Before you read the article below please keep in mind:A black boy beat the shit out of a black girl at a McDonalds. Another black boy tried to help the black girl. The black boy doing the battering of the black female pulled out a Saturday Night Special and shot the black boy who was trying to protect the black queen in the chest. The wounded black boy still has the bullet lodged in his back, inches from his spine.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=6958997&page=1
Racist jokes/cartoons are not worthy of OUR time. Helping OUR boys control their ANGER is.
White House Watermelon Email from California Mayor Dean Grose Inspires Outrage
The mayor of Los Alamitos is coming under fire for an e-mail he sent out that depicts the White House lawn planted with watermelons, under the title "No Easter egg hunt this year."
Local businesswoman and city volunteer Keyanus Price, who is black, said Tuesday she received the e-mail from Mayor Dean Grose's personal account on Sunday and wants a public apology."
I have had plenty of my share of chicken and watermelon and all those kinds of jokes," Price told The Associated Press. "I honestly don't even understand where he was coming from, sending this to me. As a black person receiving something like this from the city-freakin'-mayor - come on."
The Orange County Register first reported the e-mail on its Web site Tuesday night.
Grose confirmed to the AP that he sent the e-mail to Price and said he didn't mean to offend her. He said he was unaware of the racial stereotype that black people like watermelons.
He said he and Price are friends and serve together on a community youth board.
"Bottom line is, we laugh at things and I didn't see this in the same light that she did," Grose told the AP. "I'm sorry. It wasn't sent to offend her personally - or anyone - from the standpoint of the African-American race."
Grose, who became mayor in December, said he sent an apology e-mail to Price and her boss and also left her a voicemail apology.
Regardless, Price said it will be difficult for the two to work together.
Now I am like - wow, is this really how he feels?" Price said.
Los Alamitos is a 2¼-square-mile Orange County city of around 12,000 people. The mayor is elected by fellow members of the five-seat City Council.
Shared by Brian E. Payne. Inspired by BLACK HYPER-SENSITIVITY and BLACK HYPOCRISY.
26 comments:
Reader Response:
I disagree with you. Racial jokes is worth our time and energy. Racism breeds hate, no matter how you sum it up. We can't afford to sit by and ignore racism in any form. Yes we have problems within our race but that shouldn't prevent us from demanding accountability for these types of instances ESPECIALLY when coming from elected officials. No we don't have to go to Cali and March but we should demand respect from anyone who thinks it's okay to disrespect us. Other cultures do it. We are no different.
-DM
Muata responds to DM:
I have no interest in combating racial slurs or jokes. None whatsoever. When I was a child my mother told me:
"Brian, if you are insulted. If someone calls you a Nigger. If someone makes fun of your skin color. Please ignore them. Do not allow them to get you to respond with emotion. Beat them at your intelligence and humility."
I remember that like it was yesterday. I did not adhere all the time. The times that I did not I ended up getting suspended or hit on the ass with a wooden board. The times that I did follow her guidance I prevented myself from being disciplined and I mind-defeated the white boy/girl who issued the racial insult.
We ain't winning crap! We are defeated when we have to respond to every single piece of foolishness. We have the audacity to complain about jokes - but do not have the fortitude to address self hatred, violence in our community, and other crap we (collectively as a group of people) fail to address. I am sick and tired of us responding to someone's ignorance. I am sick and tired of us complaining about what someone said when we treat each other like shyt.
Some of us are hypocrites!
Let's find something to address that we can change. We cannot change a racist heart.
-Muata
Reader Response:
I saw this yesterday and my take was that the "relationship" betwe en these two individuals had broached or crossed the line before. I've encountered folks like him before, and the more leeway they're given, the more they toe the line. It's only now that this sister is announcing to everyone that dude has a propensity for going too far. Something else I do know is that this man would not have sent this to anyone that he didn't think was going to find it "funny." He wouldn't have sent it to me. But, of course, he and I would have never shared this type of "friendship." We have to be careful who we call our friends. Were he just someone who stops by the cubicle every day and chit chats, I'd see this a little differently and tell her to pick better chit-chatting buddies--which I still say she should. But this man is a mayor of a town, which means sooner or later his "tell me how you really feel" personality leaks into his duties.
I do agree that we must pick our battles, but we also have to understand the type of game we're playing and that a lot of these people are playing for keeps. When it comes to the young brothers shooting each other, we need to give as much of our attention to preventing this as possible. We march for all the other ills of our world; when do we begin wholeheartedly spending this time on our children? In Atlanta, there's this group Atlantans Together Against Crime began by a couple of white dudes to protest what they see as rising crime/violence against white20people in Grant Park and surrounding areas. What bothers me about it is that this group is able to pull Black councilmen and other Blacks into the street to protest crime in predominantly white Atlanta neighborhoods, but we can't get not one of these Blacks to say we'll form our own coalition and protest the crimes in our more economically crime-ridden neighborhoods. I bet none of them would ever go out to Bankhead or any of the other areas where police round up our brothers and sisters on a daily basis--sometimes justly, other times not. Sometimes we have to ask ourselves, do we really care about our young brothers and sisters like we say we do? And if the answer is yes, what are we doing about it? Not what are we going to do, but what are we doing?
-YJ
Muata responns to YJ:
Last year Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Atlanta reported that they have a 2 year waiting list for black boys. Why? Brothas ain't volunteering to be mentors. Is this an issue? I wholeheartedly believe that it is considering we have countless black men in the A. I am aware that there are other mentor programs and that some black men are volunteering in some capacity - but that stat is alarming. It speaks volumes on so many levels like: WHERE THE DADDY AT?
Why can't we just focus solely on us. We can only win battles that we have control over i.e. the rise in HIV infections in our community. Also, while I am not a huge proponent of this, however one of the best outcomes noted in history was the ability not to respond to racist hatred. Gandhi and MLK, Jr.'s approach: non violence.
We have not learned a damn thing!
-Muata
Reader response:
There must be a balance here. There is a time to react and a time not to react. Clearly in this situation I think there has been other jokes. This guy is the mayor of a town and sent an email to his friend. Seems to me that they must have made racial jokes before and maybe this one went overboard. I find it interesting though that some people get all bent out of shape when they see these things but they call every asian person chinese and every hispanic a mexican and so on and so forth. You can't cry victim if you don't have your sh*t together yourself. I still react to those racist statements when said to me personally but a lot of things I see in the media I don't let get me too riled up. I can't allow ingorance to control me. I feel good about me and truth be told, lviign in chocolate city, I think I get more crap from those who look like me than anyone. But it is what it is.
As an American people we have bigger fish to fry. However we must find a balance between worrying about the fu ture of the country and it's direction and making sure we are respected as people. Some thigns are worht reacting too. But then again do we want freedom of speech or do we want people to be sensitive to our feelings as a race? It's a slipper slope. The cartoon from last week was someone's expression. It offended some but then again freedom of speech doesn't mean be sensitive to how you are received. If we can have black comedians talk wreckless about white people but then get upset when someone makes a super sterotypical remark about chicken and watermelon then we are gonna always be pissed off. Someone hates everybody, every race and every gender. That is a fact. RACISM is abundant in American and the rest of the world. Difference is the rest of the world doesn't always make it a focal point of conversation because they have figured out a way to deal with it. Maybe they ignore it or maybe it is what it is.
-LS
Muata responds to LS:
BLACK HYPOCRISY!
-Muata
Reader DM responds to Muata:
I agree with you To Some Degree. We should not get caught up in worrying about every racial slur or joke that is out there. However, as I pointed out earlier, we should not tolerate this type of behavior from an elected official. These people weld great power and their mindsets as it pertains to our race should certainly be of some concern rather than dismissed as trivial.
-DM
Muata responds to DM:
I wonder if it is a community with a significant concentration of black folk? Just asking because if it is the black folk have some power that many of us do not use: the ballot.
I am always going to turn the mirror on us and myself when a truthful/factual point like you have mentioned (elected official and the power he has) is shared. Where can WE make a difference without crying about the issue at hand?
-Muata
DM responds to Muata:
I have to counter and not just for the sake of doing so. You referenced Martin Luther King and Ghandi but in the same breath asked the question "Why can't we just focus on us?" They didn't just focus on one culture. They focused on mankind and humanity. Now I agree we need more focus on us but we must not loose site of the bigger picture which is; It isn't just us in this country or world. In other words, we must focus on us as a culture but we must not forget that we are a part of mankind that needs to know how to relate to others.
-DM
Muata responds to DM:
MLK focused on eradicating an injustice against black people. To change that injustice he had to combat the political structure. We need to focus on us in so many areas without including the white man/government in the formula unless it is a MAJOR injustice i.e. white cop shooting black man in back for no reason.
-Muata
Reader YJ responds to Muata:
Umm, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Gandhi was anything but non-violent. That's the peachy clean persona the media ran with, but Gandhi not only believed in the practice of violence, but assisted the British in the implementation of it against the Zulus and other South Afrikans. You can read a little about him here: http://www.trinicenter.com/oops/gandhi2.html, http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_23-3-2005_pg4_24, http://gandhism.net/gandhiandblacks.php and http://eserver.org/history/ghandi-nobody-knows.txt. There's plenty more to be found about this self-serving individual who gathered an army of South Afrikan Indians to assist in the destruction of Afrikan people.
When we speak of Dr. King, we must be clear on that subject, too. The media, once again, portra yed him as non-violent, which he did start out as. But if we were to listen to or read King's speech on the Vietnam war, given a year to the date he died, we'd see the changes he was undergoing. It is because of this changing mindset that I truly believe he was murdered.
And before we begin to ask where the DADDY AT, we also have to ask where the MAMA AT. Many of these man/boys are running around shirking their responsibilities under the obsessive protection or cognitive dissonance of their mothers. And as a mother, I have a right to say so. When we mothers, aunts, sisters, lovers and wives start to demand more from our boys and men, we'll see a difference. Our men are waiting on us to demand something different. We have to stop babying our boys and allow them to experience their right rage, not their wrong rage. We also have to do the same with our men and stop expecting them to be a carbon copy of the european or to ride in on a white horse and save us.
-YJ
Reader PM responds to YJ:
Lord THANK YOU Ms. Jacobs! Spread the word. Our Mothers are often failing these boys. Allowing far too much foolishness in their homes which carries out into the streets.
-PM
Muata responds to PM:
Baby Boy-ing' them is what I call it!
-Muata
Muata responds:
The Indians from India that live in my neighborhood carry on like it is just them here, and they have created internal community wealth.
I have no more justifications for us unless I can attach a strategic system that's in place to keep us down. They are there. Yes, we have reasons to be where we are - but too many of us like Ben Carson have made it/succeeded in the eye of hatred/discrimination for me to give any credence to all the so call barriers.
-Muata
DM responds to Muata:
I agree that Dr. King focused on eradicating the injustices of blacks but he didn't do so with the exclusion of all other races. He and many civil rights leaders were inclusive and understood that in the bigger picture, in order to be considered equal, we would have to deal with people of all cultures, not just blacks.
-DM
Reader YJ responds to DM:
We should deal with them, but we shouldn't always be20inviting them into our planning or action processes. That, to me, has always been our greatest failure in the success of our movements. It's also why we seem to end up right back where we were before. The Chinese have had movements. The Japanese have had movements. The Arabs, the Indians, the Vietnamese, etc., and what made their movements successful was that they excluded them in the planning and enactment process and only interacted with them as needed to accomplish a goal. And they felt no guilt behind that because they knew they were doing it for the long-term preservation of their people and their peoples way of life.
How many of us are even highly familiarized with our peoples way of life, and I'm talking pre-slavery, post-slavery and across different lands? So much of who Afrikans living in Amerikka were before slavery has been ripped from them--the language, culture, traditions, knowledge, love, self-esteem, etc. I see many of our brothers and sisters living and dying to e mbrace a culture foreign to them, because they've never had instilled in them a sense of self and a solid connection to their history. It is like many of us live with no attachment to any homeland. And a landless people is a people soon to be exterminated.
-YJ
Reader DM responds to YJ:
100% agree. Don't want to be misunderstood here. I'm not saying sit at the table and have other cultures privy to or participate on how we should behave and/or grow as a culture. What I'm saying is that we have to multi-task: 1. Yes we need to address the ills of our culture and remedy them 2. We also need to know how to become adept to a multi-cultural environment because like it or not, we have to deal with other races be it: in school, hospital, paying bills, law enforcement etc.
Simply stated, we can't cut our nose off to spite our face. If we turn a blind eye to others and their mindsets about us (whether they be justified or not) we are not doing anything to help our plight. As I20stated earlier, elected officials and others (i.e. police, doctors, lawyers, judges etc.) have a great amount of power. How they view other races is ABSOLUTELY important in that if they are jaded toward a race, they can AND HAS skewed things to offset the playing field for that race.
LOL at the fact that this commentary states that time and energy should not be wasted on slurs and racial jokes such as the one posted yet here we are some double digit posts later still talking about it...
-DM
Muata responds to DM:
i believe the conversation moved to ideas and solutions being presented. at least we are not crying about what they have done to us. there is no woe is me mentality being presented in this dialogue. hopefully the continuation of the discussion has encouraged us to do more for us or to encourage our people to be more viligant when it comes to self development and culture respect.
-Muata
Reader Response:
i totally agree that we are our biggest obstacle and i also agree that these jokes are not worth our time. we have bigger fish to fry. i would rather work on eliminating the damage we do to ourselves than focusing on what other people are saying and writing about us. every time i read one of those jokes, i ask myself what are we doing as a people that makes others feel comfortable publicly insulting us cuz it happens frequently. even though i have no stats, i'm willing to jump out there and say that it happens to us more than other cultures. that's my concern. i don't want to write a letter to help the guy who wrote or said it get fired. i wanna deal with fixing ourselves so that people are not comfortable treating us any way they see fit.
one of my favorite movie lines of all times is from training day when denzel washington's character tells ethan hawk's character (or some other) that "this is chess it ain't checkers". he's talking about the complexity of his whole hustle as a crooked cop. black folks play checkers while white folks been playing chess for centuries. checkers is easier and requires very little forethought. chess requires planning, a deeper level of concentration and involves positioning yourself where one of your pieces strengthens the other. you anticipate future moves and you position yourself so that certain defeats are impossible. the goal of both games may be the same, but the approach is so different. what can we do to position ourselves so that these attacks are difficult or impossible to make without some kind of repurcussions beyond a protest or a letter writing campaign. how can we strengthen ourselves so that people will think twice about these jokes? that's more urgent to me than the joke itself. we're crumbling. we're self destructing. i don't give a damn about a watermelon joke. i think it's terrible that it's happening, but workin on fixing ourselves will help to dismantle that power.
one of my students got mad cuz a white man called him a nigga. i told that child that the man shouldn't have said that and i also said what are you doing that would make him think you're not a nigga because it seemed that the child's perception (in that case) of a nigga was something bad. and i told my student that that's what i wanted to work on cuz we can only change ourselves and consequently, teach people how to treat us. there are certain people and groups that others are just not gonna step to on no bs, just like kids on the play ground. there are some people who you will just not come at all crazy cuz they've either demonstrated that they are not havin it or their reputation speaks so loudly that no one would support your argument.
i'm saddened by the state of black people. i think we have turned into a joke, and we've given the writers all the material to create their comedy. what if we stopped supplying the material for the skits? (i'm feelin a lil metaphoric) but for real, we gotta clean our house before we started workin on the block.
keep the dialogue goin.
-A Peaceful Journey
Reader response:
I know this is off the subject, but I justed wanted to share...
-Freedom
Dealing with Disappointment
Do not [earnestly] remember the former things; neither consider the things of old.
—Isaiah 43:18
All of us must face and deal with disappointment at different times. No person alive has everything happen in life the way they want in the way they expect.
When things don't prosper or succeed according to our plan, the first thing we feel is disappointment. This is normal. There is nothing wrong with feeling disappointed. But we must know what to do with that feeling, or it will move into something more serious. In the world we cannot live without disappointment, but in Jesus we can always be given re-appointment!
In Philippians 3:13 the apostle Paul says, "But one thing I do [it is my one aspiration]: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead." Paul stated that one thing of greatest importance to him was to let go of what lay behind and press toward the things that were ahead! When we get disappointed, then immediately get re-appointed, that's exactly what we're doing. We're letting go of the causes for the disappointment and pressing toward what God has for us. We get a new vision, plan, idea, a fresh outlook, a new mind-set, and we change our focus to that. We decide to go on!
-Freedom
Reader DM responds:
I agree that exercising our right to vote can sometimes help change the political landscape and I have no trouble with the mirror being turned on us. I just think that while we are looking in that mirror we must not forget the other people in the background that we have to deal with as it is not only "Just Us" here (or anywhere).
-DM
Reader YJ respoinds:
We can't and won't make lasting differences until we can come together on the most important issues and leave the nitpicking outside the door. Put a room of us together from various backgrounds and we'll argue over religions, clothing, music, etc. We'll do everything but figure out our real reason for being there and then commit to resolving whatever that issue might be. I attend Black events all over Atlanta and in other states and its always the same thing. We moan, groan and complain about our situations, but the minute someone says so where do we go and when do we start going there, there's this hush over the audience. And don't let someone mention we might have to pool our resources to pull it off, because that's pretty much a wrap. So, again, we say we want things like freedom, equality, less bullets in the backs of our children, less of our sisters and brothers locked down, more fathers in the home, etc., but then we have to ask, what are we willing to do to obtain it?
Why is it that the very people whose system is set up to oppress not just us, but all people of color, can hate each other's guts, but they'll work together for a common goal? And we can't say that they won't, because historically they have proven that they will and do. I mean, if we look at the years where europeans were fighting europeans in Europe. They were tearing up the country where they lived, but the minute they set their sights on Afrika, they all came together and settled on who would take over this section of Afrika and who would take over that section. They divvied up the country like it belonged to them, and they did it without warring against each other.
-YJ
Reader PM responds:
Michael Jackson said it best. Look at "the man in the mirror". First, then proceed to contribute. One day at a time, one person at a time. By the way, our generation MUST educate the youth about pride, dignity, and the importance of education.
-PM
Reader YJ responds to PM:
And that's correct. We must always hold and be willing to hold ourselves up to self-examination. It is only through conquering our own demons that we can even begin to assist others in doing the same. And even then, we can only expect that someone else will only conquer their own when they're willing, ready and able. That doesn't mean that our work is useless, but that those for whom our work is intended will see it as a catalyst, while others will disregard it or see it as a threat to their current state of being--whatever that state may be. But our youth is where we maintain the power to shape minds. It's also where we can't afford to be caught slipping. If we fail in this generation as we've failed in others, the cycle starts over and our children will be where we are today, discussing what we have discussed today and nothing will have changed for the better.
-YJ
Reader Response:
Just one more reading I wanted to share with everyone that is off the subject, yet still relevant.
God Bless,
Freedom
Filled with His Light
And this is the message [the message of promise] which we have heard from Him and now are reporting to you: God is Light, and there is no darkness in Him at all [no, not in any way]. [So] if we say we are partakers together and enjoy fellowship with20Him when we live and move and are walking about in darkness, we are [both] speaking falsely and do not live and practice the Truth [which the Gospel presents].
—1 John 1:5,6
So often the things we try to hide by burying them deep inside ourselves become darkness within us. But this passage tells us in God there is no darkness at all. So when we allow Him full entrance into our hearts and minds, there will be no darkness there. I am so glad that God fills every room in my heart, so that I am filled with His light. There are no places in my heart that I know of that are blocked off from Him and the light that comes with His presence. Often one of the signs that we are walking in the light of the Gospel is that we have good relationships with everyone with whom we come in contact in our daily lives — including our spouse and our children.
I can truthfully say that right now I do not know of any person in my life with whom I have a major problem. And it is not because they have all changed. The reason is that I have allowed the Lord to come into those dark recesses of my heart and fill them with His marvelous light. When I was one person on the inside and another person on the outside, I had to wear masks and be phony. I am so glad that now I can stand before God and be at peace with myself and with others.
I no longer have to live in fear of what anyone thinks of me, because I have opened my heart to God's Holy Spirit and He has lighted up the dark places within me so I can live free! You can say the same thing if you will open your heart to God and allow Him to fill every part of you with His life-giving Spirit.
-Freedom
yea folk we be missing the big picture
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