can be traced back directly to Dr. Dean.
More important, stories like Dr. Mark Dean's should serve as inspiration for African-American children. Already victims of the "Digital Divide" and failing school systems, young, Black kids might embrace technology with more enthusiasm if they knew someone like Dr. Dean already was leading the way.
In other words, because of Dr. Dean, the PC became a part of our daily lives. For most of us, changing the face of society would have been enough. But not for Dr. Dean ..... Still in his early forties, he has a lot of inventing left in him.
He recently made history again by leading the design team responsible for creating the first 1-gigahertz processor chip. It's just another huge step in making computers faster and smaller. As the world congratulates itself for the new Digital Age brought on by the personal computer, we need to guarantee that the African-American story is part of the hoopla surrounding the most stunning technological advance the world has ever seen. We cannot afford to let Dr. Mark Dean become a footnote in history. He is well worth his own history book.
First Woman Ascends to Top Drill Sergeant Spot
Command Sgt. Maj. Teresa L. King , the first woman to run the Army’s Drill Sergeant School.Her new job will have significant influence over the basic training of every enlisted soldier.
By JAMES DAO- Published: September 21, 2009
Command Sgt. Maj. King held a meeting with her first sergeants.
Petite yet imposing, Sergeant Major King seems a drill sergeant at heart, ever vigilant for busted rules: soldiers nodding off in class, soldiers with hair a fraction too long, soldiers who run too slow. “Are you crazy?” she shouts at one who is walking across a lawn. “Get off my grass!”
The eighth of 12 children, the sergeant major is the daughter of a sharecropper who grew cucumbers and tobacco near Fort Bragg, N.C. Her first job in the Army was as a postal clerk, a traditional position for women in those days.
She says she regrets not having been deployed to a war zone during her 29-year Army career, though she has trained many soldiers who were. And now, in her new job, she will have significant influence over the basic training of every enlisted soldier. Last year the Army consolidated several drill schools into a single campus at this sprawling post, meaning Sergeant Major King, with her staff of 78 instructors, will oversee drill sergeant training for the entire Army.
Famous for their Smokey Bear hats, booming voices and no-nonsense demeanor, those sergeants transform tens of thousands of raw recruits into soldiers each year. It is one of the backbone jobs of the military, and having a woman in charge underscores the expanding role of women in the Army’s leadership.
Sergeant Major King said one of her priorities would be to recruit more women into her school.
But she pushes back at the notion that she has risen because she is a woman. “When I look in the mirror, I don’t see a female,” Sergeant Major King said. “I see a soldier.”
As a child, she refused her mother’s cooking lessons, insisting on driving her father’s tractor and playing basketball instead. When her siblings got in trouble, she volunteered to take their spankings. It was the sight of a commanding-looking female soldier in a stylish red beret at the fort that inspired her to enlist while still in high school. Within three years, she was sent to drill sergeant school, graduating as one of five women in a class of 30. Willie Shelley, a retired command sergeant major who supervised Sergeant Major King in three postings, said that he once promoted her over the objections of his commander into a position at Fort Bragg that had been held only by men. “Turns out she was about the best first sergeant they ever had,” Mr. Shelley said. “It would not surprise me that she could become the first female sergeant major of the Army,” he added, referring to its top enlisted soldier.
In her clipped speaking style, acute command of regulations and visible disgust with slovenliness, Sergeant Major King prowls the grounds of Fort Jackson, where she was the top noncommissioned officer for a human resources battalion before being promoted to commandant.
“She can always find the cigarette butt under the mattress,” said Patrick J. Jones, a public affairs officer at Fort Jackson. Respect for rules and dedication to training is what keeps soldiers alive in combat, Sergeant Major King says, and she expects drill sergeants to embody that ethic 24 hours a day. “Most soldiers want to be like their drill sergeants,” she said. “They are the role models.”
Yet for all her gruffness, she can show surprising tenderness toward her charges. She describes her soldiers as “my children” and her approach to disciplining them as “tough love.” She wells up with emotion while describing how she once hugged a burly master sergeant whose wife had left him.
“She is confident, no nonsense, but compassionate about what’s right for the soldier,” said Col. John E. Bessler, her commander in a basic training battalion four years ago.
After a stint as a drill sergeant in her early 20s, Sergeant Major King went through a series of rapid promotions: aide to the secretary of defense, then Dick Cheney; senior enlisted positions near the demilitarized zone in Korea; with the XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg; and at NATO headquarters in Europe.
For a time in her 30s, she was married to another soldier. She got pregnant but lost the baby, and eventually divorced. The failure of her marriage, she said, brought on a period of soul-searching that led her to study the Bible. She was planning to retire and join the ministry when her appointment to the drill sergeant school was announced over the summer. “On the other side, the military life, I was doing so good,” she said. “But my personal life just stunk.” Since her divorce, she added, “I just pour my heart into these soldiers.”
Looking back on her years in the Army, Sergeant Major King says she can think of few occasions where men challenged her authority because she was a woman. “And when they did,” she said, “I could handle it.”
Asked if women should be allowed into front line combat units, she said yes, but only if they meet the same standards as men. While she says most women cannot meet those standards, she believes she can. As if to prove her point, she scored a perfect 300 on her semiannual physical training test last week, doing 34 push-ups and 66 situps, each in under two minutes, then ran two miles in 16 minutes 10 seconds (well below the required 17:36 for her age group.) But before she started her test, she characteristically noticed something amiss. “Can you believe that?” the sergeant major asked no one in particular. “A bag of garbage outside my Dumpster.”
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
It's Okay to Quit!
Motivational Speaker - Veraunda Jackson
1. Quit arguing with people about the same old foolishness! Respect their position and keep it moving!
2. Quit telling people your secrets when you know they are not going to keep them! And if you keep telling them, then quit getting mad when they tell your secrets!
3. Quit trying to pull people on your journey who don't want to travel with you. Either they believe in you and value you...or they don't!
4. Quit complaining about things you can't and won't change!
5. Quit gossiping about other people! Minding our own business should be a full time job!
6. Quit blaming each other for things that in the big picture aren't going to matter three weeks from now! Talk solutions...and then implement them!
7. Quit eating things you know are not good for you! If you can't quit...eat smaller portions!
8. Quit buying things when we know we can't afford them! If you don't have self control, then quit going to the stores! Quit charging things, especially when you don't NEED them!
9. Quit staying in unhealthy relationships! It is not okay for people to verbally or physically abuse you! So quit lying to yourself! It is not okay to stay in the marriage for the children! Ask them and they will tell you that they really would prefer to see you happy and that the misery you and your spouse/partner are living with is affecting them!
10. Quit letting family members rope you into the drama! -Start telling them you don't want to hear it! Quit spreading the drama! Quit calling other relatives and telling them about your cousin or aunt! Go back to #5 minding your own business should be enough to keep you busy!
11. Quit trying to change people! IT DOESN'T WORK! Quit cussing people out when you know that they are just being the miserable and jealous people that they are!
12. Quit the job you hate! Start pursuing your passion. Find the job that fuels your passion BEFORE you quit!
13. Quit volunteering for things that you aren't getting any personal fulfillment from anymore! Quit volunteering for things and then failing to follow through with your commitment!
14. Quit listening to the naysayers! Quit watching the depressing news if you are going to live in the doom and gloom of it all!
15. Quit making excuses about why you are where you are or why you can't do what you want to do!
16. Quit waiting on others to give you the answers...and start finding the answers for yourself! If what you are doing isn't working for you...then quit it!
17. Quit settling and start making your dreams a reality!- Quit being afraid and START LIVING YOUR LIFE! CREATE THE LIFE YOU WANT! If you want something different than what you have had in the past....you must quit doing what you have done before and DO something different! JUST QUIT IT ...... and START DOING something to create the experience you want!
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Dr. Andrew Manis: “When are we going to get over it?”
For much of the last forty years, ever since America “fixed” its race problem in the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, we white people have been impatient with African Americans who continued to blame race for their difficulties. Often we have heard whites ask, “When are African Americans finally going to get over it?
Now I want to ask: “When are we White Americans going to get over our ridiculous obsession with skin color?
Recent reports that “Election Spurs Hundreds’ of Race Threats, Crimes” should frighten and infuriate every one of us. Having grown up in “Bombingham,” Alabama in the 1960s, I remember overhearing an avalanche of comments about what many white classmates and their parents wanted to do to John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Eventually, as you may recall, in all three cases, someone decided to do more than “talk the talk.”
Since our recent presidential election, to our eternal shame we are once again hearing the same reprehensible talk I remember from my boyhood.
We white people have controlled political life in the disunited colonies and United States for some 400 years on this continent. Conservative whites have been in power 28 of the last 40 years. Even during the eight Clinton years, conservatives in Congress blocked most of his agenda and pulled him to the right. Yet never in that period did I read any headlines suggesting that anyone was calling for the assassinations of presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, or either of the Bushes. Criticize them, yes. Call for their impeachment, perhaps.
But there were no bounties on their heads. And even when someone did try to kill Ronald Reagan, the perpetrator was non-political mental case who wanted merely to impress Jody Foster.
But elect a liberal who happens to be Black and we’re back in the sixties again. At this point in our history, we should be proud that we’ve proven what conservatives are always saying -that in America anything is possible, EVEN electing a black man as president. But instead we now hear that schoolchildren from Maine to California are talking about wanting to “assassinate Obama.”
Fighting the urge to throw up, I can only ask, “How long?”
How long before we white people realize we can’t make our nation, much less the whole world, look like us?
How long until we white people can -once and for all- get over this hell-conceived preoccupation with skin color?
How long until we white people get over the demonic conviction that white skin makes us superior?
How long before we white people get over our bitter resentments about being demoted to the status of equality with non-whites?
How long before we get over our expectations that we should be at the head of the line merely because of our white skin?
How long until we white people end our silence and call out our peers when they share the latest racist jokes in the privacy of our white-only conversations?
I believe in free speech, but how long until we white people start making racist loudmouths as socially uncomfortable as we do flag burners?
How long until we white people will stop insisting that blacks exercise personal responsibility, build strong families, educate themselves enough to edit the Harvard Law Review, and work hard enough to become President of the United States, only to threaten to assassinate them when they do?
How long before we starting “living out the true meaning” of our creeds, both civil and religious, that all men and women are created equal and that “red and yellow, black and white” all are precious in God’s sight?
Until this past November 4, I didn’t believe this country would ever elect an African American to the presidency. I still don’t believe I’ll live long enough to see us white people get over our racism problem. But here’s my three-point plan:
First, everyday that Barack Obama lives in the White House that Black Slaves Built I’m going to pray that God (and the Secret Service) will protect him and his family from us white people.
Second, I’m going to report to the FBI any white person I overhear saying, in seriousness or in jest, anything of a threatening nature about President Obama.
Third, I’m going to pray to live long enough to see America surprise the world once again, when white people can “in spirit and in truth” sing of our damnable color prejudice,
“We HAVE overcome.”
Andrew Manis is author of Macon Black and White and serves on the steering committee of Macon’s Center for Racial understanding.
It take a Village to protect our President!!!
__________________________
More About Dr. Andrew M. Manis
Andrew Manis
Assistant Professor of History
Author, historian, researcher, lecturer
The author of five books, Dr. Manis is a frequent lecturer and has become one of Central Georgia’s leading authorities on the history of race relations, especially in the South. His most recent book, Macon Black and White: An Unutterable Separation of the American Century, published in 2004 by Mercer University Press and the Tubman African American Museum, earned him the 2005 Georgia Author of the Year (History Division) award, and he was a semifinalist for the 2005 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. Manis’ previous book, a biography of Birmingham civil rights leader Fred Shuttlesworth, won a number of prizes, including the 2000 Lillian Smith Book Award. In addition, he has written many magazine articles about religion and religions in the South.
Thank you Renee
Friday, September 18, 2009
THE PLANET MERCURY IN RETROGRADE?
In the last few weeks alone there have been a number of situations that just haven't seemed right.
First, South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson had his "you lie" outburst during President Obama's health care reform pitch to Congress, which was seen as strange to both Democrats and Republicans alike.
Then tennis phenom Serena Williams had her foulmouthed rant while playing at the U.S. Open, something we've never seen her do. And most recently, Kanye West transformed into the most hated man in music after stealing country singer Taylor Swift's acceptance speech moment. Not to mention all the random fights, brawls between sports teams, town hall meetings, relationships gone awry( and I may add town hall meeting and the Freedom Works attacks on the president) It lead us to ask the question, what the heck is going really on?
ESSENCE.com talked to astro-numerologist Lloyd Strayhorn to find some answers. He explained why we're ruled by Mercury in retrograde and reveals what we should all keep in mind during this time.What does Mercury in retrograde mean?
It means that the normal course of communication has slowed down. Mercury rules the planet of communication. When it's in retrograde, you're left with mis-communications and misunderstandings. Computers go on the blink and start running slower. If you buy a car, it's not luck that made you pick the worst car on the lot.
Think of it this way—when the local and express trains are traveling side-by-side at that same rate and speed and the local starts to slow down to make it into the next stop, those sitting on the express train look out to see what appears to be the local train moving backwards.
Mercury in retrograde takes place four times this year, which is a rarity. It usually only happens three times a year. It started on the west coast on September 6 at 9:45 P.M. and on the east coast on September 7 at 12:45 A.M. It will end on September 29 at 9:14 A.M. The next one will take place on December 26 at 9:38 A.M., and it will end on January 15, 2010, at 11:52 A.M.
I wouldn't sign any contracts. People usually want to revise or cancel what they've signed during this time. This is when you'll see a lot of people having arguments, like one person is serious but the other is just joking and vice-versa.
Also, lets say you have a very important contact and you're writing down the telephone number. The last four digits might be 1,2,3,4 but you've written down 1,2,4, 3. When you're dealing with important clients or friends, it might seem silly, but ask them to read it back.
If you have an appointment that normally takes you 20 minutes to get to, while we're in retrograde you should definitely add an extra 15 minutes on top of that just in case there's a glitch along the way.
Yes, there are exceptions. If you've been negotiating a deal since April or May and now it's ready to be signed off, go ahead and follow through. That will be fine. But you should not get up tomorrow and say while Mercury is in retrograde that you're going to sign a contract because things are likely to go foul. It's not the best time to start anything new.
It is possible that the recent events involving Kanye West, Serena Williams, Joe Wilson and others are a result of this phenomenon. Mercury is all retrograde here. Interestingly enough, Kanye West is a Gemini born on June 8. Beyoncé is a Virgo. Gemini is ruled by the planet of Mercury as is Virgo. My advice to them both going forward—be careful about what you say.
People need to use this time to learn about patience. Not only being patient but in finding ways to approach things with a more open mind rather than just assume. I say again, this is not the time to assume. We need to communicate openly and not be so reactionary.
More misunderstandings take place when Mercury in retrograde than any other time. Once we're out of it, people won't even know why they've been fighting.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
TOGETHER WE CAN
...."We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly...I can never be what I ought to be unless you are what you ought to be." Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
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Learn more here - JUSTICE FOR ALL
http://www.ronsworldlife.com/
TOGETHER WE CAN
Learn more here - JUSTICE FOR ALL
http://www.ronsworldlife.com/
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TOGETHER WE CAN
Thursday, September 10, 2009
PRAYING FOR THE FIELD OF EDUCATION IN U.S. SCHOOLS
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
President Barack Obama
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the EconomyFrom: President Barack Obama (info@barackobama.com)Sent: Wed 9/09/09 10:57 PM To: Ronald White (rgbw46@hotmail.com) Ronald --
I just finished laying out my plan for health reform at a joint session of Congress. Now, I'm writing directly to you because what happens next is critical -- and I need your help.
Change this big will not happen because I ask for it. It can only come when the nation demands it. Congress knows where I stand. Now they need to hear from you.
Add your voice: Ask your representatives to support my plan for real health reform in 2009.
The heart of my plan is simple: bring stability and security to Americans who already have health insurance, guarantee affordable coverage for those who don't, and rein in the cost of health care.
Tonight, I offered a specific plan for how to make it happen. I incorporated the best ideas from Democrats and Republicans to create a plan that's bold, practical, and represents the broad consensus of the American people.
We've come closer to real health reform in the last few months than we have in the last 60 years. But those who profit from the status quo -- and those who put partisan advantage above all else -- will fight us every inch of the way.
We do not seek that fight, but we will not shrink from it. The stakes are too high to let scare tactics cloud the debate, or to allow partisan bickering to block the path. Your voice, right now, is essential.
See my full plan and call on your representatives to support it:
http://my.barackobama.com/SupportReform
Ours is not the first generation to understand the dire need for health reform. And I am not the first president to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last.
Thank you,
President Barack Obama
Black Caucus Says Public Option Or Nothing
Black Caucus Says Public Option Or Nothing For Health Care
By News One September 9, 2009
Leading members of the Black Caucus are threatening to bring down healthcare reform if it does not include a strong public option.
Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) said that President Obama will not be able to muscle through a bill that sidesteps a government-run plan.
"[Obama] can't get 218 without a public option," Conyers said on MSNBC last night. "This is simple arithmetic."
Conyers tallied up the progressive members he expects to join him in opposing a plan with no public option.
"There are 83 Progressive Caucus members, 42 Black Caucus members 25 Hispanic Caucus members, 14 Asian Pacific members, and most of them are public option people," Conyers said.
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) agreed with Conyers's ominous analysis and warned that House liberals will not settle for the kind of compromise that might be necessary in the Senate.
"You're asking whether or not we will support some other altnerative to public option, and I want to be very, very clear," she told MSNBC's Ed Schultz.
"We've got to have a public option. I will not vote for anything that doesn't have a public option."
At a press conference today on Capitol Hill, Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Barbara Lee said there was no room for debate on the issue.
"As members of the Congressional Black Caucus, we are unwavering in our support of a robust public option," she said, according to First Read.
Obama is expected to push for the public option in his address to Congress tonight, but will likely not "draw a line in the sand" by threatening to kill any reform package that lacks such a plan.
Monday, September 7, 2009
ANDY ROONEY AND PRAYER
I don't believe in Santa Claus, but I'm not going to sue somebody for singing a Ho-Ho-Ho song in December.
I don't agree with Darwin, but I didn't go out and hire a lawyer when my high school teacher taught his Theory of Evolution.
Life, liberty or your pursuit of happiness will not be endangered because someone says a 30-second prayer before a football game. So what's the big deal? It's not like somebody is up there reading the entire Book of Acts. They're just talking to a God they believe in and asking him to grant safety to the players on the field and the fans going home from the game. But it's a Christian prayer, some will argue. Yes, and this is the United States of America, a country founded on Christian principles.
According to our very own phone book, Christian churches outnumber all others better than 200-to-1. So what would you expect -- somebody chanting Hare Krishna? If I went to a football game in Jerusalem, I would expect to hear a Jewish prayer...
If I went to a soccer game in Baghdad, I would expect to hear a Muslim prayer.
If I went to a ping pong match in China, I would expect to hear someone pray to Buddha..
And I wouldn't be offended. It wouldn't bother me one bit. When in Rome .....
But what about the atheists? Is another argument.
What about them? Nobody is asking them to be baptized. We're not going to pass the collection plate. Just humor us for 30 seconds. If that's asking too much, bring a Walkman or a pair of ear plugs. Go to the bathroom. Visit the concession stand. Call your lawyer!
Unfortunately, one or two will make that call. One or two will tell thousands what they can and cannot do. I don't think a short prayer at a football game is going to shake the world's foundations. Christians are just sick and tired of turning the other cheek while our courts strip us of all our rights.
Our parents and grandparents taught us to pray before eating, to pray before we go to sleep. Our Bible tells us to pray without ceasing. Now a handful of people and their lawyers are telling us to cease praying.
God, help us. And if that last sentence offends you, well, just sue me.
The silent majority has been silent too long It's time we tell that one or two who scream loud enough to be heard that the vast majority doesn't care what they want. It is time that the majority Rules!
It's time we tell them, you don't have to pray; you don't have to say the Pledge of Allegiance; you don't have to believe in God or attend services that honor Him. That is your right, and we will honor your right; but by golly, you are no longer going to take our rights away. We are fighting back, and we WILL WIN!
God bless us one and all ... Especially those who denounce Him , God bless America, despite all her faults. She is still the greatest nation of all. God bless our service men who are fighting to protect our right to pray and worship God.
Let's make 2009 the year the silent majority is heard and we put God back as the foundation of our families and institutions . And our military forces come home from all the wars..
Friday, August 28, 2009
A War For Your Soul
This video was created to inspire young at-risk African-Americans not to fall prey to some of the problems they face in society.
Peace & Blessings
Thursday, August 27, 2009
TORII HUNTER'S PERSONAL MIRACLE
By LEE HAWKINS
Two days before Christmas 2005, five years ago, Los Angeles Angels star outfielder Torii Hunter learned he had a half-brother. His father gathered him and his three brothers together to tell them they had a half brother. Theotis Hunter pulled out a high-school prom picture of Brandon Thurman, then 17, and told them that a DNA test had just confirmed his paternity. Adding to the shock: Their newly discovered sibling would be joining them for Christmas dinner at Torii's Dallas home.
"I felt like I was in a soap opera," Mr. Hunter recalls. "He looked just like my dad. Six-four. Had the same face. It was amazing." Recently, the blended family celebrated another major achievement: the graduation of Brandon Thurman from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. If there's ever been a near-perfect illustration of how natural-born talent can emerge even from the toughest of circumstances, it's the story of these two brothers—a superstar outfielder for the Los Angeles Angels and a young U.S. Army officer bound for a war zone.
The brothers, who have never talked publicly about their reunion, both grew up in Pine Bluff, Ark., a town about 45 miles outside of Little Rock with one of the highest crime rates of any metropolitan city in the U.S. Mr. Hunter admits to carrying a gun around Pine Bluff for safety as a youngster. He also remembers often playing cards by candlelight with his brothers because his father, then a crack addict who often squandered his paychecks on drug binges, left the family unable to pay its electric bill.
Mr. Hunter and Mr. Thurman both graduated from high school, but many of their peers did not. The state's high-school graduation rate for black males is 61%, but only 29% of black students who start high school in Pine Bluff are considered college-ready when they leave, according to Marcus Winters, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.Mr. Thurman's mother, Gloria Hampton, a nurse who recently retired after 20 years and also served in the National Guard, opted to not reveal who Mr. Thurman's father was, saying she didn't want to stir up too much small-town gossip in Pine Bluff. She and Theotis Hunter didn't see each other for years, so Mr. Hunter didn't know about Brandon.
Meanwhile, Brandon struggled with not knowing his biological father. "He was always bitter," Ms. Hampton says. "You know, children are bitter when they have a father that's not around them." In raising him, she kept him focused on academics, athletics and the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps program, always with the goal of keeping him active and away from trouble. "The child was seeing people do drugs, going to jail, and down the street selling drugs. I would tell him not to get involved with that," she says.
Mr. Thurman set his sights on West Point during his freshman year in high school, inspired by a speech by a West Point grad who attended his same high school, and by Col. Stan Warrick—his JROTC adviser who also graduated from West Point. "I wanted to get away from Pine Bluff," he says. He credits his mother for pushing him. "Even when things are bad, she just keeps her head up, she keeps going. And I think that's how we got through difficult times when we were younger, too," he says.
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Before he graduated from high school, Mr. Thurman's mother decided to resolve lingering questions about the boy's father. "I took him to court" seeking a paternity test, Ms. Hampton says. "I didn't get anything out of it [monetarily], but I got a lot out of it, because Brandon was able to meet his father," Ms. Hampton says. Torii Hunter has a strong mother, too. Shirley Hunter, an elementary-school teacher, basically supported the family during tough times, all the while scrambling to attend each of her four sons' Little League games. Torii's success changed everything. Mr. Hunter started to use his earnings with the Minnesota Twins (he left the Twins as a free agent and signed with Los Angeles in 2008 and now earns $18 million a year) to catapult himself and his family into a new financial universe.
Some of that money went to helping his father get treatment. Now clean, Theotis has spent the past few years trying to correct his past mistakes, saying his relationship with his new-found son and his other children and grandchildren have helped keep him straight. "It's an ongoing process. You have to manage yourself every day. You have to kind of watch who you deal with and everything. My grandkids and my family, they're No. 1. They keep me out of trouble," he says.
Looking back, Torii Hunter is impressed that his brother chose to attend West Point even after the war in Iraq had begun. Mr. Thurman says he heard similar sentiments elsewhere. "Some of my friends told me, 'You shouldn't go into the Army. You could get killed,'?" he remembers. "But people get killed over here, too. I figured, 'When it's my time, it's my time. I'd rather go out serving my country."
Mr. Thurman is currently training at Ft. Sill in Lawton, Okla., and will be stationed at Ft. Lewis in Washington. He recently learned that he will likely be deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq next year as part of his five-year commitment to the military. Mr. Thurman was less aware of his brother's talent. He knew Mr. Hunter was a major leaguer, but didn't realize the caliber of player he was. Toward the end of his freshman year at West Point, however, he found out. Some buddies were looking at a photo of Mr. Hunter in Sports Illustrated in their dorm.
"I think it was when he knocked some guy out while he was sliding into home plate," he recalls. "They said, 'Torii Hunter,' and I said, 'Hey, that's my brother.' And they were, like, 'No way, that's not your brother! He's like one of the greatest center fielders ever!' And I was, like, 'Really?'?" As for Mr. Thurman, the discovery of Theotis and Torii has helped answer questions that lingering in his mind. Mr. Thurman always stood out in cross-country, track and basketball, but he never knew where his athletic ability came from. He was plagued by injuries for most of his career as a walk-on sprinter at West Point, but the Hunter genes surfaced during one of his final races, and he set a school record in the 500 meters.
Theotis, himself a star high-school football player in Arkansas in the 1960s, wasn't surprised.
Known as "Iron Man," Theotis played both offense and defense, rarely coming off the field. But his dream ended with high school. "I had 17 football scholarship offers, but Vietnam was going on, and I got drafted," he says. He marvels at how two kids growing up on the streets of Pine Bluff could be so extraordinary. "The odds are probably a million to one," he says. Right now, the family is focused on strengthening its ties. Shirley and Theotis Hunter divorced, but family members say they remain friends. Theotis flew to New York for Mr. Thurman's West Point graduation ceremony, and Mr. Thurman visited California this summer to see his brother Torii and attend some Angels games. After the military, the future is less clear.
"I will need to stay in the Army until 2014, but I don't know if I'll stay or leave after that. If I decide to get out, I'll do law," he said. "I've thought about sports casting. I think that would be a nice job, too, and Torii has a lot of contacts in that area." Meeting Mr. Thurman and seeing all of his sons excel in life has helped soften Theotis's past personal disappointments. "It was a load off of my chest," he said of finding out about Brandon. "I didn't want to go through life not knowing he was my son. That was something that had to be resolved, so I took the test, and it came out 99%. So it's all good."
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